Wednesday, April 18, 2018

"Simple Solutions" by Aparna Sanyal

Simple Solutions
Aparna Sanyal 

Blind
to Occam's razor until it slits my throat, 
simple solutions arrive too late, cry at my quick burial
then party at my wake.
Too late and I am china in alien hands
freely crushed into shards--
uncaring shards that cut, open wounds unevenly healed, then
scarify into knots and twists of tissue 
that weep my plasma.
Heuristic answers lack the romance that my grave craves-- 
So I wait patiently to be 
desiccated by your malignancy 
and the loping twists
of drama
that come in your wake. 
Crunch me underfoot.
Your leviathan weight
leaves a sense-shaped absence 
in my place.
Your juggernaut moves forward
unabated. 
Unstopped, uncontested,
by simple debate.

Poet’s Notes:  On September 29th, 2017, twenty-two people died in a stampede at the Elphinstone-Parel Railway Station in Mumbai. Daily commuters, simple people on their way to earning a livelihood, bent at quotidian tasks, unaware that they are at high risk, use this station heavily. 3,000 people die each year due to the Mumbai metropolitan train systems' poor infrastructure and overall civic negligence. The simple addition of footbridges and pathways, something for which citizens have been petitioning for years, would have averted this tragedy.

Sadly, those in power play grand games and ignore our basic human needs. The simple solutions are in front of us, but we choose to ignore them, take too little action too late.

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