Gods of Flesh and Bone

By Amlan Hossain

I beg the gods of flesh and bone—

Tear me down, stitch me new.

Replace this failing heart,

This rusting machinery of lungs,

These eyes that dim like dying stars

That see no meaning, but only

The slow unravelling of time.

But what of the mind?

Inside this skull lies a clockwork of despair,

Gears grinding on questions

That corrode themselves.

If there were a surgeon of mind,

I’d pay with my last shattered dream

To slice open the skull,

Scrape away the hauntings,

And fill the hollows with logic, faith,

Or even silence.

Anything but this cacophony

Of unresolved questions.

If they could graft wisdom like a limb,

Would it replace this stubborn ignorance?

Would I accept a soul transplanted

From a martyr or a tyrant,

Their histories sewn into my veins?

Could I bear the weight of borrowed tragedies?

Would the gods grant me a cycle of rebirth,

Or have I lived so poorly

That even my karma is exhausted?

I envy Vishvakarma,

Who built the universe with precision—

How effortlessly he crafted purpose

Where I can find none.

Or, give me the fate of Frankenstein’s child—

Stitched together from remnants of strangers,

Freed from the tyranny of sameness.

Yet I wonder,

If this flesh were new,

Would the ghosts still whisper

Beneath the skin?

Would my shadow still follow me,

Cloaked in the same dread?

I’ve stood on the precipice of science,

Peered into the particles that dance and decay.

I’ve sought solace in scriptures,

Where gods forge worlds but abandon men.

Each answer is a fragment,

Each fragment is a wound.

The mark of poison remains blue

The sacrifice that saved the cosmos-

Even gods have their limits,

What hope, then, for a man

Who cannot shape his own being?

Perhaps I am the lotus,

Rooted in the muck of existence,

Struggling to bloom but unsure

If the effort is worth it.

Or maybe I am Ouroboros,

Devouring myself in a futile cycle,

Both the destroyer and the destroyed.

Perhaps I am nothing—

A flicker of electrons

Pretending to be.

And so, here I sit—

A man both seeker and ruin,

Half-prayer, half-paradox,

Pleading of a body

To the gods of flesh and bone

That can carry this mind,

Or a mind

That will stop mourning this body.

By Amlan Hossain