The City has No Face

There is smoke everywhere, dust pollutes the air –
discrete columns of gaseous swirl,
hang, hang-out with street pigeons
and parrots in the square.

Like a conspiring asthmatic the virus-ridden breath,
slips like Dhaka silk and nestles,
in trees of lung mass and airways and air sacs.

It coughs up, a cancer – a hairless, hollow-eyed wheeze –
cancerous, sunken-cheeked.
The sick yellow face of cancer reminds me
of Mr Pinakin who in turn reminds me
of that strange plumber – who insisted on returning
next Sunday for repairs and sent down my spine, a nasty scare.

I cannot forget his gaze, however.
His lingering rancid gaze that reeked of open city gutters.
Who knows what hides in a face?
Who was it behind Dr Zeba’s rape?

A faceless hospital attendant, they say.
Choked her throat with a dog collar.
Zeba struggled and fell and fell and
slithered like a bitch leashed and collared.
Even blood, the doctors said, was denied passage to the brain.
Brainless she lay – brain dead with a noose around the neck.

The maniac guzzled as he chewed and plumbed his way
through gyres of climbing lust.
Her brain – Dr. Zeba’s head, lies upon my plate today.
I simply will not eat.
“No no Madam it’s a lamb’s brain.
It’s a Mughlai gourmet”.
O never mind all that, I’d rather not eat I said.
Please take it all back.

Who knows what hides in a face, faceless.
I excuse myself. I escape.

Outside, in the shelter of night air
and planets silent as bats, I heave lungfulls of breath.
It’s a new-moon night. Moonless-ness is spread on all sides.

Bulky and bored the buses dash,
farting, sputtering, through the day’s last drag.
The speeding city – BMWs, tongas, Mercedes –
feels desolate and heart less.
The road chokes upon dust-clouds and smoke-rolls.

A slice of fear and the howl of a stray trigger a race…
I choke – I choke on Zeba’s brain
and a goat that is dead.
I break into a running red sweat.
Fear stalks the street like a rapist.
The city has no face.

Woman you are upset.
A sea of masks masquerade.
Who knows, these days, one just cannot tell.