The Long-Necked Beauty
- Deep from the Soul -

K. Radhakumar *

Monday - zero.
Tuesday - zilch.
Wednesday - nada.
Thursday -
A long time ago
There lived a king
Ruling over a vast empire.
After a long reign, the king died
Like all mortals do
And his dead body was mummified
For all eternity.
At last silence reigned in the graveyard;
Elsewhere, mountains were reduced to dusts
Inside the cosmic womb of earth.

The spells written in hieroglyphics
On the body of the sarcophagus
Oh! That is deception writ large.
The dead boy in the sarcophagus
Though ensured of eternal survival
Did not at all stir
In spite of the human bandobast.

Death is the end of one form of life;
Never will the dead resurrect
And redefine life.
Throughout history the moon has waxed and waned
And my life is no different from the moon
In the night sky.
Dead body mummified for all eternity -
Eternity!
Perhaps, that is temporal human desires.

Friday -
The question, dear friend, is not if
God is dead or not;
The question is if
God exists or not.
He does not exist
From the evidence of my five senses -
It is another matter
If we talk of the sixth sense, or
Of the extrasensory perception or ESP.
The latter is not my cup of tea.

Saturday -
The woman dressed in the latest fashion
And wearing a light make-up
Cranes her swan-neck
To see models on the catwalk

At night
I close my eyes and imagine
The woman is lying on her back stark naked
Yes, stark naked beside me
Not because it is summer
But because it is, um,
She is acting the role of creative energy
And is frighteningly beautiful.
Beauty is notoriously fickle -
It undergoes a complete transformation over time;
Sometimes it captures the subtle hues of the countryside
At the moment, it is a poor imitation
Of a woman with a long neck.