If you're like us, right now you're holed up inside, praising the inventor of the air conditioner.

By which we mean, it's very, very, VERY hot outside right now.

To take your mind off the prospect of walking across the surface of the sun on the way home, today's Poetry Friday entry has been specially chosen to give you a lot to mull over while you melt into the concrete.

Please enjoy Gary Geddes' intriguingly titled "Mahatma Gandhi Refuses an Invitation to Write for Reader's Digest" (from Active Trading). 

Mahatma Gandhi Refuses an Invitation to Write for Reader's Digest

Gentlemen:

celibacy, in the extreme,
is no less violent
than sex

blood is thicker
than the briny, clichéd waters
of Chowpatty Beach
but religion will prove
thicker than both

a man's life
cannot be condensed
to a series of major scenes
in lighted boxes
without distortion

nor did the letter of an obscure
Indian lawyer
secure the release
of Sacco & Vanzetti

Tagore, as he sits beside me
in the wicker armchair,
waiting to be photographed,
appears massive, twice my size,
yet there's no denying
the delicacy and grace
of the manuscript
he holds awkwardly in his lap
or the confidence
he has given the people
in their roots

the dead woman in the street
outside the railway station
in Bombay is not there
to provoke the curiosity
or guilt of tourists

there are wounds
no amount of salt can heal
regardless of the manufacturer

Indigestibly yours