Sanjeev Sethi


BULLETS

(1)

Love’s territorial expansion
ambles towards colonization.
You reside in a row house
of my mental real estate.

(2)

Now on, I’m a teetotaler.
No leasing of heart
then those binges.

(3)

I like skinheads.
They hide nothing.
We’re talking surface here.

(4)

Quags of aloneness swathe me.
Loneliness, I understand.
This is seity.

(5)

When politicians are peered
they sally: you’re with them?

Can’t we be on their side,
have a question?

(6)

You were never as heroic as were hailed to be.
You are not the monster you’re made out to be.
Past master of tokenism is now its totem.

(7)

I’ve been postponing
happiness
till it happens.

(8)

You are tender
like a poem
being born.

(9)

The captious track canters on
with your rage, your rantings.
I wish love were less pure.

(10)

It is better they yawp and
yammer, pick your phone
than moon over you,
“Good person, etc. etc.”
cold-shoulder your call.



SELFSAMENESS

Emperor of my isolation I reign over
mottled enclaves of the mind. Serrations
on keys to my kingdom are chiseled by need.

Examining pixels on the wind-screen I intuit.
Readiness with my inner rondure intensifies the apercu.
When a cloverleaf is choked I taper off the runway
making minutiae my hallmark.

I engage with embellishments in the sky,
observe run of breath, agile colonization by ants.
Welcome a cold caller with warmth.

Are these frig-magnet smarts?
Wisdom for one, hogwash for another.
True as tics: inked on the letterhead
of my life.



PENTAMEROUS

(1)

She is better as widow than wife.
Forty days alfresco was out. While
in zoetic mode her social zeal kept
him away: he smelt like a dead rat.
Now, rodent is dead. Lucky chap.

(2)

Poems are best inhaled by those in
its empiricism: especially true of
lyrics on lost love. Try perusing one
when in sturdy emotional shape or
far away from notions of romantic love.




Sanjeev Sethi has published three books of poetry. This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015) is his latest work. Some of his new poems are in Ink Sweat and Tears, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, The Galway Review, The Open Mouse, I am not a Silent Poet, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Jawline Review, The Helios Mss, Right Hand Pointing, Revolution John and elsewhere. Poems are forthcoming in Futures Trading, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Yellow Chair Review, First Literary Review-East, Drunk Monkeys, Of/with:, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Postcolonial Text, and A New Ulster. He lives in Mumbai, India.
 
 
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