FEET OF CLAY

Who am I to know 
the abstract silence 
when you drink the moonlight all alone? 
The black toes of a dying woman 
haunt me in a stream 
of white shrouds. A night 
of shattering perceptions, 
defaults and ignorance. 
Time bomb was ticking. 

It had been troubling me 
the betrayals in night 
mothering a vegetable past. 
A single finger defines 
the authority of future. 
I traced the proud shadows of a god for, 
a useless reference of illegible wisdom, 
untold misery of green waves mirrored in sky. 

For extracting death 
from life at every step 
I knew the answer. 
Dying was not a private thing. 
The truth and the path would die. 
How you dreaded the closed doors? 
The explicit fear of drowning 
in beliefs with brothers of 
sorrow and feet of clay.

Satish Verma