Omair Bhat
The findings of the last night’s dream suggest that i should have woken up,
(to the news of an innocent killing )
as gregor samsa
as anger
as disappointment
but when i wake up ( you know how this is ?
waking up for me is dying
it’s tabula rasa
the absence of the thought of outrage )
when i wake up i hear the breeze, in curfew,
move in through the curtains
(the window looks aghast)
i sit upright in my bed
like the yardlength of freedom
i drink my tea, lay down,
sleep again
wake up comfortably
(to the songs of freedom )
late in the afternoon
i don’t mean to wake up
like I wake up, from any dream/nightmare
(mirroring realities)
I want to wake up, amidst people,
in rain, as a thunder-clap of revolt.
I want to wake up, half asleep,
mumbling disbelief. (How did i
go blind? )
I want to wake up and hang the perfectly delicate morning
on a nail with my infested shirt.
And upon waking up i want to
break into a torture chamber,
across the road, behind mist of the graveyard,
and free my little friends .
I don’t want to listen to my mother’s pleas today
I don’t want to stay back, in the cloistered space, in my house. The
feeling of inaction, in time,
transforms itself into a fishbone I choke on.
I read the news
about the dead of our country of suffering
with caution. I don’t want to breakdown. I
want to sustain silence of the stone
I am handed over.
The toll rises. The numbers
are like days, in columns, on a calendar.( We are already past the summer of numbers. We are nearing the count of 90). I want to react.
Upon waking up I want to run out, blind, and disappear in the streets.
I want to wake up either awakened or dead.
Omair Bhat thinks of himself as a memory keeper. His poems have formerly been published by Cafe Dissensus and Cerebration.