Still

A poem by Achuthan Panikath

Wed Apr 22 2026

It’s hard to jump from safe trees
To light the fire of dream;
It’s harder still to make another
Leap into that dream.
We walked and talked as nature glared
And buzzed us off as loons.
We stole the flesh, we stole the gold
We made the mad men kings.

We carved the gods, we dug the dirt
We tidied up the place.
We killed a few, we praised a few
And sang the tales to taste.
We learnt the art, we drew the math
Proved wrong all we thought right.
With just the right amount of soul
We learned to live and kill.

The first wall rose to stop the wild
‘Bless the wolf who kills because.’
Next one rose with the wild within
‘Curse the one who rapes a child.’
Quickly turned our brilliant minds
From ‘keep the evil out the walls’
To ‘out the walls, all must be vile’;
Now we love our evil kin.

With worldly brains came worldly sins;
We groaned in bed at distant wars.
Too long we learned of hell on earth
That now we toss when all is well.
When a sinful taste of flying flesh
Met age-old sins, those borne of skin,
We either fought for rights and died
Or safely slept with dying rights.

As fallen leaves seek hard the stream,
We, the liars, chase the truth.
Sham to water dying plants
Or a truth unknown? Or blind belief?
Yet to see or gladly blind?
As selfless thoughts tug close my eyes.
X is true and graphs don’t lie!
Bother not with fleshed out thoughts.
When juicy speeches shrink the gloves,
Raise a hand and pledge your life.

While we pay and swipe off love,
Too lost in tags to feel her touch,
We either trust too much in stars
Or in their wake just shadows see.
Tired before the stretch of dawn
Lost long past yawns of jaded owls.
I read, I learn, I live so much
As a speck of dust I fight to fly.
When can I just wake to see
That to know is not to be.

Will a mama bear who knows this world,
Birth a baby still?