Ceteris Paribus

My curves are upward sloping,

Directly proportional to the price.

The quantity of love that I supply,

Has a coefficient of one, not thrice.

I could say it’s price inelastic,

You’ll get as much as you always have.

I could lie through my teeth and flutter my lids,

And act like your season’s flav.

But I’ll be honest as honest can be,

And respect the opportunity cost of your time.

You may think we’re both complements.

Burst your bubble, will this rhyme.

The competition in this marketplace,

Is perfect with strong form efficiency.

While you may think you hold a monopoly,

The entry barriers are open, as is the vacancy.

The marginal utility of what we shared,

Has diminished to quadrant three.

The equilibrium in our chemistry,

I no longer can see!

The indifference curve that you have plot,

May be invisible to your own eyes.

But I’ve had enough of your time-rationing,

So here’s your pareto optimum in disguise.

The cross-income elasticity of my love,

Has been under the wraps for a while.

The consumer surplus that I wished to save,

Has been found across the Nile.

Your costs have all just sunk,

The capacity stagnates like a blot.

What used to be a candlestick,

Is now an untailed boxplot.

My preference for a differentiated product,

May be termed as Game Theory No. 2.

Only if the beloved “ceteris paribus”,

Could apply to our “love you’s” too.

Image Source: robert-h-frank.com

Can You Dream It?

Can you feel the wind in your dream? Can you feel it traversing through the thickness of your hair, slightly brushing through your scalp? Can you feel it fill your shirt up from the bottom and leave it from the neck, grazing through your torso? I know you can’t see it. The wind cannot be seen. Maybe, you see the leaves flying with it or the storm with its chaos. But have you felt the dust pinch your eyes while you brave through a storm when you’re fast asleep? Or have you never cared to notice?

Can you hear the birds in your dream? Can you hear a cricket chirp as your mind walks through a dreamy forest? Or do you hear only the people who call out your name and speak with you in your dream; the voices bereft of any background music? Maybe, you think you do. But are you sure the conversations in your dream are not telepathic; where you understand what is being said without it being really said in words audible but through images with facial expressions? Or have you never cared to notice?

Can you taste the food in your dream? Can you taste the sourness of lemon juice behind your teeth; the tanginess that makes your mouth water? Can you taste the roughage a java plum leaves on the roof of your mouth or the little shreds of its peel that are hard to fish around with just a swift swoop of your tongue? Or do you just see yourself sprinkling salt on a paper cone in which you hold it? Maybe, you think you’ve never dreamed of it to know if you really do or not. Or have you never cared to notice?

Can you smell the scent of your mother’s washed hair while you lay your head in her lap, only unaware that your head lies on a bag of fluff in the physical world instead? Can you smell the pages of a book that lies shut in the attic, a place you could only dare to climb into while you were away from the consciousness of your physical reality? Maybe, you can see a drop of wetness in your mother’s mane or the yellowness in the pages ancient. But can you smell them? Or have you never cared to notice?

Most importantly, can you see the colors in your dream? Or is what you see a movie of flickering images black and white? Can you recall the answer with crystal clarity; sure that it wouldn’t change? Or would you only vouch for the fact that you can watch your dreams run by you so quick that you can only tell that you saw them, but are not sure if you felt, heard, tasted or smelt them all the same.

Now would you call the blind blessed, for they can live their dreams as reality, not confined to the offerings of the sense of sight? They can feel the presence of company in their dreams; can hear the footsteps by which they know. They can taste the food in their dreams, for how else would they know? They can smell the place they seem to travel to while fast asleep; and the answer to whether the dreams are black or colored is crystal clear too. Now would you claim that they don’t see as much as you do?

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