I, too, have been to India

Before a team of specialists
An artist paints her face to feed expectation of a conditioned audience.
The visual is pleasing,
Her curls, her features, her eyes, her eyes...
We will highlight, lift, gloss
Her eyes will pop.
Precision in the layering,
Confidence in the strike of tool,
The artist is meticulous and
The canvas is exquisite.
All step back, admiring as only their own vanity could contain...
Such beauty. Such beauty.

Escaping the outer corner of the left eye
A single tear
Not falling, nor coursing, nor rolling...
This tear disperses a flat cloud
Across the luminous expectant angle
Of cheek.
A weeping flush
Its filth housed within its clandestine travel,
An insidious memory of ongoing
infection.

India.
The rose of India
The body of flesh and filth,
Heart and karma,
Her rose placed infection in the feminine eye.
She placed grief and isolation in the rose of this canvas.

Humanity, stark within the soft petal curvature of the Indian heart,
A rusted populous,
Absolute in presence,
True to experience,
Unencumbered by perspective...

This rose owns this canvas.
This tear owns India.

A dire humanity is housed within the weeping dew of this dispersion,
Infection...

Dark, aged eyes project unfettered gratitude for the toe tag that will carve from him his saleable organs upon his immediate death. Casting off the wealth of gratitude indifferently ,an entrepreneur awaits his income.
A mirror to the artist’s frustration as she patches the incessant weep...

Wailing of a newborn girl engulfed and silenced by the Ganges as she plummets to the watery chill of unwanted.
A new wave of infection bleeds across the canvas cheek.

Blood runs between the fingers of the healer, one placenta, two cords, two souls that never knew atrocity would not welcome them.
The canvas could be ruined by this...the artist tries to recover with a medium waterproof.

This same canvas brushes the flies from the babas’ gaping, retching mouth...blood trails his path to his dying place.

And humanity steps over him,
On their way.

Humanity steps over us,
On their way.

Humanity ignores its atrocity,
On their way.

To know Human
An infection claimed the feminine eye
Dispersing so gently a raw wisdom
To pass on.

The canvas is teacher.
Humanity her pupil.
She steps beneath the lights, waves to some pupil, smiles at her host...
A single tear escapes....

Melissa Hocking 2010