Family Urn and Other Poems

By Vibha Vasanth

Family Urn

Our family, by the door, has an urn
 Where people go after they burn;
 Honestly it is more of a tray
 Yes, the ashes sometimes fly away;
 I don’t want to be put there once I’m gone
 And this feeling only got more strong;
 When during one of my short walks
 I saw the neighbour’s cat use it as a litter box.

The Pill Popper

In the yellow house down the street
 Where the grass is always trimmed and neat;
 There lived a middle aged guy
 Every day, he ate a cherry pie;
 One of the things that filled him with dread
 Was that all this pie would leave him dead;
 To prevent this what he decided to do
 Was to take pills for everything, even the flu;
 He took the blue pills for his heart
  Which he got from his neighbour Bart;
 The grey pills were for his nose
 Which he hid in the garden hose;
 The pink ones were to cleanse his blood
 Which were stored in the wet mud;
 The green pills were to fix his brain
 Which were kept in the sink drain;
 He took these pills every day
 So in perfect health he could stay;
 Which is why it deeply saddens me to say
 He choked on a pink pill and passed away.

Fighting Ring

I woke up to find myself in a fighting ring
 My opponent was a duck wearing a belt that read ‘king’;
 It was just a duck, I could take it on
 But this is where I was completely wrong;
 It flashed me a set of really sharp teeth
 I could see its talons were in their sheath;
 Out they came, the bird charged at me
 I took one beating, two then three;
 One more blow and I was done for sure
 But as the duck came at me, I saw it veer;
 In the audience it saw a lady eating popcorn
 Charged over there before, her, I could warn;
 The duck and lady got into a wrestling match
 Each one, the popcorn, they tried to catch;
 I didn’t stay back to see who won
 This was my chance to escape, I was done.

The Hourglass

There is an hourglass in my family
 Made of teak wood, it looks lovely; 
 It’s been handed one generation to the next
 Along with a secret piece of text;
 Which the elders said we could not read
 From its envelope it’s never been freed;
 Something weird about this hourglass
 Please don’t judge, just give it a pass;
 It had in it only twelve grains of sand
 Why this was, no one could understand;
 Now the hourglass has finally reached me
 I could give into my curiosity;
 Open the envelope and look inside
 And find out what the elders wanted to hide;
 Inside the envelope there was a long letter
 That started with my great aunt making cake better;
 Apparently when she had finished baking her cake
 She ran out of sanding sugar to decorate;
 Sneakily from the full hourglass she took some sand
 Approximately enough to hold in her hand;
 With this she finished the decorations
 For whatever upcoming celebrations;
 Having come to know the significance of the twelve
 Into the past we need no longer delve;
 Now I find it rather hilarious 
 To keep this hidden, people were so precautious.