"Simple Solutions" by Aparna Sanyal

Simple Solutions

Aparna Sanyal 

Blind

to Occam's razor until it slits my throat, 

simple solutions arrive too late, cry at my quick burial

then party at my wake.

Too late and I am china in alien hands

freely crushed into shards--

uncaring shards that cut, open wounds unevenly healed, then

scarify into knots and twists of tissue 

that weep my plasma.

Heuristic answers lack the romance that my grave craves-- 

So I wait patiently to be 

desiccated by your malignancy 

and the loping twists

of drama

that come in your wake. 

Crunch me underfoot.

Your leviathan weight

leaves a sense-shaped absence 

in my place.

Your juggernaut moves forward

unabated. 

Unstopped, uncontested,

by simple debate.

Poet’s Notes:  On September 29th, 2017, twenty-two people died in a stampede at the Elphinstone-Parel Railway Station in Mumbai. Daily commuters, simple people on their way to earning a livelihood, bent at quotidian tasks, unaware that they are at high risk, use this station heavily. 3,000 people die each year due to the Mumbai metropolitan train systems' poor infrastructure and overall civic negligence. The simple addition of footbridges and pathways, something for which citizens have been petitioning for years, would have averted this tragedy.

Sadly, those in power play grand games and ignore our basic human needs. The simple solutions are in front of us, but we choose to ignore them, take too little action too late.