Our Mother

Our mother is dying fast
from too much carbon in the air
and too much poison of prosperity
poured into her oceans,
fertile grounds and the river streams
through the outlets of progress, vomiting.

She is no more vibrant
and full of colors like she was
centuries ago when fewer human
crowded her brown, ragged skin, unlike now,
ever busy overgrazing
like a colony of virus
without any thoughts for the time ahead,
spreading, then moving on to spread again.

Now we can either cherish or destroy
the wonders of life on our mother and
that would decide if she will, in return,
nourish or abandon the humankind.

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The Company You Keep Around

When troubles come
everyone around shall unveil
their faces, true
and you shall see
how many of them are
truly hideous beneath…

When you have something they need,
you would find them
jolly and so benign
but if the scene
is reversed and
you are in need
of something they have,
you would know how quickly
a bright and warm
smile can turn icy cold…

When promising
they conjure up phrases
and words more eloquent
than even the finest poetry
but when the time comes
to honor those
promises made
they become as petrified
as a shameless stone
and later they even live on
as if everything
took place in a mere dream…

But is it in the nature of humankind or
just in the company you keep around?

Is it not far better then, if you can
live alone and
to their selfish demands remain
indifferent and unyielding as well?

As then at least, ever
if you are overwhelmed
you would know that there is
no one else but yourself to blame…

Half of the Spring

Wild gusts of dewy wind
ruffled the budding leaves, lush green
and whispered that half of the Spring is gone.

The solitary cuckoo’s mating calls
grow louder and more desperate,
as the Summer approached.

Only a month is left
before the scorching Summer days
appear with flaming vengeance in their mind
to parch the sky and to watch the fields burn.

Wild gusts of wind ruffled the budding leaves
and whispered that half of the Spring is gone.

The bright and ugly days
have already become longer
than the silent hours of the waning nights.

The solitary bard’s wandering thoughts
become fainter and less obvious
with even lesser time to concentrate.

Only a month is left
before the vicious Summer days
settle down with flaming vengeance in their mind
to parch the sky and to watch the fields burn.

Wild gusts of wind ruffled the budding leaves
and whispered that half of the Spring is gone.

The Reign of Anarchy

As violence escalates, bloodshed as well
intensifies. The days become cruel and
unpredictable. The price of bullets, live
seems to have fallen down. Every one
able and willing, can get their dirty hands
on enough rounds to rule their native wards
through terror and intimidations, crude,
unless one wants to have them legally!

Yet a bullet is a much safer threat
to face than bombs and Molotov cocktails.
A bullet can only kill one or two,
be it dead on target or gone astray,
unlike bombs that never discriminate
between the innocent and the marked one.

Now it seems that whoever can keep a gun,
can find an endless source of bombs as well,
handmade, anytime. Like fortune, power
and the gross domestic wealth, firearms too
among the civilians are centralized
in the stained hands of a privileged few.

Even those that were supposed to protect
the guiltless civilians, left too terrified,
along with the vow of their uniforms,
have long ago been cheaply compromised.

So people like you and me can only run
or hide like rats in the sewers for life,
still on fate and our luck it shall depend
whether we die or survive till the end.

The Silent Masterpiece

And silence descended upon the metropolis
to render the overcrowded streets
as barren as a desert land,
full of concrete structures, standing tall,
submerged in the shadowy darkness of the night.

Behind their locked doors and windows
carnal rats and indomitable cockroaches thrived
and the astray dogs had the reign outside.

They were barking every now and then
in tandem to claim their sovereignty.

Both the loudness and the pitch of their barks
kept on rising until silence reclaimed the scene
or their lungs had run out of air and they
were forced to take a much needed and blissful respite.

In between a few lorries and
public cars shred through the silence to fade away.

Their engines shifting down to emit
a heavier groan near the painted mound
built across the road to restrain the speed
of vehicles going by too fast.

Although these sounds were distinct individually
and way too out of scale but as they were back then,
so thinly spread along the silent emptiness,
the symphony became almost a masterpiece.