Vagabond

 
You look okay but nothing works    
You try to love someone  
but it ends    
in superficial cuts    
and swollen scar tissue    
   
They call you    
wild-uncivilized-fringe nihilist    
All you do is smile    
while your psyche sheds    
tears of blood    
   
You drift off the mainland-walking    
and walking some more    
particularly towards nowhere    
   
You feed of discarded food    
or else go empty    
Your Spanish guitar is your solace    
not to forget the stainless steel    
harmonica    
which you play to ward off  
the howling ghosts    
which rise from the murky recesses    
of your past    
   
to whirl  
swirl    
encircle you  
   
You sleep inside your bag    
amidst the cold and scurry    
and wake up at first light    
to resume your journey  
    
Last month you burnt    
the family album    
and watched the polychrome    
flames erupt and crack    
unsure what to do with    
the images etched within  
    
No Zippo can light up    
your psyche [not really]  
    
So you try hard not to think    
much and rather walk  
   
At times you miss your Leica  
which you threw off the cliff    
It was the thick fold of    
umbilical cord-the last strand    
of any connection and now  
you are Siddhartha-    
The true seeker reeking of    
clogged pores and stale sweat   
unkempt yet exuding    
an intrinsic radiance    
which even the hard sun can not    
tarnish  
   
And you walk smiling at    
passerbys    
fleeting cars    
with transient laughter and    
blaring music left in their wake    
   
Nothing touches  
nothing corrupts  
nothing matters  
    
You are the free ion    
bombarding endlessly  
aimlessly    
until the nucleus is engulfed    
within and you are freed-    
to traverse in vacuum  
in non-space till eternity    
   
Someone wrote a feature on you    
a while back on the local  
   
It gave you a moniker-      
'Wanna be seeker  
beaten by Occidental bug'    
   
Particularly harsh it was
   
The gentleman himself surely was one    
Once upon a time    
following Kierkegaard in his hey days    
Until one day he got up    
and cried for he had failed    
and now he sees you    
fulfilling his long lost dream  
    
Heart breaking it is    
   
But you walk unfazed    
far from a newspaper or    
the telly or  
anything    
close to yourself    
listening to your inner music-    
your heart beating    
the Chakras whirling   
the myths and lies and half truths    
being crunched    
under the 'higher truth'  
the final step in the stairway  
    
You are gaunt  
your skin having been rendered    
almost translucent    
your eyes are twin trap doors    
in ancient craters      
and yet they dance and    
flood and light and search  
    
That nasty fall the other day    
ended real bad   
The pain shoots up every night  
from your feet to your brain    
and downward  
like Kundalini energy  
in analogous pattern    
   
And when the pain is mortal    
you miss your IPod    
and Max Richter's    
'On the nature of daylight'    
Pointless! It's long given    
to a homeless man    
who had kissed your hand    
and shed a few drops himself    
upon receiving the discography    
of Choplin and Shostakovich    
Except for the pain and    
the weakness your spirit is    
u n d a u n t e d    
hunger is like a giant mountain rat  
which gnaws at your stomach    
till your own blood and acid    
start to scorch the ulcers    
And the haunting madrigal    
from within makes you actualize    
the meaning of life  
which Camus and Kafka wrote about  
    
And tonight you walk towards    
the city-unsure    
the second day of starving and    
vision-altering weakness  
    
And you find a graveyard    
one that belongs to all    
the town being a Hippie setting of Europeans    
   
You crash on the ground and    
taste the dust which is no different    
and you find a corpse    
Caucasian-blonde-mid thirties    
probably an overdose-  
it's the purple rot on his arm    
   
He smells like a putrefied carcass    
alright      
C. Welchi have been at work.    
and you drag yourself near him    
and look closer into his face    
the train of ants works in non-chalance    
Christmas time  
And mister dead body    
must have been an idealist    
asking to be left in the open-    
for the scavengers to feed on    
his body-battered-bruised  
   
The pain travels back like    
fluid fire raging in your veins    
but strangely it does not pain    
like always, it's freeing    
and with a smile you bring your hand    
onto him, Mr. Corpse    
and start to search his pocket  
   
for a joint, may be