Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ho

She is hysterical mostly
Stares blankly with a piercing precision
She can pluck a flower
Plant it on her matted hair
Slice her wrists
Exposing her arteries
Blood oozing
And she smearing her face like Kali’s
The blood could become a puddle
Where the well-behaved children of the street
Jump and splash it on the rusted iron gates
That safeguard the families with a place to sleep

Mad woman –
Always conversing with herself
Complaining, yelling
Forever miffed
A disowned noise of the ragged world she wears with ease
Stinking of the odor of ruthlessness
Of sector 13
An island in the crowded city
Loitering around the dustbins in search of a morsel
That was all that she has to do to outlive
Switch between the networks to find some sticky rice
Or some leftover chicken pieces of a grand birthday bash

Mad woman changes her blouse in public
Takes a crap by the sewers
Next to the wall with
Please don’t Urinate here
And washes herself
Under the municipal tap
Then she smiles at her reflection
Of the car in the traffic signal
As the civilized pull up their windows

Nobody knows where she came from
Nobody would know where she would go
She was an assemblage of oddities
Unkept hair, stained teeth, a torn petticoat and a bag full of un-demanded attention
Her home is a corner along with her dog she fondly cares
Nurturing is an instinct she doesn’t know how to shed
Though she knows how to wail her loneliness
Like a threnody carved on the night’s right calf

Madwoman –
Knows not to expect
Knows not to explain
But only the mad woman knows the contradictions of this world
The politics of the day that plays with the night
The plots of the drunkards tripping in squared walls
She knows how the dirt flows
As she blends it with her country liquor and swallows it neat

Poornima Laxmeshwar resides in the garden city Bangalore and works as a content writer for a living.

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Featured Image by Jona Fine.