TEARS OF TIRED MEN

Tears of Tired Men

When you meet men with dehydrated orbits

Palm-staked chins and shining cheeks

And think it’s make-up,

You’ve failed the first test.

Check all ticked items on your to-do list

Check why and when you did what to who

Send spies to go into the ramification.

Don’t get gobsmacked when you learn

That the men with shining cheeks are the same men

Whose big-budget mansions you ordered to burn

Because their names clouded your docket

But they never turned up for trials

So what did you expect?

The arsonist, psychiatrists say, was not a pyromaniac.

When you think it’s the blazing smoke that rose

To the sky and formed nimbus, then rain,

When you think it’s this rain that fell on the men’s cheeks,

You’ve failed the second test.

Their eyes drained of all fluid,

Their throats silently vibrating,

Their shoulders uncontrollably dropping,

Their souls in unspeakable grief,

These men, their flesh worn out, have done enough sobbing;

So their tears inadvertently flow

From sockets too innocent

Forming a heavy flood on the dimples. 

If you doubt this, visit this flood at sunup

Vapour will rise and form nimbus, then rain,

And when falling hail bonks your slow-witted head, ask,

“Rain, how were you formed?”

Abiney Kitooke.