You can’t breathe…

By Adarsh Madhavan

You can’t breathe…
You can’t breathe
This time not asthma
Or even virus

You can’t breathe…
Monster’s heavy weight on bare thin neck
Black hearts breathing down on tiny little nape
Kneeling is the new killing!

You can’t breathe…
Black coiled snake
Uncoiling on frail numb body

You can’t breathe…
Like vicious dog
Hissing reptile on a leash
Your own man urging
“Bite bite bite!”
Fill you with venom…

You can’t breathe…
Agony
Venom in blood
Not of snake
Your man’s venom!
Hardening your blood

You can’t breathe…
Elephantine belly not full
With nature’s bounties

You can’t breathe…
With deceptive fruit
Boar’s trap
Pineapple bomb
Mama’s mouth blown
Entrails torn
Jaws shattered

You can’t breathe…
Trunk drowning in river
Mouth bleeding
Not just pain
Harmless pachyderm
Heart in conflict
Harmed none
Hurt none
Only ate what was given

You can’t breathe…
Fed by their venom
Bled by their hatred

You can’t breathe…
Heart bleeds
Unfathomable
This vicious laughter
As mouth explodes
As jaws break
As bleeding bleeds
As pain after pain after pain
In mad sway
Sinking
Willingly

You can’t breathe…
Unfathomable
This vicious laughter
Son or daughter
Li’l life in belly snuffed out forever

You can’t breathe…
No mercy from these
To even a mother like any other
Imagine
Plight of their mothers
Plight of their little ones

Sans asthma, sans virus
You can’t breathe
You can’t breathe…
In this ugly cruel smog.

(Lines prompted by three killings, three deaths, three innocent lives gone: George Floyd – killed by a US(less) cop, S. Uthra – killed using a cobra by her husband in Kollam district and a pregnant elephant in Palghat – killed after eating a ‘bomb’-laden pineapple trap meant for boars – mind you, it is okay to kill a boar with fruit ‘bombs’!)