Narcotics of Narcissism 

Don’t stare at your reflection
too long, Tim;
you may turn into a knife for yourself.

Shadow stains the mirror.

In my friend’s garden
narcissus bulbs anthologize 
yellow into a bush.

Mirror desires to inhale some shadows.

In the kitchen Tim’s mother
rectifies the shape of a potato.

Fishing For A White Memory In The Ocean Black

Doc says – we don’t keep
our memories at one address.

I close my eyes, twin dinghies
in night’s stream hauling,

retrieving the fishing line
gone to, through many places,

and I think, Doc, I see the white whale
anon- a vision, cathexis inside,

my complexities diminishing
to widen the ambit of size.

Before The Coup Tanks Roll Into My Id

The mirror word- éfac on the glass,
all gold and matte-
not what I see, nor those people, the busy street.

From the fadeout, a bokeh voice
asks if I need a second cuppa.
I need to sit here some more.
Caffeine indeed.

What shall I tell you when you’ll appear
just before the rain hits the clear asphalt
and a journalist captures from a third kind of parapet–
change rolling into the country?

Not in this country. Not right now at least.
I read the mirror thoughts in my head.
You may call this rehearsing, déjà visité.
In my mind your umbrella snaps to a closure
and you stare at me, ask the prelude to my nocturne.

Kushal Poddar edited the online magazine Words Surfacing. He is the author of The Circus Came To My Island (Spare Change Press), A Place For Your Ghost Animals (Ripple Effect Publishing), Understanding The Neighborhood (BRP, Australia), Scratches Within (Barbara Maat), Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems (BRP), and Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems (Hawakal Publishers), and now Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel (Alien Buddha Press). Find him on Facebook and Twitter.