No one

I was traveling, in the
middle of this global pandemic,
without a mask, without washing
my hands. Audacity? Defiance?
S’enfoutisme? Maybe, but I wasn’t
afraid of the virus anymore.

I saw a beautiful world,
men, women, children with
their conditions; everyone suffered,
some with wealth and health,
some without, but I could clearly figure
a sense of pain in them; it was as if they
were carrying an imperceptible germ
within them; to be able to do that they
were expecting someone to come and
deliver them, but who? A leader,
a guru, a god, a lover, a friend, who?
Rest assured, no one came.

When I closed the book, I thought
I could be all those the characters were
looking for, I could also be any one of
the players! The story made me wonder
if no one was also someone.

I took out my mask and went out to buy
some groceries, I carried a sanitizer with me,
very soon, as it were, I will be out on a
different journey with heaps of hopes
that I could change my world that can
do without a purifier and a mask on the
stage.

Paradise

Clouds in the sky,
thoughts,
waves on the sea,
repeated froths,
I behold the liquid 
nothings as huge
insurmountable rocks,
listen to their hollow
sounds and find me in the
blues, blue horrors
overpower me;
I look for my paradise
above, the seas lose on 
the ground, they’re beyond
my sense, lying hidden
inside my golden garden
waiting to surface, but
overcast with foams of lies.

Our priceless abode

   

snows are melting,

the temperature of our 

solitary nest increasing

beyond limit,

join hands and act 

to reduce carbon emissions 

in the balconies, windows, 

doorways, porticos

attics, terrace of our 

unique home;

for some time, scrap the 

borders that you have 

scratched over it,

the indigenous people 

are suffering the most 

for our expensive habit,

look beyond the codes

of selfish boundaries,

unite in action, 

not in mere words 

to save the earth, 

our priceless abode

Rose is not a word

 

The word rose doesn’t

emulate any colour, no matter
how perfectly read,
it doesn’t carry any sense 
of smell either, however
flawlessly the speaker accents.

Poetry cannot die

I will prove to the world,
with my indomitable words,
poems can kill all wars,
all anger, jealousies, hatred;
here’s to my lines, read 
or unread, but they lie in 
black and white.
I will keep playing my tune,
until all wars end, to you
I’ll sing, with a heart 
in my head, ‘poetry 
cannot die, it is 
never ever dead.’

In the circus of things

I had tied all of you in a rope,
until you ate, dressed and spoke,
wrote, and even thought like me, beyond 
any scope; with your entity, civilization,
language, attire, and food, lost in our hands
of power, prowess, intolerance, to ape me, 
became your condemned destiny.

Now, with all of you locked up in my cage,
I speak of justice, liberty, disarmament,
I score you down for distorting my language,
I mark you high for your neutralized accent.

The odd one

In the garden of tulips
a lotus was born; the gardener
smiled, but those in power,
surprised; they ordered to pluck 
the intruder, it was thus thrown
outside the border; the earth, like
the garden of flowers nourished 
the outcast with light, water, and air.

At work

Write, till your eyes turn in,
read, till you look within; you
will soon construct a different world,
where the azure paradise will fall
in love with your golden garden.

In the midst of miracles

The sun and the moon,
the earth and the sky,
the water and the air,
heal my world from
this warring lie.

I know of no other
gods and goddesses,
no kings or queens,
no princes or princesses,
I worship you, your highness,
cure my world, tired with
hatred, anger, lovelessness.

The meadows and the gardens,
the seas and the oceans,
the flowers and the fruits,
the brooks and the rivers,
the rocks and the mountains,
help my world to see,
your bounty and treasures,
enable them to hear the
sounds of your beats,
empower them to taste
the benevolence of your juice,
to you alone, I sink on my
knees, bless my world
deliver it from the disease of wars.

The kind wind and the breeze
so mercifully do you grease
all my sentient beings
so they love, live, and play,
every night and day,
I know you’ll never ever leave
us to die; in you alone, I believe,
teach my world with your pure
touch, how to caress, care, and cure.

I pray to you with all my heart,
my world, you’ll never fall apart,
with all your selfless teachers around
let our feet not lose the ground,
we’re blinded and deafened by
the debacle of disaster and deceit,
help us see and hear your miracles,
let them activate the sleeping brain,
let them rejuvenate our heartbeat.

In medias res

I can dance in the middle of a war
like a cattle in the slaughterhouse,
I can sing in the middle of greedy
hunger for power, like a severed
rooster; I can die in the middle of
pious talks on global peace and
harmony, I can drown myself in
guilt and shame in the middle of
theoretical cacophony;
I can be mesmerized at the autocratic
insistence on growth and development,
when millions starve under the indifferent
firmament; I can chant spiritual mantras
in the middle of inequality and caprice,
like a gang-raped teenager, seeking justice,
I can dance in between the designed gap
of word and action, and listen to volumes of
discourse on integrity, on one hand, I become
rich, and on the other, I breed poverty.