A Voice in the Dark | Shubhodeep Pal

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…

Stand on the air open your arms feel the earth rotate on its demented axis— you’ll smell the breeze, the flagrant verdure, the glory of life, the passion in love, bliss promenading inexorably through the stunted trees, grief ebbing to inexpressible multi-layered joy of being, a gazillion blessings…. Reminisce those unforgotten halcyon seconds… Taste this earth: there is happiness in being who you are, for joy masquerades in the unlikeliest of charades. Touch yourself knowing that your skin is enthused with eclipsed passions and a long-forgotten tenderness. Feel the whispering leaves, Tame their chlorophyll tongues: you’ll hear what you want to hear, you’ll know what you want to know. Sense the dewed grass burgeoning under your naked feet— drench your soul in this macabre, senseless milieu. You’ll know there’s joy in living yourself— in living as you want to, in loving whom you want to.