ROSE UPON ROSE

Let me put back
the rhythm to the song
of broken limbs.
To arrest the speed of sun-set,
for a meaningful dialogue
with the verse of moon.
The poison of floodlit city
grazes my house.
The innocence of the dark suffers.

The white stillness
of empty hands lifts a failure
my heart lives with a death
Intimately. Where the birds have gone?
I chase the wings.
The otherness of love,
the vulnerability of darkness
stays with me.
The thirst of ocean is very large.

Mechanical imitation
of aloneness for a ripe death
it is nostalgia of past history.
Deep in thoughts I run
for my green childhood.
A strange metastasis
from remote guilts. A rose
upon rose piled up
to form a signature mode.

Satish Verma