Circle

The hardest possible decision a poet could come across…

That can either create a masterpiece or a terrible loss…

So, after one arduous day of work, I sneak into my cubicle…

A room that I shared with a family of 3, small yet whimsical…

So 4 people on one floor in a slum that we all called home…

Which belonged to neither of us, yet it was all we ever owned…

While I poured myself a glass of water, I noticed my neighbour who is seven…

Glued to a television screen, way past his bed time, 15 minutes past eleven…

His parents can’t afford to pay the tv bill so they invented something new…

And magically convinced him that the service provider notice is a channel too…

He acknowledges my presence with an eyeroll, as I pulled my diary out…

Hidden behind a labourer’s attire was a silent poet filled with doubt…

And as I scribbled a couple of lines, I sneaked a question to the boy…

“would you like to hear some poetry?” He agreed but not with much joy…

And as I read to him a vicious poem about the loop of life…

The ends, the beginnings, the peace, the strife…

A circumambulating marathon? What does life really mean?

The boy wondered if I was drunk with a perpendicular lean…

I sigh in finish and ask him if he understood all of it…

And he nods in denial, a bored hypocrite…

I tell him that I still can’t find this poem a perfect title…

As I rested on a bed of newspapers concluding my recital…

“Life is a circle”, the boy who barely got out of 1st grade…

Gave me the most accurate title assisting my crusade…

That my philosophical mind could never find…

The perfect title and left me behind…

But as I wondered how he possibly found this name…

He pointed at the television without any shame…

And as our curious mind were finally even…

He showed the buffering circle for a show called “Jeevan” …

Life indeed was a circle, a secret hidden in complexity…

And yet innocence won with its naïve simplicity…