Incarceration Poem by RAJ VIKRAM

Behind the bars and barred
from moving ahead with time
I allow myself to be imprinted
inside the confines where
I exist aware about everything.

Interred in my head are the
skeletons of my notions
about myself which never tallied
with the world's ways.
And I felt sullied by life.

Around me inside the space
where I belong since the day
I woke up to my existence.
I loiter around returning to
where I began like a caged tiger.

I have no distance to cover
And no path to traverse.
the writings on the walls
of my mind remain unintelligible
like the fading bars of my cage.

I don't know if my eyes are fading for I don't see the bars with
the same clarity when I got
detached from the umbilical cord and obliviously landed
into the lap of incarceration.

Intangibles appeared the moment my thoughts began
to decipher themselves
and began to question me.
I knew I am jailed the moment
I was told that this is life.

I don't know who passed me
that knowledge in some indefinite but surely infinite past.
Till then I was enjoying the bliss
of being unaware and unknown.

Like an animal I am following my tail relentlessly as if in hot pursuit, knocking occasionally
on the bars that bruise my scarred nerves.
Incarceration is my state.

Inside my head I remain in spate
having known that outside
world matter little at all.
I am caged yet I don't feel cagey.
Imprisoned I am but mind
is now impregnated with an
embryo which dislikes freedom.