Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts

25 October 2008

Lines Across Our Eyes


Terrorizing times stretched across our lives,

Times when one should see, feel and learn.

 

“We see those lines across our eyes,

The very lines that kill’d our lies and dreams.”

 

We were made to slide across steel,

To feel the smoothness of gravity’s pull;

All until we were impaled at the foot

Of the glistening face of reality.

 

Promises, made to make a change,

(That) won the votes and won the war.

They did all things just like the waves,

They simply forgot to keep their charges safe.

 

We were marched into the silent cells,

With cloth balled up into our mouths

And tape pasted across our lips.

They locked the pins inside our nails

And watched our bodies writhe like dolls.

 

“The pain lasts just as long as you’re alive,

They showed us that death is the only escape.”

 

We speak and shout against them, hoping to defer;

We weren’t wrong, they were right all along.

They surround us at a lonely hour

And escort us off our very porch.

 

They race past the Freedom statue,

They throw us into the prisons of Libertad.

 

And when finished, they chopped us neat

And dropped the bodies (weighted) into the sea.

Sometimes a hand washed ashore,

Sometimes the others raised a finger –

Only to disappear without the sign of a fight.

 

The ones who chose not to fight

Lived a life of futile oblivion.

Eyes saw the coup, the terror and the torture;

They sealed their lips – everything was just fine.

 

The time they fell, with the cultured brains,

They had the merest of words to say –

“As to what he did and what she had to pay,

We know not his fate, our hands are cleaned by the rains.”

 

*******

 

The sun rises in another land,

A boy wonders if he’ll see a million minutes of peace.

He turns to see the blades of a windmill slice

Through a passing dove in perfect silence.

28 April 2008

Refractions


The haunting memories of a frenzied nation,
The frequent attacks with peace so scarce,
The sadness that only comes
When that is past and what's next
Is worse than worst can be.

A step into unfamiliar land,
A stride on unchartered territory,
A leap over hurdles scattered,
And the lessons meant to be learnt.

An eventful journey through Hell,
Only to know what it is
To be in Heaven,
With good at your side,
Drenched in bliss
And the mind set free to fly.

A broken road on which my life wanders,
A tingling difference, not diffidence,
A surrender so complete, it distorts
The very air around me.

Nearing the border,
With war behind,
And a battle ahead,
I seek a miracle that's in my control.
I write my story as I wish it to go,
Just as the light into the night,
Just as the million stars that fade at dawn,
Not a bang, not a sudden demise,
It shall be a fading, with a different end.

Looking back at the path I've tread,
With a tinge of guilt, a twinge of sadness,
The things I did, the things I could've but didn't,
Flashing on a faraway mirror,
A reflection of those very days,
Reminding me of something else.

I know what it means,
And carry on under the stars.