THE HYPHENATING

Awareness becomes a burden, 
with opposite thoughts in conflict, 
Crawling like roaches on your skin. 
Sage or beast it was same. 

They run on the bricks in sun 
or drift at night on unwrapped voices. 
Every thread of a dialague 
rakes up an old sickness. 

The stammering tongue will never tell 
the name of the priest, 
who led you to the pond 
and drowned your ethics and morals. 
Who was the culprit? 
your hood or your arrested silence? 

The same thought comes again and again 
in single file. 
The past presents a missing link 
Between no and yes.

Satish Verma