Reductio Ad Absurdum Poem by Jay Kasturi

My blue share is confined these days
to hospital rooms,
my darkness to the scent of aging hardwood
in funeral homes,
to looking at the blank face of a widow,
to the waxy frame
among the flowers with its eyes ready
to open any minute.

The old man with a plastic lung
on his face, breathes
harder than he ever did, a final clasp
to arrest the revelation.
I will soon run out of things to weep over;
to the tear duct’s catheter,
funeral homes will become wax museums and ICUs,
a polyethylene plexus.

My mother, now senile, used to say
many years ago, at the peak of her seeing,
it is all human condition, be gentle
and blunt your thrusts.
Mothers must say what they struggle
to gather words for, and children
listen to what soon they would tune out,
reductio ad absurdum.

(1998)