A screen door
creaks
small incursions
into rip and hole.
Unseen, a creeping grub and thriving,
chitinous mandibles
munch upon the desiccated dead,
thrive in the thrash and mingle.
Corruption forms its disorderly queue,
jointed question marks
walk on segmented legs
spindly limbs pry
where slick eggs incubate.
As time swings its metronome,
splintered chips
flake away, wood
cracks its rotting bones.
Internal scaffoldings
crumble,
mold multiplies,
mildew clings to
muck.
A festering wriggles forth.
"Honey, can you oil the back door,
it's creaking again."
I scrunch my butt deeper into the sofa.
"I'll get on it after the game." I say,
making a mental note
to get more beers in,
Tomorrow, slap some paint
over the wormholes
maybe.
The paths of my mission would be rows of roses, I thought.
To my shock, in tipsy turvy twists and turns, I got tossed
Didn't I desire to know the known to know the unknown?
Each wish of mine, like worn-out shoes of a nomad, got torn.
The moon of joy in my gains should have been at the zenith.
Struggles, like palms, tall-grow. Bliss, like dried grass, peeps from beneath.
Like iron-rods in saline waters getting eroded
The weakness of my will, like pumpkin buds, is unfolded.
Virtues, as fallen scaffoldings, are disintegrated.
Absurdity, like the blood red moon, is reiterated.
My vigour, before my puniness, like a dewdrop, fades.
Apprehension and anxiety, like gems, I adorn.
Pessimism lifts its head like boom-slang cobras from burrows.
Coffins and graves compose knells. The deceased have no repose.
Death and decay have become the blessed norm of the day.
Despair and disappointment, like thorns, pierce through every way.
Self-confidence is erased like mud paths during monsoons.
Will the Times, like the rainbow chromas, bring multihued boons?
The spirit hovers.
I am not interested in a
séance. Let me come face to face
with the book to share clean
or unclean thoughts.
Not able to print my deep
angst. A clash of cultures. I
will call the unprinted scream. The
dismembered limbs begin
a dance of unfolding
the hate.
It was a jig.
Of scaffoldings for the
peacocks to shed their wings.
Everyone was falling for the green-gold
to be embossed on the dust
cover of life.
Satish Verma
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