Who Will Stem The Rot? Poem by Asha Iyer Kumar

Who will stem the rot,
Vanquish the Satan under the skin,
Tame the wolf behind the veneer,
Crush the creepy worm
that's infecting the pigment
in masculine blood?

Unbeknownst,
There is a sinister plot being hatched
in our deepest chambers,
Someone is planning
a wicked mutation
of man (to a heinous being) .

The bile in the pit is travelling to the heart
and from gooey yellow
turning into venomous black.
Suddenly, I see slimy reptiles everywhere,
Intertwined, mating with mankind.

I spit at the evil that roils inside,
Shriek silently till my bones burst with
the collective pain of our crumbling breed.
Breaking into bits,
The soul becomes a dust storm
in a dystopian land.

And at the inky hour
when the poison spreads,
Blue becomes the colour of the flesh.

Ravenous and insatiate,
This flesh -
A pleasure
a pain
and a plunderer.
This flesh -
A mystic poet's consecration
and a vile potter's clay of sin.
This flesh -
Between love and lust, insane.

Sullied tears fall
like cloud-induced rain,
As I search inland
for the root of the depraved vein -
In the heart, in the head, in the heel,
Whither
the seed of sickness lies,
Can someone say?

Soon we will be bodies.
Curled limbs, frozen frames
that even the earth
would be loathe to disintegrate,
And our carnal instincts will stick out
of a stinking, lust-ridden mass grave,
waiting to prey on passers-by.