Cerebration

In the classroom

on the second last brown bench

I saw a bookish creature, reading, scratching

his head counting syllables on his fingers

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR

combining coda and nucleus

in every metrical line, he was composing.

I asked him out of curiosity, "Are you baking a poem?"

He nods in affirmative, yes! yes! yes!

I looked at his hand bearing graphite

on sharp nails kissing the tip of the paper

I looked at his eyes searching for

meaning outside the blurry glass window:

in trees, in yellow leaves, in mechanical machines, in grasshopper's legs, in between greens and yellows, in
rotten grassland.

I asked him again, "Are you baking a poem?"

He nods again in affirmative, yes, oh yes!

I asked him politely to read me a few

lines from his uncooked-poem,

He started reading it in a husky voice,

"Pretend it is a post-pandemic

poem lying on the death bed

of Simone and Sartre...

Pretend it is a post-modern

poem touching loss of

meaning in abstract sentences..."

Wait, let me read you the

ending part,

"This hour of the day is always

too early to dump your ideas

let the white light crawl down

the beautiful clouds and shut

the doors of your existence.."

A POST-PANDEMIC

POEM IS LAID DOWN

EVERY CHARACTER IS

ALONE HERE.

Baking a Poem: Mohammad Anas