BRAIN-DEAD

reading more between the words, my fractured
dream, identified by its teeth, begins to bite
in pursuit of an unknown fear, the river
becoming red, a paranoid delirium
sets out a scream under the praised
beheading of a jolted lover in the name

of a betrayal, a son goes to court arrest
for mother, in earth hour of unseen grief,
voiceless, vendetta between the pacemakers
of sick hearts, the horrible incest, nicked
and kept in a glass jar to be witnessed by
waxed faces of dying men rinsing the

heart with blood of fallen heroes; the honeymoon
of unborn centuries waiting in vain

Satish Verma