Another Year (2013)

I wonder, if the coming year would be
different for me than the previous lot
and better perhaps, I hope, than the current one!

So you see, hope is not dead yet, it sings
in tune, with all the citizens across
the colonized continents of the ageing world.

Hope, that dreams, in silence, of a new start
and, promises to be more vigilant this time,

though I must admit that the pessimist
is alive too, caged around the contour
of my battered soul, bleeding from too many wounds.

From there it questions me, “The sun that shall
rise tomorrow, does it know that we have
marked it as the beginning of another year?”

Terrorism Redefined

“But can you have terrorism legalized”,
he asked, “just because all the terrorists
are wearing those state sponsored uniforms?
Even worse,” he pronounced, “fascism is born
through such brazen greed, from the ruling class,
to remain incumbent, eternally
like the gods perhaps and to sodomize
the people and the wealth of our motherland!

Throughout the span of human history,
those in power have seldom been too fond
of paying heed to factual disagreements,
let alone from a dissident like me!”,

Then he whispered, lowering his voice even more,
“Wish I could have learned how the native folks endure!”

The Ocean of Life

To my starboard side are the volcanoes
of calamitous temptations, submerged,
ever ready to hurl at me with force
a shell from the molten core of the world.

I can see no sign of land to my port,
where I can dock myself and contemplate,
why the ocean of life has been growing,
more and more violent and savage of late.

I am too tired from traversing the waves,
relentless against the slime of my hull.
My gangway, left untrodden for too long,
in painful silence, has begun to rust away.

For how long must I endure this? “Please let me sink!”,
to godly Poseidon my wailing sirens pray.

A Different Life

Suddenly the silent night came alive,
as if a ‘Pause’ button had been repressed
and a different life had hence resumed.

Yet the night remained as silent and dark
as it had been before this tale began;
nothing changed in the world of our senses,
for the frequency of that life belonged
neither to the spectrum of light, nor sound,
audible to human mortals like myself,
so it was unlike anything, I had
ever seen or heard in my entire life.

On that night it felt as if the greatest of joys
had been quantified and I could lay my hands on it,
so I let myself be draped in the warm delight.

And Change is Nigh I Hope

I can feel the poison of stagnation
spreading through my veins. I wonder, perhaps
it is almost time to have my blood overhauled,
time to look back at the efforts that I have put
here and against that investment, I think,
no matter how rude it may seem per se,
it is time to bring out and check the register
of my loss and gain for the time I have spent here.

This is the place where I have grown to be
whatever I am today. Sadly though,
the headspace for further growth has shrunk recently
and the fact that I was born here has been a curse,
for here the natives are valued less than the foreigners,
so I wonder, how uncertain can rest of the world be!