Sati

i can't rhyme...i'm no where near it..

In Alhamra Arts Council

past the Crow Eaters Gallery,

they shut the light out with Navy blue curtains

and the cold A.C air

is pregnant with dry scraps of talk

and the smell of blades

and after-shave lotion.

The only thing noisey is the jet black of her eyes.

(dead here have such a huge reserve of life)

Your eyes turn to dark red empathy

ogling the yellow flames fanned by her sari.

You turn around to tell me,

Had i had been born 200 years back,

i might have been burnt by a man

at a man's pyre.

400 years ago,

there were the Salem Trials.

i guess,i'm way too lucky.

What i dont say,

cant say,

cant tell is wherever your pale,

carnivorous hands touch me

I scald,I scrunch ,i burn,i peel...

I'm...just another kind of sati.

Author's Note

Reviews

[abhas]

may be what you say is the way it was meant to be... no matter how many years you go back and see... long after sati has been abolished we can tell that we're born in luckier times... but luck comes with a price tag... one way or the other... it will get you ... nice write... makes you think... how much did we change... and what's left to change....

[J]

You have a knack for fleshing out and marrying imagery, emotion and thought on an innate level. Seemingly disconnected but it all comes together at the end and leaves a full feeling.

Thought I'd wander by instead of being my usual quiet, anti-social self here =)

[closed]

You don't really need to rhyme lol, your imagery is excellent. You're the intellectual poet, and no you can't say that about all poets in general. Take that as a compliment, because it takes poems written by that type of writer, to invoke the kind of thought that this one does.

nice write.^

-Dream

[Sweet_pale_cacophony]

Ah!..you have got this fearless vivid imagination and i loved this.The last four lines in particular do help me understand why you would use the 'Sati metaphor' here.Till date there is much speculation on many of the rituals and festivities in India which simply celebrate the apparent devotion of wives for their husbands..it can be dismissed with a wave of the hand..bah!..but then every ritual in every culture has this deep rooted reason imbued in the cultural psyches..hence it makes no point to rationally analyze something.In our times sacrifice too is measured and thought about before jumping in..and yes i do understand burning down yourself in a completely different nature of fire.Bold,courageous and a very clever metaphor.

[Linear]

The last lines seemed to me to be about love, but im non to sure of this, being devoured like a sati is a taste to far.

Yet ill enjoyed the flow and feel of the words.

[Jibey]

I was captured by the smell of death and the hands of the mortician... somehow immolation is a better end... even when the pyre is lit by a man... A powerful, atmospheric write

[Another Relic]

Always powerful writing. You always have a knack for leaving a potent feeling in the reader.

[paul]

really remarkable stuff here

[Ed Hart]

most of us are running 110 wiring between our words and our thoughts; you've got pure 220...good girl

[Emily B]

I think it may be perfect, just the way it is