Crisis

Hands suspended in the void,

Grope in a haze of smoke,

Of burning cities.

Ten thousand years of garbage,

Ten thousand printed words,

In all their combinations – burn,

Ten thousand thoughts.

*

Bewildered and schemeless,

In the dream-walk of a somnambulist,

The sobbing mind behind the groping,

Hands seek the tragic impossibility,

Of re-entering relentlessly moving time

Of re-drafting the written line.

The throbbling remorse of could-have-beens,

Of ten thousand memories.

*

Gaunt and mud-splashed,

Persists an indestructible spectre,

The brown sheen of its tight-drawn skin,

Glistens in the flames,

Yellow and black,

Whose deep-throated cry tears the sky,

For vengeance.

*

With the pent fury of ten thousand years,

It shatters the concrete columns,

Of the temples of justice.

The treacherous weighted scales broken,

And scattered. The blinded goddess,

On a macadamed street. Her feet of clay,

A formless mess.

*

The broken pillars stand against,

A crimsoning sky,

Like phallic symbols.

**

J.J Puthucheary