I Am The Bengal Tiger.

Your Stars are My Stripes I.

College should make me better not worse.

You can lecture me, but not with force.

I have the mindfulness of a hummingbird;

I focus my wit,
 my attention

on the nectar of your thoughts-stirred

I have the attentiveness of a retriever;
I fetch your object,

your immediate desire

in my desire to make you a perceiver

I have the libido of a dolphin;
I crave your caress
your playfulness
without the wakefulness of your chagrin

I have the vigor of a tenacious little ant;

I saunter through work,

through tasks unfinished
in grasp of greater goals They’ll grant.

Your Stars are My Stripes II.

College should make me better not worse.
You can lecture me, but not with force.

I am a representative of my species,

striving to be

an outlier of statistics,

listening to see

 anything but CNN,

revolving past
the esoteric filter bubbles,

above the accepted and amassed

Oh, THS, I deflect and reflect your opinions

I sign my name, my legal identity away,

we vote no with fists clamped powerfully shut

 and yaay with vulnerable fingers spread

we give superficial care to your dominions

We purchase the diploma under the guise

that with it, comes not misery,

but allow me to surmise:

a brain Made not in China,

rather with lies.

 Our institutionalized minds may have Magellan-ed

in places afar,

where we pander to capitalists
whose faces stay unmarred

The Presidents themselves

are little more,

than rainbowed statues

whose minds we ignore.

I am the Bengal Tiger,

lithe, nonchalant by day,

omniverous for knowledge,

yet passive-aggressive by night.

                             -poems written by Mala S. Sharma