Deadpan

Wintry hazy call of blood curdling alarm
Abandoned blankets rise like reluctant hurricane
Icy touch the ground flip flop gingerly to the doors
Opening onto the nihilist morning.
Down veranda, drowsy
Knock knock knock
Ma opens the drawing room doors
Of our L shaped habitat
My room comprised the tail end.

In between the long and short arm
The vermilion cemented verandah
stretches in icy venom
I like it in summer but between November and February's eerie five a.m lights
I am reminded of Stephen King's
ghost towns of Maine.

By the time I'm showered and ready
The polite six o clock world is smiling
Civilization's thin veneer of a sneer
Relentless rise and shine
Get up and go program pasted on
Lunatic leers of imposed normalcy.

Hot cocoa on trays and the family up
In pyjamas and nightdresses.
Someone drops me off to the local station
To board the 6 28 each and every day.
I never howl though I almost growl
At innane chitchat, like the price of
Tomatoes.

My school mates stand, their smiles are
Placid jeers, hiya lazybones no one
Let you bunk today I see...
This part is good, the programming
Acceptable and integral to survival
Plastic welcome of the amiable familiar.

After the bonecrushing journey
They're tender and help me up the
Bus steps,
Engine already roaring to rev off
Its murderous marathon
At breakneck speed we tumble into
downtown Calcutta
Of the pristine chapels and greens
Of Loreto College
The exciting dream sequined walk of Park Street
The city's poshest most happening thoroughfare

Eleventh grade not a boyfriend
In an all girls school
Dreaming greedily about Tom Cruise and
Boris Boom Boom Becker
And struggling with Calculus in classrooms.
The frogs I dissected had not been caught
Less unaware by the taciturn Gardener
Of our lives...
as dear and precious and holy,
as it was meaningless.

And later that night in bubble gum
pink tunic and skimpy camouflage shorts
I crouched on the back steps
Of the languid verandah
Staring psalms into the darkness.
The garden glowered back as I sent it my
Dreams, to be brave feckless, praying
To Angels of opportunity.
My sozzled angels were busy that night
Solving crises of other
More amenable teenagers
The problems of alcohol depression
And suicides flow smoother
through societal sluice gates of care
Than unease unrest and anthems unformed
Vague hopes and sordid fears.

And like every other one
I put on some cherished music
To sputter my grandiose inarticulacy
My apalled treasures and spent tears sent
into an enigmatic eternity of ether
For sentient star dwellers,
Samurais, sentinels of the frontiers.

And then calm as an unsolved puzzle
I took my misfit rough hewn pieces
Hope faith doubts and fears
Cuddling in the blanket of bedlam
Deadpan to bed.

© Amrita Valan 2015