Hunger Flames
In the pit of my stomach, just above my navel
A hollow grows and yawns and cries to be fed
But the beauty in it is the sheer depravity of the thoughts that cause it
And the number of times I have to bop those thoughts on the head
To subdue them
And order them back into the hell they came from.
For if, as they say, heaven is chaste and pure and full of sublimity,
Stands to reason that these glimpses of forbidden pleasure
These visions of subliminal fires,
Firmly banked, suppressed, contained,
Aren’t they clearly from the incendiary reaches of the profanely passionate
And that is NOT allowed, is it?
So when these moods come upon me,
When my breath comes in orgasmic gasps
When my eyes light up with the flicker of fiery flames
When the down rises on my forearms
And my stomach caves in,
With imagined pleasure on un charted seas
I know that the frail vessel I am on, and the waters I sail in,
Will be neither shield, nor armour,
To protect me from the fires that burn
With calm inevitability beneath the surface.
That I will drown, first
In a rite of purification and cleansing
And then, be confined to the flames
And my un repentant, un remorseful soul asks me,
“So? What’s the difference?
You were burning then,
You are burning now.”
And this is the thing:
If the choice is between burning, and ending
In a flash and a streak of barely perceptible glory;
Or leading a blameless life,
Ringed around by the palisade of society’s certainties…
I would much rather choose death by burning
Than death by boredom.
©️ 2021 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
