In The Shape Of A Zero Poem by rama teertha

A void
Very much in the shape of a zero
That appeared after a slug’s entry and exit

The whole night takes shelter there
Birds a legion come shooting from the domes
And dies here

Not much difference between a vast desolate plain and this-

Putrid seas termite ridden like old beams fall apart at every joint
This is a watery grave yard

A blind man goes that way with his way finding stick
And a hound with face at the tail’s place follows him

All around the agitation of unconnected beaus –
A military craft falls amidst the living areas
None got the capacity to cross the road

Between personalities split into two
The rivers dry up
Symphonies breath their last
And the head on the shoulders
Just dangles like a towel held on the collar bones

There on the bed a stain of distress
And in the void on the forehead, a headache whirlpool

A dream not yet a full twenty drowns itself in a kerosene lantern
The whole sky becomes a folded paper and shuts itself

unknowing
Whether it is a prison or free world
One just plucks the head and tosses it away
Like the palm fruits de-skinned
Arranging them in a neat pile he engulfs himself in the fire

Not knowing the immense joy nor the deepest grief
Fading and going color less to the finality
Searching those fingers slipping away from the gripless wall
Finding the whereabouts of forbidden places,
Going rounds in a headache,
hoping to reach the heavens with the aid of a pill,
No Hades here -
One has to shoot himself in order to born again
All the faces are moth-eaten, hardened –
This is a chopped off jungle
And a void on the forehead in the shape of a zero.