A Long Life

‘Discard bottle after use’
They write.
But we keep on using them.
Harmful
For both bottle and drinker.
Some people are the same.
Meant to be discarded,
Yet lingering on,
Leading long lives.
A discomfort
To others
And to themselves.

They have no choice.
God keeps drinking from the same bottle,
Forgetting the words he himself imprinted on it.
‘Discard bottle after use.’
Maybe he hasn’t forgotten.
Maybe he hasn’t used the bottle enough.
One day, the bottle will leak.
And he’ll have used the bottle enough.
Then he’ll throw it away.

People leading long lives;
They are bottles to be discarded,
Used longer than they should be.
Harmful
For both bottle and drinker.

A Cat and a Dead Fish

A fish dies
Swimming in water with its own dirt,
And it rises to the surface
Gently,
Sending out one last bubble of air,
Like some message;
Some letter put into a bottle and swung into the sea;
Like a ship
Sending out a late SOS.
A fish dies
And rises to the surface
With wide-open eyes.
There is still a glow in them.
There is still a spot of light in the middle.
A fish dies
And the cat looks
With wider eyes and having more light,
More glow.
There was a time when it was hard to catch it.
But now there is no competition;
The cat has to find another purpose for living.
A fish dies
And the cat doesn’t care about eating it anymore.

Stick No Bills

‘Stick no bills,’ they write on the wall.
And everyone else writes there too.
Kids draw smiling faces and meaningless lines,
The young man crosses off the heart he drew for his girl with chalk,
The old man spits,
The rebels write names of politicians with spray paint
And throw empty bottles of wine at it;
No one has the courage
To throw a full bottle.
‘Stick no bills’, they write on the wall.
And everyone else writes there too
Until the ‘stick no bills’ cannot be seen.
And they’ll replace it with a bill that says
‘Stick no bills.’