TSEliot

The richness of pickings do thus derange -
The richness of pickings doth derange -

La figlia che piange

A girl deranged in an empty parking lot
In front of her father in the car
Across the dark parking lot
Then she gets the call from her auntie
And prayers to God to save her
Hot air blowing through her damp forehead

The possibility of death dawns upon her
Dragging herself to her end, the death, this way
While having a tantrum and pushing the button

And her voice and her words, those fluent words in her native tongue
Hangs in the air
Inflections from a cheap drama
Of a mind so confused and mired
That of the crazed mother -
If the daughter became a visitation of his mother
How the past begets the future and the future

The girl is eventually becalmed and led back home
The doors of the car closed and driven off
But on the edge she sits
Perhaps with dangling legs and a lollipop in her mouth
Perhaps with fingers digging into the cement
And nails crushing against the congealed sand and grit

"And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose."

The Dog

What what what can I say....All the people I see of so many races
Mixture of races, mongrels all
What what what can I say.....Liars cheats heroes and vampires all

The faces, the faces they surround me, engulf me
The arch of the eyebrow, the funny protuberance of an eyeball
The snub nose, or one so peculiarly curved and defined
As to have been moulded by a sculptor in a moment of madness
And stuck on to this smooth surface of skin
Which is the strange Mediterranean or Indian or African or Jewish or East European or
British face I see before me...
The olive skin which covers so many gradations of being
And textures
pebbly to knobbly to jagged to marble smooth (if you are that lucky teenager)
Baby skins and the walrus-like wrinkled, folded, coarsened and prickly skin
Of a drunkard hopefully on the not-so-slippery slope of
Rehabilitation -

What what what can you say......what words do you have left
The funny walk, the stumpy ankles, the fashion we idolise
Of cut off ankle lengths and hip swinging minis over black leggings
Delineating the bulging, knobbly protuberances of limbs.

And each being so exuding of a need.....
Craving of things, of succour, of destinations
Humanity not to be denied
Like the muling cry of a new born babe

Then I see the clear eyes of a young pup or a dog or a bitch
The wagging tail
The glossy coat
And somehow, its a miracle, the world is a miracle

and a smile will save all - may be.