A sequel to Visions.
Distorted red and orange ellipses surrounding a perfect
brown circle, floated about a feet above the earth. Threads flying around –
white, black, maroon. A red dot stung by
black and orange. Some blue, some splattered grey, here and there. An array of
superfluous entities – destinies per se, transmogrified into cold clay clad
idiosyncrasies resembling mercury droplets. Sean touched a droplet with his
fingertip and watched it flatten.
Fairy tales and cocktails. Screwdrivers and safety pins.
The green shroud, deluging cloud – oh so proud; covered
all of Sean, but his legs. His legs left bare to the naked air and the
whistling moisture; to the infrasonic sounds and the blood thirsty hounds. Rounds of bullets – long and short, heavy and
light. A tight slap, across his face.
The beggar spat at Sean’s freshly slapped face. A crowd
was about to gather around the place, when Sean walked away. The beggar tried to
run after him, but gave up. Apparently, Sean had stepped on a sleeping beggar, and
instead of moving his convicted legs off the beggar, he stood there nonchalantly,
listlessly staring at the nearby playground.
About to sit on a mournfully marooned rock in an expanse
of grilled greenery, Sean tripped over it. Indifferent to the aberrant actuality,
not incurring a perplexing possibility, he froze, ruptured the frozen
exoskeleton and exhaled a fit of brazen derision. Lighter’s clicks, mosquitoes’
licks, sick, sick, sick. Sean could not sit on the rock. The rock was stained
with human blood – all over, probably donated by martyred mosquitoes.
The beggar came around and spat on Sean’s face again and
sat down on the rock. Sean did not wipe his face. The beggar did. Sean did not
look at the beggar. With folded legs he sat at the beggar's feet.
The beggar sang –
“Hunger is boiling your intestines,
Crows carry stale meat between their beaks.
The caws and paws, like music,
Harps strung with tongues and lips.
Snails swirling with giant-wheels,
Hogs and masses gargling cosmetics.
A breath of the trees,
A voice to cease.”
The beggar dropped a coin on Sean’s head and walked away.
Sean, in a fit of hysteria, jumped off the podium, tore
off a page from his notebook, and chewed it. Then he ran away.
‘What on earth was that?’
‘Who let the lunatic in?’
‘Do you know the name of the poem he was about to recite?’
‘Yes. ‘The beggar who drank my cocktail.’’
Sean shook the beggar’s hand. The beggar spat at Sean’s
face.
That was not all. The beggar took out the safety-pin that
held the torn, loose pyjama to his waist, and pricked Sean’s fingertip, as if
taking a blood sample. A drop of mercury popped up, from within.
Sean looked at the Raven, seated on the window sill, and
asked her –
“If I were a beggar, would you be ashamed of me?”
The raven dipped her beak into the glass of Screwdriver Sean
was holding, and made a hole in the ice.
