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