Neelam Aglawe
The vinyl scratches
Crimson tides over
The crunch of time
Hacked staccato into seconds
Past hours of midnight's infant infamy,
She stares back sublime with empty woes
I daren't rest or let a second lie unquenched,
Un-tended lest she sense the desperate hopes
But now in vizened years
A welcome ghost she stays
Cleaving direct between the eyes
In that rhythm of murdered time
She stays with the otherwise
Otherworldly sounds of crickets and wind and terror
Of deeds past and unending cycles
From dreams, to hope, to glee; to sorrows.
That spectre gazes back,
Dark virginal canvas of each, warm midnight
Askew with banished burdens of the day,
A reproach she cries, another me from another time
Encroaching on yet another
Untouched blissful moonlight
Where no terrors greater lie
Than the consequences
Of being alive.