by Srinivas S.
Words are not an escape,
Written or spoken,
From those parts of the mind
Which seek liberation
In vessels that have form.
(They are just clouds sent as raindrops.)
Nor can thoughts dodge,
Addled or clear,
Those slices of the World,
Which seek to invade
The tetchy equilibrium of identities.
(They are just black scrawls in the dark.)
What about travelling in space,
A ruse to forget time,
And filling time with things to do,
For constraints of space?
Couldn’t those count as escapes?
(Not unless time and space are split.)
How about hopes and memories,
Sky-winged in a cell,
Or sweet nostalgia and dreams,
Teary-eyed in a desert?
Mightn’t these matter as escapes?
(Not so long as life is three-tensed.)
Also, when one speaks of love
In the light of(f) passion;
And speaks then of passion,
In the shadows of(f) love,
Is each an escape from the other?
(Is Life a separation of bodies and souls?)
A simple dress it wears,
But ‘escape’ is a tenuous thing;
For its being is built
From the life of another
Whose air must ever feed its breath:
To escape, therefore,
Is to know what it is not to escape:
To be Free(d)though–
That is a different inquiry.
