Growing up - II

You find the heart is a zeppelin with the simplest needs:
just enough wind to keep it bloated, just enough
pressure to keep it from bursting. The stomach
complains in ways you never imagined it could
as a child when you stuffed it with a crayon,
a wriggling ant, roadside bhajiya’s that sank
like meteors into its enduring depths. Now,
a rivet groans, long suffering machinery squawks
its resistance. You wander from cafe
to bar to a midnight stall by the roadside,
wherever this churn inside you subsides the most,
wherever you can stand at ease with shining eyes
and look and be looked at. Some days, you feel
you’re filled with smoke. Some days, it is ash
that weighs you down. Others, you lay still
finding a corner, a stool, a fallen remote control
to stare at; to imbibe their silence through
the pores of your skin so whatever it is
that boils up into your throat, that creaks
its protests down some fast moving track
in your guts, that sends rivers of molten
sludge flooding over an intestinal levee;
so all of it will calm the fuck down
long enough for your afternoon nap.