Oxygen

You step out of your house for a breath of fresh air.
Your senses are assailed by the stench of rotting garbage.
Carrion birds scream for your attention.
Cars whiz by leaving their exhaust fumes
to wrap themselves around you.
You step back into your house.
Back in your room the signs on your walls seem to
mock you.
"Tear me down" they say "Go on
tear me down."
But there is nothing behind them you haven't seen before.
There is a strange buzzing in your ears.

Your vision narrows.
You stare coldly at the person who walks into your room,
recognise him as one of your own. You think about
how easy it would be
to sever all ties with him
(real or imaginary)
Words like knives poised in mid-air.
The devil inside is scratching
scratching
scratching his way through
the veneer of your civilization.
You send him away.

Get into your car and drive.
Ram the accelerator into the mat as you try to outrun
that buzzing in your ears.
A bus
a car
a bike, you
leave them all behind shedding
your responsible skin.
Zoom on in search of space to be alone in.
Your very anonymity works against you. You
see yourself in every face that drifts by,
reflected in the steel of a coke can floating
in the filthy sea.
Entangled in seaweed
entangled in people
enatngled in the hair a man pushes out of his eyes to
stare at your breasts as you pass by.
Take shelter in a friends house.
"This is exactly what i need" you think
"someone who knows me."
Her place is full of Random people, their
vulpine smiles devour you as you enter.
Warning bells sound you ignore them
shake the nearest hand want to crush it.
Woman asks "What do you do?"
(the filing cabinet in her brain opens to recieve you
with the bittersweetness of a thousand aunties undressing
the prettiest girl at a wedding)
Cognitive dissonance tapdances its way around
the room.
In your head Matthew Sweet sings
"A misanthropic anthropoid with nothing to say"
"Nothing", you say,
(your voice like steel wool)
"i dont do anything."
As a child you had visions
of an aquamarine world populated by
infinitely gentle people who never
made you feel
small.
Reality is a black hole lined with razors.
Soceity is a malevolent growth
on the epidermis
of this nation.

This is Karachi.
There is no
fresh air.