Chlorophyll Of Poetry Poem by Sachin Ketkar

Icy green blood
From the carnage of multitudinous
Trees, innocuous and mute
On my bare naked hands

Whenever with my sharp pen nib
I lacerate
The white backs
Of a blank sheet of paper
I calligraph cold-blooded lines
Of tongueless poems
On the cemeteries of voided spaces
Vacated by annihilating
Thousands of forests

Unsuspectingly
My hands become part of the conspiracy
Denuding this planet
I too become a collaborator
In this felony

But my lush green hands
Cloaked in the bleeding screams
Of the handicapped trees
Are long-familiar
With the yellow grief
Of a leaf nipped off

The crimson excruciating pain
Of a crushed petal

The wet sting of a branch being broken
The earthy agony
Of being uprooted

These are the very things
Flowing out on the white corpses
In the form of chlorophyll
Of poetry