Piker Press Banner
December 16, 2024

Dying Breed

By Prithvijeet Sinha

Dying Breed

Words can come from oracles,
like sirens ringing out of wooden floors
while mother waits patiently over the threshold,
eager for the plane ticket in his palms.

Words come from motormouths,
gaping wide at the valley
till the altar of adulthood reveals
a mountain peak
and the same sirens
produce squirts of anxiety about the future.
Words left over
as the final call on the summit.

He picks up tatters left as clothes,
chopped blocks of wood
as dying sacraments of the migrant's pursuit
and puts curved stones
on the nape of his neck
to ensure tunnels
don't enter the wound there.

To go away,
leave at the earliest,
is the command.
But he holds himself vigorously,
stubborn as a mule
and sacrosanct as a child,
by the scruff of a green soul,
veins blue as those embroidered
suits kept away,
their soft departures unbecoming
for those strange climes
he's banished to.
An eventual exile affronting his constituency back home.

The words are cruel stipends to him,
repaid with mere confrontations
and a yellowed, soured disposition,
like a drowning body
recovered from deep down the lakes
where alligators await their fodder.

Say anything.
Only don't cry out,
'He's one from a dying breed'

'He's one from a dying breed'
now rings like sirens
from oracles passed down
as the family tree.







Article © Prithvijeet Sinha. All rights reserved.
Published on 2023-10-02
Image(s) are public domain.
0 Reader Comments
Your Comments






The Piker Press moderates all comments.
Click here for the commenting policy.