SCOOP THAT BLOOP

Water Pipes in Cooma

It’s much different now, the world.
All around me are things I remember:
the textbooks I bought and never really
read, photographs of places I had hopes
of visiting, and even the computer’s obnoxious
fan that seems to never
stop making that rattling noise like the
water pipes in one of the flats I rented
when I lived in Cooma. There was a
sleepless night I spent in that flat, listening to
those pipes crying for the help of someone
who could fix them and I thought of
Jacob, a man I had come to know who was
homeless and hungry, crying for the help
of a God who he thought had abandoned
them, a God who he had once called
Father, Abba*. When I think of him, my
abandoned books offer little solace or
explanation. The photos of distant corners
of the world seem startlingly more real.
It’s much different now.



The Death of the Three Muses
(The Three Graces—Clement Renzi)

Beauty, charm and creativity
were the gifts given to these
three to aid, inspire and uplift
the minds of feeble men.

Beauty is much loved gift of women
throughout time. But, its sweet taste
leaves a canker in old age this
goddess did not design.

Charm is highly esteemed among
the noble in history’s pages. But
who wants to be charming when
talking with an ass or a
snake in these ages?

Yet Creativity could not live
without her sisters’ grace and so
the three sisters danced until
at some point stood bronze
and still in their place.

(Inspired by the statue of the Three Muses outside my dance studio at Frenso state).