by Akil Contractor
A day on venus is 243 earth days
You spin so slowly it defies all cosmic traffic laws—
a stubborn, beautiful marble refusing to rush.
The rest of the universe is sweating on a treadmill,
zipping through years like breezy calendars.
But you and I are on Venus time,
where brushing teeth takes a weekend
and pouring coffee lasts until next Tuesday.
I love you enough to survive your atmosphere,
even if it is mostly sulfuric acid and crushing pressure.
I would willingly melt my lead boots
just to sit on a volcanic rock and watch you not move.
Let the Earth sprint itself ragged.
We have a single afternoon to waste,
and two hundred days of a Tuesday morning
to figure out who forgot to shut the lights off
Akil Contractor is a prominent Indian poet and industrial innovator based in Mumbai. Born in 1957, he was a key founding member of Mumbai’s historic Poetry Circle in 1986 alongside Menka Shivdasani and Nitin Mukadam. Professionally, he is an award-winning developer of specialized printing inks, recognized in the Limca Book of Records for technical innovation. Contractor writes across diverse linguistic traditions; his published English titles include After Kalinga and Other Poems (1986), Spirit Song (1986), and Rhyming Verses (2023). Under the pen name Talabgaar, he has also authored two celebrated volumes of Urdu Shayari. His latest English manuscript is Going Nowhere to a Place.
Photo by Peter Olexa on Unsplash
