The Scaffold Climber Poem by Shikhandin Shikhandin

These are the minarets of the rich. Be agile
when you climb, because you are not rich.
Here are the brushes that you will need. Wield
them with care. Make the tall palaces look bright
and neat. So they may be proud of the homes they keep -
these nesting birds that live within gilded cliffs. There
they are. Look at them. Oh do. Especially the nubile
ones with their determined foreign speak, just because

you are forbidden to peek.

You cannot help it anyway. Any more than they can
understand that you are a man. And you allow yourself a glance.
Then another, and another through the thin gaps of lush drapes.
Above the hum of air conditioners, you dare yourself, balancing
on a rope or a wafer thin plank like a falcon on a telephone pole,
clawing at your precarious support with a hero's heart, for the songs
from a popular movie are playing
against your eardrums

on your mobile phone. Yes, of course! For are you not
new age too? And is this not the country of your birth?
In this fleeting moment you are Rajnikanth - you are

that mega-movie star.

And the hard realities of your life simply rush away. Just like that
flat concrete ground you left so far behind when you climbed
with your rough jute brush clamped tight between multi-tasking teeth.
So now when you gaze upwards what you see are golden
silhouettes in the sky. So why

should you bother now?

Swing and sing without a care until you fall.
You have nothing. Therefore you cannot lose.
Someone else will pick up your phone, and carry on
with the song.


(First Published in The Bread and Roses Poetry Anthology 2017 from Culture Matters, UK)