Introspective Desi

Sometimes I feel like the villagers, who after days
of physical exertion, after hours of underfed labor,
find a famine, filling their fields
with a harvest of hunger and death.

I find myself abandoning those fields of hope,
moving to a distant city, to a sidewalk life,
say a rickshaw job,
cycling for shelter and bread.

Sometimes I dream that I will buy the houses I build
working as a temporary hire, a daily-wage laborer,
carrying on my head cement and bricks,
sweating for walls and roof of others.

I see myself eating expensive entrees
not just serving them, wearing the clothes I tailor-make,
being chauffeured, and not struggling with traffic
of sleep, that jams my travel to riches.

Sometimes I hear sweet nothings whispered
by TV-show dolls, who look plain in nakedness.

Often times I feel like a four year old son of a slum
outside a shop window. I confide in a mannequin,
if I had clothes like it has
I won't sit still the whole day.

First published in Nilab