My Shrivelled Up Poem

[SivaRamanathan]

I have removed this poem as I am sending it elsewhere.

S

[Billy]

Like this very much Siva. A few changes, take or leave:

A green Musambi and an orange Kamala,
as I bend down to the fruit tray
I lift them to display on the dining table.

Not really display as much as
to help me to remember that I must eat
these fruits before they loosen up at the bottoms.

Green and orange I think, but don't stretch out
my hands to lift. ''Peel me, eat me
discard the skin, they seem to say

as my parrot talks to inanimate objects.
Our elders compared lazybones
to the one who awaits peeled bananas.

But the artist in me, the poet craves for
that limp colour-change, desiccated bottomless
apology of a fruit falling all over

the porcelain plate; still-life model;
one peel looking like an old woman wearing
a sanyasi's sari; the other a hunchbacked cauliflower stump.

I who had never reached for the shapeful
stretched out to stroke the shriveled up skin
that might live for an hour before decomposing.

[Smmrtmestos]

Nice job very descriptive and visual, that's something I have a hard time doing. You took something lifeless in most eyes and gave it character. Very nice job.

[SivaRamanathan]

Billy

Thanks for working on this poem. At present I will use your version.

Siva