When I Stopped…

If my world couldn’t be what I had thought in my teens I can’t help. I was dependent on my father a self-made man against the currents I couldn’t read the sky and its stronghold the prints of the Ganga’s sand have faded like the rainbow in a spray of years that prick like pebbles

now the caries, cavities cyst and myopia haunt and sexual anxieties disturb sleep and dreamless nights the hairs on my balding head mirror the laughter I have ceased to take note of

I have ceased to peel the ugly shapes, the cunning and treacherous I work with resent my identity and the future I fail spinning influences

yet I’m sure when I stopped it won’t be all that bad: my vision would still be good I would still smell fresh air