As children, we were taught to wonder whether the blue curtains symbolised some hidden sorrow or whether the poet simply meant that the curtains were blue. Reading Pradeep Bhai’s (arborealband@gmail.com) Mystic in Your Head took me back to a younger, angrier self: a time when I wanted to paint a middle finger as my answer to every question posed by the establishment. Raw, restless and defiantly unpolished, these poems move through fear, freedom, fractured identities and systems of control with the energy of grunge lyrics. All Control stayed with me the most, particularly for its unsettling suggestion that what we experience as choice may merely be conditioning disguised as freedom.

Later.

PS : It is strangely wonderful to discover this much rebellion living right next door.