Suburb

At night,

not the hissing of cicadas, No.

The leftover-nature, duly plotted,

hears the screeching of a worn out truck

dumping a load of frigid boulders.

In the morning,

not the gushing of a stream, No.

Trees that remain, wilted and soggy

hear at irregular intervals

loud retching of individuals in haste.

At noon,

not the raw aroma of vegetables. No.

The remnants, stones scattered, 

of an old disintegrated hand-dug well,

smell the stank of a concrete septic tank.

In the evening,

not the melody of birds, No.

The scrubby grass, its forlorn bugs,

gaze at the conceited fluorescent lamps

of a cctv-fixed iron gate.

People, nevertheless, 

seem happy,

which complicates the question further,

Is Earth a suburban hell as well?

Dream

Upon waking in the morning 

I settled in to write down my dream -

If only a fragment of it.

I, however, couldn't recall anything.

Afternoon approached 

but the dreamt didn't,

although the sumptuous lunch 

brought its mood back.

In the evening while reading 

a book, one secondary character 

in it dreamt about 

long lost-friends 

holidaying at the beach.

Mine wasn't about that.

I remember, at least,

what my dream wasn't.

Unhappily,

night arrived and with it came 

the thought of dreaming again.

A portion of the dream flashed 

in front of my eyes:

the part in which I'm 

trying to remember what the

dream was.

Sad, somewhat melancholic,

I stopped thinking about it.

Probably, the dream was a dream

about writing. Writing, anything, at all

and paying the dream forward 

to you.

Act II/Last scene

She assured

she'd love him

till the time 

he's frail and old enough 

not to remember 

simple ordinary words

like towel, toys, potato, poems.

Unusually however,

he retained 

all the mundane things

but somehow forgot the words

promise, vow, pledge.