NUMB

This is a poem I wrote based on a series of unpleasant experiences.
The poem appeared in Postcolonial Text.


http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/762/446

NUMB


Those days you used to say
“Remember you promised not to forget?
No amount of taunting can take away regret
Forgetting is an art that has to be learnt
I have strived for exile
Accomplished numbness

Drink hot coffee
in this minus twenty five
wind chill street
cup in a rheumatic grasp

I said I’ll not forget 1983
1987 1996 and abuse
On buses, spit on dust
election campaigns
And the salary the university
Never paid me for my toil
And so
Many
Other

Things I chose letting go is sometimes like
My mind that wanders in a sun drenched heat
Picking up molten memories of madness

Schizophrenic gusts from seaward
tug and pull
A seagull hovers
And the cold advances.