Slave Poem by Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Consciousness stumbles
Willy nilly on the knots;
A junk of new combinations
Pile on stacks;
An image betrays
My solitude;
I start pulling apart
Light into its constituents.

I am ground into
The machinery;
Passion pleads absence;
Each moth strikes
The wall and falls;
I read pages
Of possible meanings,
None appear right.

Spirit is rude;
Each bug is a mess
Between thumb and index;
There is no end.
Farcical strength
After all;
My most hated object:
That mock slave.

Possessive love
Is angry with me;
Those framed certificates
Laugh in irony;
Each larva grows
And flies away;
The last to fly
Is growing death.