Written by Ayush Banerjee
Staring towards
the hallway of emptiness
with frozen feet,
my eyes stumbled upon
a cluster of fireflies
that shed light
on my presence.
‘Twas a bleak path
with uneven crevices,
like the lumpy surface
of crooked branches,
like the bulging furrow
of gravel and sand,
indefinite, yet indicative of growth.
Two steps forward
and what lay before me
was an enormous cactus,
shredding tears of belongingness
in the form of its thorns,
falling onto the surface
as every minute passed by.
All I could hear,
but was still hideous
to the naked eye,
was its high-pitched shrill
like a bird,
flapping its wings,
after being caged for years.
I wish I could help,
I wish I could fix you,
I wish I could take you home,
but I could feel my feet
wishing to move on
as you weren’t
the only broken soul that needed help.
The hallway broadened,
whilst managing to creak
like rusted doors;
uncanny
yet, inviting,
at the blink of an eye
I had sea waves caressing my feet.
The turbulent waves
crashed onto a desolate island
and I had found myself
in the land that belongs
to the dead, deceased
and frowned upon
by we, the people.
Seclusion lingered
in every breath,
it is here wherein
the sinners,
obsolete and unnamed, rot
and the ghastly, righteous king
deduces the existence of a misfortunate
into the flaring pyre.
A chilly breeze
with the ashes
of a juvenile addict,
brushed through my face;
he, who had a watch no more
as his time had now blended with the soil,
stirred by the blackened fingers of the mad king.
A stream of questions
gushed into my mind:
Who decides a sinner?
Is it your law?
(Who judges your law to be fair?)
Is it your religion?
(Who is it that wrote religion?)
Is it your purchased minds?
(How many are there that your tainted money can buy?)
Is it you?
(Who made you the decision maker above He?)
Or
Is it your fear?
If God had existed
treachery would’ve cast a shadow,
on the mind, beheaded,
one who kills in the name
of the loose ended religion,
one who bites on food
whilst the innocent is electricuted.
If God had existed,
then a cactus
would be a plant
on the topmost shelf
and its soft interior would be valued
alongside its roughened exterior.
God is created
by those very minds
that sin every other day,
swearing on its name
and butchering lives
and emptying the brains
of those that speak against the hierarchy.
Pride in the eyes
of the fortunate with a sturdy shelter,
Greed, Gluttony and Sloth on the fingertips
of a corrupt monarch,
Lust and Envy, stained on the soul
of he who deems to be His messenger
and Wrath, engraved in glossy metal, on a horse’s whip.
Where is You,
the unbiased one
to put an end to misery?
Where is You,
the almighty
to decide above all
and to sow the seeds of a fair life?
Good and the evil
never existed,
until our minds
decided to use
the malfunctioning machine
of judgement and prudence
to attach labels on every object in sight.
