A Voice in the Dark | Shubhodeep Pal

What if age reverses its steps, and reduces you to a mass of grey?

A dull, red pain Oozing out slowly from a Forgotten wound

Black water In the lake today Smells like death

quaint words trickling down steep stairs of thought— disappearing like mercury on moist leaves overcoming the falseness of dead dew on empty platters…

What if you realize people will never understand you as you are? What if you realize that people don't realize? That sometimes they don't care. Sometimes they don't think. And sometimes they don't know what they they say. Sometimes people don't appreciate you for not being the things that you can be. For not being what you don't need to be. Should you act hurt? Surprised? Disappointed? Or at the end, should you just carry on without giving it a thought? Sometimes you don't need to tell people everything about yourself. Should you tell? And whom should you tell? But what if those things inside you begin to suffocate you? How do you release them without becoming an object of pity? What if thinking about certain things make you want to weep? Should you weep? Should you carry on? It's not easy to make a distinction between the necessary and the extraneous at most times. Sometimes, it's impossible... Sometimes you sit down and think of how you have faced

strange, white pigeons lurking under dead skies and vultures wheeling- devouring thoughts with myopic eagerness. residual habits dying under the dull pressure of anticipated relief- and somewhere under less dead skies, knowingly macabre thoughts curdle and become less grotesque

piano notes under the greyness of a wet sky and within warped walls of a room, the mustiness of yellowed paper, and glazed eyes on the whiteness of cement; and somewhere on a scratched, faded wall, tired hands resting in the hope of regaining hope.

The clock has stopped. But then, it had broken a somnolent decade ago. Time has stopped— it was supposed to continue unimpeded: ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The cat does not stir on the thornless hedge— It’s frozen midway through an unfinished yawn of shattered semi-expectation: its blackness scares wheeling birds in their already hesitant flight. The half-melted sun is stationary in the gelid rain— rain that turned to sleet last summer… The gutters are still overflowing since the fetid, burning rains this monsoon— the last rains ever…

Prologue: It was once 1757. After years, this year will also have been a year . After many years, many years would have been many years. And yet the cycle would continue.Because rules do not exist to exist, they exist to rule. And death is inevitable. ~ Rain is crashing down portentously on the tin roof of the outhouse... Rain and sleet have become indistinguishable in the little light that still remains. Dusk is long past: Twilight is dwindling with traces of dark uncertainty. The smell of death is in the air: musty, yet unnervingly fresh as always … Suddenly, as it always happens, a scream rends the fabric of the mad night. Almost quite as sudden is the appearance of the hulking man dragging his legs as if they had been recently broken. Without halting the man looks down at his broken watch. “Yes, it’s time.” He utters clearly and continues limping ahead. As an afterthought, he stops for a moment and unfastens the worn leather strap of his watch and flips it over in his palm. On th

Rain. And solitude. Memories abound, echoing around in summer shades of night. Dark night. Darker music. And a refreshed awakening- a re-attempt, at tightening cords, at awakening a numb passion, at absorbing what love can bring about. The night is alive, resounding with lost sounds, escaped emotions and rejuvenated tenderness. Thoghts of a resurrection. Of a meeting that was long due. Of two souls drenched in macabre rain of a lifetime. Of touches to test existence And of tears that only happiness can bring about. And sometimes the time of night... Follow @diaporesis

Stay! Stand a little Life’s passing away— Sleet’s turned to spittle You’re going astray. Snatch what little you can Talk less, speak vacuities Lauding the lame race you ran— Let life provide its gratuities. Sit on the open field Soak up the drenched grass Harvest this macabre yield— Life, my friend, is crass.

Our voices are numb The black sun creeps unwillingly across a myriad stars— There is silence in twinkling… In burning, in hating! Silence seeps through the grass balming our cacophonic lives— creating calm, caustic euphony of hope and a contradictory despair. The clock cannot be heard But it ticks… Life slips into a labyrinth of purple twilight. Twilight does not speak… Our eyes are still The wall is rigid, and the clock’s stuck—shattered. The dials are haywire in the tormenting silence, the room is dumb, reason has turned blind There can be no speech No return: just suffocation and an anesthetized passion. Life runs on without the usual drone of its less than one horsepower steamless engine: life is silent in its fetid hopelessness…