Talking To Myself Poem by Prabhakar Subramaniam

Everytime, inside the bus

Full of strangers

I keep looking for

Known faces

Someone I could

Lighten the journey with

Trading inanities

On life's Sisyphean grind

Or trumpeting new acquisitions

Aware of sounding like the serpent

Selling the forbidden fruit

Even while saying it

All the time both

Hiding the pain in lies

Pretending to be swimming

When being swept away

Living the same servile lives

Yet assuming sovereign airs

As the bus lurches, sways and surges

And I trade old words

With him, I often feel

I'm talking to myself

In a dream I've already had.