Belonging as Consequence: On Poetry Poem by Prageeta Sharma

It was just a momentary untruth in my way,
bodies of the crowd blocked the big blue outside.

Now I have a stealthy cause: to try and be myself,
to further a personal idea of arrangement,

of how to use those thoughts, the ones that don't get used.
But how to let them tick without abuse.

How to repay the debt, use the solvent,
blast the botched & troubled nearby—

What does everyone else caress?
All those etched poses neatly joined:

Mastery, hierarchy, witchcraft & shamanism.
A spike in the dander keeps me plain enough—

but to insist! To consolidate those fears—after months of uncertainty
couldn't cough or breathe or pilfer correctly.

Now this victorious shape, this idea moves
through muteness, shyness, weakness—

then it awakens:
Becomes a nonconformist happenstance—
A person saddled beneath

Reaches up for a fiction,
abundant and unrestricted ideas

poised and in front.