I've never been to Kathmandu
it's highly unlikely I'm ever going to
and I don't consider macaques the least bit holy
while some there choose so to do
tho' they may be Nepalese aristocracy
no they won't make a monkey of me
such couldn't leave me any colder
as it's all in the mind's eye of the beholder
and who decides what is 'God'
of all possibilities chapter and verse in the universe
why give such Old World primates the nod
how about a slug or a ladybug
polyphyly and insects are equally relevant too
in fact if we're allegedly created in 'His' likeness
why not me... or even you?
Categories:
kathmandu, animal, fun, humor, religion,
Form: Rhyme
He had never seen the temple
As he leaned against the blessed stone.
He never saw the mountain
Which took lives, and tried, and never forgave.
His eyes never rose above your knees
And he never saw your shoes
As his body decayed faster than an avalanche.
His mind vanising quicker than the warmth
To be given from the descending coin or two
Flicked from our hands
Into his hat of greasy wool.
His prayer-like hands thanking
And he pushed himself away,
To another time
Another place.
Categories:
kathmandu, solitude, sympathy,
Form: Narrative
Kathmandu
a quaint, romantic name,
had wanted to go there now it is a dream.
Nepal, this small mountain country
often used a golf ball between big countries
for purely selfish reasons.
Thousands of people killed and classical
palaces are reduced dust covering
mountain tops
as a fog of sadness
Cry my lovely I can only offer you friendship.
But for the tourists who evacuated on
Himalayas’ sacred top.
Filling valleys with empty cans of beef
and toilet paper flapping in the wind,
I have little empathy
rich tourists that had to bestride and befoul
a holy mountain.
Categories:
kathmandu, allegory, allusion, anger, anxiety,
Form: Blank verse
The sun drenchs and heat soaks the air.
It throbbs with fumes.
The drivers of the three wheeled, canvas covered
taxi’s curse, beep, and press
their way between motor cycles
with garishly clad riders.
Males in western-style helmets
drive women, dressed in peacock-colored saris,
down the main boulevards between
the Mercedes of diplomats and
the Range rovers of the wealthy Western usurpers.
Upon the cracked concrete edged sidewalks
lined in a herringbone pattern of bricks walk bird venders,
whose baskets of finches, parrots, and macaws tweet wildly.
The baskets upon their shoulders swing.
The noxious fumes of the traffic apparently insufficient
to quell the beating of their small hearts.
Shop keepers hawk fly covered, freshly butchered chickens
from dirty white porcelain surfaces;
as tomorrows dinner pecks seeds through
the floors of their wire cages.
Through and amongst the plethora of colors and noise
military and police in mundane blue with rifles mounted
on the rear of their vehicles pass by.
Ordinary citizens hack up spittle from raw throats and congested lungs
while horns blare continuously;
blending with the barks of hundreds of stray dogs.
Categories:
kathmandu, urban
Form: Narrative