Cultural Drift

Folder: 
Satish Verma

For unwashed beliefs, 
and semi –truths, someone wins 
a half-bread and claims immortality. 
I am ashamed to witness a filthy event, 
life’s descent into a can. 
The quiet is broken in myriad, 
fragments of noisy confessions. 

One day older I become today, 
harvesting the sorrow. 
Laughter did not work. 
On the swollen lips of poverty and dirt. 
The primal need sprouts again 
and again in the spaces, 
between frightening steps. 
Each day, one more song dies. 

When death starts writing 
poems on the wall 
you are frightened and want to fly out. 
The image-making was not sufficient, 
grief had erased all the jottings. 
The cultural drift was overwhelming.