JUST SAY IT
                  By: Sohel Karim

Just say it,
	Said my father,
	My father, whom I buried in an wintry wooden box,
	Twenty feet under dusky mud.
	No more sharpened dysuria, pain killer,
	Or the curved blue bowl for overwhelming retch, 
	No more magical lyrics, poems of tears, love and hopes,
	Or the smile of innocence, pure and immaculate,
	Only his open mouth, struggling to get air,
	Skinny bony body propped up on a decorated hospital bed,
	And the distant eyes emanating 
	Dwindling determination to live a bit longer.
	Yes, he was my father, my mentor, my genetic predecessor,
	And I stayed motionless, beside my dying father,
	Like a heartless vulture, tied my clammy hands
	With a thick rope of galvanic squall.

	Just say it,
	Said my father,
	And I say it as he wished me to say,
	Saying the words, sentences, and scattered thoughts
	Woven in threads of blasting gloom, miserable solitude,
	Memories of yellowish phlegm, stifling my father's breath,
	And the smiling doctor with a butcher knife
	Pronouncing the sentence of death in sophisticated manner, 
	Denying the dripping tears from my father's eyes,
	Dead! He is dead! He is done! Take him away! 
	Shut up! 
	I say shut up doctor, shut your silken mouth up!
	
	Just say it,
	Said my father,
	So I say it as he dreamed me to say,
	The dreams with billions of stars in nocturnal sky,
	Blooming like phosphorescent flowers in heaven
	Sparkling, fluttering, quivering with perpetual joy,
	Oblivious to stolid treachery of embellished surroundings,
	And I dream, dreams with color of pain, greenish blue,
	Drops of tears flowing out from my father's eyes,
	Helpless in the midst of hidden monsters,
	I scream, tearing myself away from spidery web,
	Web of dreams, waves of dreams, one after another,
	I scream again, wake up on a land of alabaster wolves.