A Dead Poet's Outcry

by Syeda Anika Mansour

I'm a dead poet

a poet whose words have withered

like the youthful petals of roses

after the scorching heat of Apollo's wrath.

A poet whose emotions have ceased to nothingness,

like the stillness of a hushed heart.

A poet whose voice is lost

among the restrictions imposed upon thoughts.

A poet whose notions pass through the parting of the lips,

only to return to an infinite bastille of thoughts inside!

A poet whose failed expressions, not once but

time after time, stab like obsidian knives!

A poet whose old verses have evanesced under forced tar.

A poet who sits in cafés,

wanders through slums,

looks out the only window from the prison,

sits among compadres in university lawns,

dreams of past life and loved ones lost,

stays awake all night to finish the due clerical work,

stays awake all night to keep babies from waking neighbors up,

prays for a roof overhead, lying by the street while people walk over unconcerned,

peeps through the torn curtains of the broken window at the sound of an airstrike,

breaking down after triggering memories of coercive touch.

I'm a dead poet who breathes in verse-devouring ashes that thicken the air,

choking my poetic heart, turning me into a shell, an empty shell,

Bowdlerized!