A Bogus Poem

This is absurd. I hope you will agree.
Hatred makes more sense than love,
as we often hissed, over polite conversations
in deserted elegant restaurants.
Where the waiters spoke only in French
and the cook was profoundly bored
and mixed the poems we wrote on napkins
into the soup that was served.

Chained by strands of acidic mist,
and the abuse of the mute and the music of the deaf
and the beatings of the paralyzed.
We look at each other
savouring the elegant hatred
invading our beings

For now it makes sense,
just like snow in the summer,
which I have always loved
And so have you,
when that was what we believed
was the real truth.

Though you have now thought about reading a book
in the middle of a deserted field
with the sun beating down in angry frustration
and the boundaries marked

by a fence made of the corpses of dreams
stacked beautifully in a nice clean line,
while I watched, sitting under the shade of that lone hungry tree

Why, the book was empty after all
The pages blank, the ink having fled
in utter misery, for you refused to read the words
the way they wished, but instead,
Complained that the Pizza delivery boy
was late. But then he arrived
at that remote meadow
in a spotless white uniform and refused to accept cash,
but instead, went away with a dead dream in his pocket
which he said was what he always wanted.

I wonder if we might examine this pizza
and see what parts belong to you and to you and to you

This slice, for sure, does not belong to me.
You must have it all.
I shall settle for the empty book
and read the invisible footnotes; they make sense
and do not lecture to me
about how I should have lived life
and what the real truth was
and so on and on and on.

- Vasudev Murthy