Innocent Indignity

 

A citizen dies, unable

To ask for the air to breathe.

A statesman dies, despite

Tanks of air and casks of drugs.

She says she could have helped,

But what would people say

If they knew she was hoarding?

He said he helped

But couldn't help enough.

*

Unable to trust her friends

To not spread the disease

Through her, to her family.

Unable to trust his wife's father

To keep death away from the mother

Of his yet-to-be-born child.

Unable to trust herself

To keep her mother alive.

Unable to trust those we must,

With and without a voice,

We cry without tears.

Through empty days,

Through hungry nights,

Through the stench of

A fever we haven't tamed.

There are more of the dead

Still to be counted,

Still to be burned.

Dignity lost as their

Bodies lay unclaimed.

Dignity lost as their

Bodies floated down the river.

Dignity lost, just as were their bodies.

*

A child runs across the empty street,

A coughing man lies prone ahead.

She nears him with an unmasked smile,

He turns in surprise,

Hands raised in protest,

She helps him

She rubs his cold hands,

He tells her to run away.

The child returns home

To her frail grandpa,

To her proud parents,

To the end of her world.

⁂

Calculated Inaction

Now tell me what you gain

Through your heavenly grace and fiery rain?

Streets lie broken with ruins strewn, and

The children remain unknowing of their pain.

You wiped the decadent from here to

Start afresh and right your wrongs;

Why start with these scarred by the loss

Of those dearly loved and hope for the sun

To cleanse the memories of a bygone day?

Blow thy wind across our cheeks

And show the beauty of a world that

Now must live by rivers and creeks.

The old centres of life and death

Are no more thanks to the play of your hand!

The smirk of your clouds across the sky

Can’t disprove the futility of your work.

You split the earth and swallowed them whole,

You disparaged the air between the factions

And celebrated when many a mushroom sprouted,

Freezing the young through calculated inaction.

We shall judge you too one day –

Not through a fire like yours

And neither duplicate those fathers of ours.

Your fate is to kill your creation again

And again till the end of meaningless time.

⁂

Keep away that Melancholia

Are gone the days

When melancholic poetry

Evoked a sense of beauty?

Tragedies could be undisguised,

Death could be mentioned, and

Cheery verses were anathema.

Where am I today,

That just the hint of sadness

In prose or lyrical meter

Is met with glazed eyes?

The unsaid pain

That wells up and

And the heaviness inside -

Can't these hearts bear

The burden of another tear?

Ah, this world in all its glory!

It's joys with its tragedies,

It's lush meadows alongside dark woods,

With it's fine and vile inhabitants -

If not for the rough edges,

Would we ever know good from evil?

⁂

Up Above

 

These green swathes are for you,

The blue and boundless oceans

Are yours to churn.

This high pedestal,

Where the winds howl,

And violent aurorae glow,

Is for me.

While you see both

The clouds and stars,

As one.

I know I am a

Cloud, not a star.

You have your seasons

Of brown, green, red and white.

I have my moods that swing

From white to grey,

And grey back to black,

And flashes of temper

Before a tearful deluge.

Yet, if you were

To look beyond me,

You can see the sun-

Bright, warm, constant.

The stars, pinpricks,

But twinkling in my wake.

Yet, if you were

To compare them to me,

You would see me fade,

Fade away when the sun is high,

Fade away when the sky is cold,

Fade away when the Earth is old.

Those stars would outlive the sun,

The sun would outlive me.

Maybe, just maybe,

I shall outlive thee.

⁂