An Elephant In Must

by

There’s peril in the signage,
yet visitors
enjoy the turbulent black sea.
A benign lust
grows malignant in chains.
The elephant
thrusts at the ground with
its tusks, as
though saving itself from the
violent voltage
current. It hurls its trunk up
the sky amidst
a thunder as the loudest
slogan of
protest in the universe.
It doesn’t
need a calendar. A mahout
can never
conceal its honeymoon season.
A lunatic liquid
flows down the side of its
head like
the lava of suppressed love.
Hormones of
creation are wasted in the void.

First appeared in The Literary Hatchet (issue #18).

‘Must ‘ is a periodic condition in a male elephant, characterized by highly aggressive behavior. I am inspired by an elephant in must in Punnathur Kotta, an old fort in Kerala State, where 159 elephants have been housed. All of them are in chains, living with suppressed passion like people in prison and similar situations.