Temple

Poem by Paridhi Puri // Photograph by Leanne Surfleet

I walked in bereft melancholy

Over to the temple that rested upon the shoulders of dark red earth

Which hid the coffins of desires

That men released

With a sunken visage o with a sunken heart

 

I gently grazed the veins of a quartered queue which stood in attention

With resplendent voices of appeal

To

Please the mosaics that lined the streets of zenith with their fluorescent feels

 

Color,

oh holy color

which blinded me

woven from the whispered prayers of chaos

Of claimed knights

 

Tears

oh tears

Of shrieking shacks of hearts

Burning in gasoline as their

Badly burnt hands seek mercy

 

I saw glass painted by the hopes of devotion mixed with cruel reality of greed  and sorrow,

I saw thin heaving bridges losing breath as men of reason cut the rugged ropes

 

My nails bit my palms as I raised those

ruby hands up in reverence

Closed my eyes

To

Kneel down at the temple of the broken,

Only

To find the fruit of prayers

Which had long lost

Their taste of salvation

to the wind of the time.