CONSENSUAL

You left behind touchstones 
when I was inventing another zero. 
Black and white, sobering transparency 
was reclaiming the mandate of dust. 

Barefoot lambs were clamouring for ethics 
in forbidden land. The sun shrinks the 
clouds to distribute equally, the landscape in 
a vibrant consolidation. The small mouths 

start resembling you. Something 
unimaginable was happening in a diaspora 
of maniacs. Interactive and dauntless, 

I put my neck on guillotine, unfevered, 
for the beheading of truth, in times 
of false hopes and unturned stones.

Satish Verma