India Poems

Here are two poems inspired by things I saw during my trip to India in January-February, 2012.

 Variation on a Theme

Silk spills
from spool to loom
spiderweb fragile like
butterfly kisses weaving soft
saris
Coconut fiber   hard as life
twisted tendons batten
rough mats from spool
to loom

Whether
sari or mat
the shuttle marries warp
and weft until the pattern is
complete
The fabric is the fabric and
the weaver works with what
he is given
to weave 

********************

I want to live in a Bollywood movie

where I’d know good men by
their handsome faces, virile bodies
and the way they defeat villains armed only
with the power of righteous indignation
and they’d always bring flowers

where I’d know the bad ones right away
by their sneers and tattoos
bristling mustaches and ugly henchmen
and they’d never get the girl

where even if the hero dies
it is a kind of victory as he strolls
into afterlife sunset hand in hand
with his mother, his father
his tragically murdered lover
to be born again as hero in another story.

I want to live in a Bollywood movie
where I’d have bracelets from
wrist to elbow, garlands draped
around my neck and a jeweled
bindi  between my brows

where for absolutely no reason sudden
drums and ankle bells provide the soundtrack
for warbling singers in swirling saris,
jeweled dancers with hip-long hair
bangled bare-chested acrobats
who beckon, flirt, spin, backflip
their way through the workaday streets –
just part of the daily scene.