Life Lesson 
(1)
There is no lesion.
I was trying to test
your skill in nursing.
Some wounds require
healing of the hurt.
(2)
I was terrified of the negativity
in your nerves. I tossed and turned
pondering how to be a palliator.
The third turn introduced me to my
incisions. Instinct drove me to scratch
the scab, and sanitize the skin.
Life’s lesson: it is best
to purge one’s own pus.
Sunny Chacha
Chacha, we met for the first time
when I was six or so. You bought me some toys.
And fondness in all its force took form.
Sadly, when one looks back, realization dawns:
It wasn’t love but gratitude.
A decade later you came back,
and in your American twang asked:
“Do you wank?” My spine shivered.
How could one who was used to nuns,
and Mother Mary, answer such questions?
This made me withdraw, and thicken in my hide,
using banana polish, and all of that! But I could not
talk about it, as was the case with other things
that had, and were happening to me.
Years later, you telephoned. Once. Twice. Thrice.
The third call must have shattered your belief
in family values.
Was one drunk, drugged or drenched by life?
I don’t remember. But the attempt was to let
the route of my heart reach yours, for in my mind,
lay the toys you had given me as a toddler.
Later, amends were attempted for the emotional enema.
You were gentle. “Beta, don’t worry. You are the son
I have never had. We are a family.”
Perhaps, saying it more to yourself, than me.
“I’m not used to families.” I cried.
Chacha: Father’s younger brother.
Beta: Son.
Metropolis
In my world
there is no valley,
no rivulet nearby.
The mind is the landscape.
It is a high-rise here
and a high-rise there.
Quibblers may ask,
” What about the sky?”
How do you tell them?
It aches to look up all the time.
Capsules
(1)
The throb of childhood pain still pounds
unlike latter-day hurts.
Has one been sedated by sadness?
(2)
Drinking in a company
is like making love.
One has to feel secure.
(3)
In a conversation when you say,
“If you want me to be honest.”
It means you are about to lie.
(4)
For me
you live in my liquor intake.
Isn’t that reason enough
to give it up?
(5)
I envy the arrogance of those who pee
with their hands on their waist.
Such fortune escapes most fat men.
(6)
Your bow tie, your shirt with shabby buttons,
conveys less about slender means, more
about the after-effects of an alien embrace.
Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). A Best of the Net 2017 & 2018 nominee, his poems are in venues around the world: The Best of Mad Swirl: v2017!, Poetry Super Highway, Formercactus, 48th Street Press, The Metaworker, The Broadkill Review, The Five-Two, Pyrokinection, A Restricted View From Under The Hedge, Ink Pantry, Amethyst Review, Beakful | Becaqée, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India
