Prisoner

By Kartik Vashist

My will is flimsy

My will to roam free

But my anxieties and sadness

Make me appear clumsy.

I have become a miser

Of a rather widespread appetizer:

Candy-sized happiness

That makes me none the wiser.

I am all but dismal

My smile has become brittle

My food intake is sometimes too much

And sometimes very little.

I hold my own emotions hostage

And my thoughts under bondage

The only object meeting my willful eye

Is a tree of dense foliage.

My desires have not yet turned to stone

I long to find the most potent cologne

Though not the one that invites allergies

Alas, I revere in my thoughts alone.

My window sure has bars

But outside I see not cannons, but cars

My punctual jailer being the sun

Which, upon exposure, gives me hives, bleeds and scars.

At night, I get freedom to commute

But the roads become empty and mute

The spirits tiptoe behind me in silence

With whom I do not want to engage in dispute.

I feel I’m better suited

To the two places whose cold is reputed:

The edges of our oblong planet

Where, for half a year, its ice isn’t persecuted.

I shall continue to survive

To keep myself alive

In a prison rarely heard of

Until I become a mere archive.

By Kartik Vashist