My altered sensorium goes berserk
when I hear four - letter words like nuke and kill,
love and hate, repeatedly.
The decrepit age full of abused prisms
deflects the sunrays for warlords.

Here I am ripened in pain of a withering syndrome,
collecting the live mushrooms
from rainwashed wastelands.
The primrose way of life did not agree.
To become untrue to the whiff and waft of summer dunes
was difficult and I remained entombed in scented air.
Phantasy was a beautiful garden for me.

Was it a desiccated, mental frame,
matured, but manic isolation from an aligned life?
or walking alone in a desert of hidden paths?
But I was my own tailor.

I presume,
evil must be alive in erotica,
the myth of erected columns in history to celebrate a victory.
My brow sweats when I start climbing the steps.

An identity crashed in mud
I felt a sense of depression, flickering off and on,
dying several times amidst the jasmines and bougainvillaeas.
Hiding in fog, a serial killer has been
nominated a blind judge.

Fainting and waking up with hallucinations,
sick in limbs, my journey starts
for violent similes, mindless but full of stops.
My words were not mine. The symbols ruled the day.

The past will always morph into future
but my present will be here
in my flights, weary but strong in veins,
My sun may be eclipsed for today
but the bright century moves on!

Satish Verma