They burned the witches for the day and tried to clean the air. But the air's never clean where their breaths have been. The smoke of ideas just circle around and infect. Once infected the symptoms are clear. Your laughter grows too loud, your songs become too free, your eyes see too much. Don't fret, simply wait to die. Some are ashes. You now are the smoke.
They escaped each night. None were noticed first— these rained-upon minds leaving burnt cities, lunging towards dreamlit waters, learning, each night, to play the lights.
The bodies have turned the crows to vultures. The smell grows stronger every day. It's all wrong. Strong is wrong. So wrong, so rotten, the vultures can't stop feeding on it. They keep pecking till even the bodies want to crawl away.
And every day they turned, returned, each to their tailored mornings perfect as a picture- may be a Cezanne room where fruits are eternally escaping baskets. One only worries about noisy neighbours or the children's lunch while a tidy tea is brewing.
A dog passes by sniffing the air. It's a country of stray dogs. Pets are a pretty peculiarity. One may pet a conspiring, corrupted mind— not dogs. The stray ones no longer know to bite. Weak knees wobbling, they just pass by.
Nights are for the creatures of dreams— lost in day when newspapers scream and frantic faiths sell faster than fashion and folly spreads faster than pollution. The moon might make a poet of you, the sun sees only sin.
Love is a luxury, but still mothers cry. Bodies become faces that once smiled. The smiles now are the smoke.
Here now is the dream, the sin of dreaming, and a land of labyrinths— here where the mind splits: two birds— one lost in the beauty of beyond, one bound in the burden of between.
Bhaswati 16 May, 2013