Desire To Live Poem by Harish Srinivasan

Set in a chair
gazing at the screen,
my thoughts elsewhere
longing to be seen,
I held no care,
of the silenced routine,
I wonder-

"I had not the vision of a rainbow
nor did Mozart enchant me
but what broke my sobriety
and what silenced the tides of my heart.

I skimmed through sections on Google
and raced through anecdotes of despair
to spot the misguided metaphor staring at me
as the gaze of prey is locked to its predator.

If stealth was an organ
my heart would embody it
and rewrite tales of misery as love
and anecdotes of despair as sacrifice."

While the human mind
deeper than the darkest valleys
the heart of their kind
is broader than the widest alleys.

The former learns rationale to judge
whereas the latter invents ways to forgive,
but in the war, if the heart does budge,
it deprives me of the desire to live.