Now How Do You Poem by umashankar manthravadi

now how do you
(renege, renegotiate)
a childhood contract
not things are ideas
but their names
not the sounds
but the words
as printed, as scrawled
or now, as scrolling down
or falling off
a virus infected screen

is it gift or bondage
that had all these years
turned all experience
into a sightless terror
a thoughtscream that
finally had no words?

now renounce, rejoice
that words except
when they come humbly
as servants of thought
or as wallpaper patterns...

November,1994