BROKEN DAM

Let’s not go,
let’s not reach anywhere.
The toenails have started digging in the earth,
to make peace with the distress response
of the bruised hunger for transactional surrender.

And the surrogate mother will abandon
the child for the father who had
run away in pursuit of pleasure, like others
sowing his wild oats in rags
unwashable in the milk of mercy.

It has spilled again my full heart.
The pain provokes the stopped clocks,
in the wake of explosions. Unstitched
fissures bleed, I see the ashen face
of a floating wisdom.

Satish Verma