Ascension

Surveillance footage will show me walk slowly
Towards the bathroom door, emerge
In fifteen minutes, go to the kitchen
To prepare a large cheese melt with
Guacamole on top, causing the young
Prison guard to salivate. While chewing

On it thoughtfully the surveillance footage will then
Show me don a knee-length Saffron shirt ,
Put a thick oily blood red tikka on my balding
Forehead, causing a guard to ask “But don’t
Only their women do that?” to which the gruff
Colonel will answer “No, their priests do it too.
So do their warriors. And note that the saffron shirt
Means he has made up his mind to go down fighting.”

“Wow” the young guard will exclaim, “This is
Some serious dude!” In the meanwhile I will
have entered the bathroom spot blind to the
Camera.

Stepping deftly behind the toilet bowl
I will then be gone, having entered the two-foot-wide
Wormhole built by my PhD minions working
From the Other Side. After some fifteen hours or one
Femtosecond of static I will have emerged on
God’s Golden Shore where Mom, Dad, the two
Fighting uncles and my dead orange tabby cat Putya
Will be waiting for me eagerly.

Their eyes will light up when they will see me
Emerge through
The wet sand!
xxx

 

Photography © Steve Warren

Photography © Steve Warren

 

Milind Padki was born to a literary couple in Pune, India, and did not know, till age fifteen, anyone who was not writing a book. For his education in the pharmaceutical sciences he traveled to the great city of Mumbai (then Bombay), where life struggle was intense and history was advancing rapidly. He spent twelve years in Mumbai, watching the worker’s struggles up close and writing small articles and poetry. After his PhD he traveled to the US, and in recent years he has been living in Long Island, NY, New Jersey, where he is part of the lively poetry scene. A sometimes featured poet and a regular participant on open mic, his work has been published in the Two Bridges Review, The Times of India and a couple of anthologies.

Steve Warren’s interests are in the healing arts, poetry, photography, dance, the nutritional arts and much more. He is a peer specialist in the recovery movement.