PRICE RISE (poem)

  (Appeared in CUCKOO an International Biannual Literary Magazine in Sept 2013 issue)

This uncanny word is now a bye law.
Wherever you go, whatever you buy,
It brings just a little pain like the prick of a pin;
Dreaded till it comes and a quake when heard,
But a benumbed sense soon takes the pain.
It is an 'amarbel' growing on green shrubs, 
Sucking sap and vitals from the parent tree,
It digs in, sitting firmly never to be shaken.
It's a lasting mark of alley-ways and ill-made plans.

Price rise is a nonentity for the affluent 
But a perilous black-hole for the weak.
As most plod with a dreaded dole
Or a  fist of futile dough,
Everything sways to the wind of wealth.
Frequent suicidal pacts with eternal ties
Become staple news for arm chairs.
A starved stomach and a parched tongue
Are drowned in a cacophony of claims and creeds.
The glare of glamour and the blare of adulation,
Conceal a squalid sewer of want and need:
The mind drowns the fear in anesthetic potions
Of vicarious virtual sex and game and drink.
When the next round of hikes arrive at the door,
A stronger dose of dope and sleaze and creed
Shall call on you, lest you should wake up. 

Jyoti Patil