Vaccine

Vulnerable and vacillating

vitrified and valueless -

valuation of humans as per the pandemic.

Vacations vilified,

vanquished social life,

violation of vantage points in vapid careers.

Vampires and zombies filled

vaguely futuristic TV shows

Vanish from to-watch playlists in hours.

Vacancies fill up the

vacuum of jobs and graves

Valor of the vanguard doctors leave us venerated.

Vaccinations and vaccines,

velocities of their manufacture intensified,

visibly offer potential vitalization now.

Vicarious living through

video calling and virtual apps

voraciously give way to veracious life again.

Vagaries of this pre-2020 life will perhaps

vaporize any vainglory

varnished in us and replace with humility.

Excess

Have you ever noticed how

the more you repeat a word

over and over again,

it starts to lose its meaning?

Right now, 'excess' in my head

is convoluting as

'XS', 'access', 'ekses', 'eksays',

'x-axis', 'x-rays', 'x-men'

and what not.

Either life is strange

or is it just my brain?

In school, we were taught

how excess of anything is bad.

Looks like excess of excess is bad too.

Excess needs to go to school.

Tenderness

I have written,

raw on the pages,

spilled my guts,

my blind-skewed thoughts,

my reality and dreams;

splashed them verbatim.

If I now look closely,

those chafed words

hide an innocence

between themselves.

I have now shed

that skin and

blended into a gray stone.

That diary is

my time machine.

The pages of my diary

know tenderness

more than I do.

Written for the Alipore Post Poetry Month

Prompt - Tenderness