Benaras

-
Far away misty streets
where East and West do meet.
Where lives are celebrated
and the dead are venerated.
Where saffron and denim
live and together breathe.
My mind still wanders
down a misty Varnasi street.
Where filth and pollution,
moral and fiscal corruption
fight for supremacy
in this holiest of cities.
Far away misty streets
pan stained and saffron lined.
A city growing steadily
a temple in slow decline.
Where lessons are learned
with bullets and bombs.
Where the color of your cloth
supersedes the color of blood.
Divided along lines
of politics, religion and caste.
With no room to grow
but all the time to become free.
My mind is still trapped
in this conundrum, this dilemma,
this divided and united city.
My mind still belongs on misty Kasi streets.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ink

-
Ink upon the darkness makes no marks at all. Scrabbling about in the shadows nails, bleeding, fall. Scratching at the doors to my own damnation, I call. Names of old, names forgotten, slithering, from my tongue, they fall. Fat, obese, they move upon the trails I've left behind. I beg them to stop, do not witness my thoughts, my crimes. But they continue, no heed paid at all. Those that came  from the shadows eat me, my past.  They eat it all. Slick with anxiety, I continue, appalled. Eaten, my fingers to the bone, I watch,  enraptured, enthralled. This blood that erupts  from my throat, leaves no marks,  not even silence, upon these walls.
Read more

Upon the name of love

-
In the name of Narcissus, who withered away face to face with an unattainable reflection of his own perfection. In the name of Hector and Achilles, and the thousands of warriors who died for what you had wrought between a prince and a princess. In the name of the thousands since who have flown off the roofs of tall buildings and consumed the foulest of poisons just to escape your bony grasp. In their names do I curse you today, love. May you forever be just a word. Meaningless. Always to be confused with lust and desire. Always to be spoken but never sincerely. May your adherents see your duplicity And may they bemoan their affliction. May you be the idle plaything of those with no hearts and no remorse. But all this bitterness of history that I bestow upon you and your name Is undone. Each time I look at a mother smile at her child When a father looks proudly at his offspring. And I know that my curse is ineffectual in the face of true love, whose nature knows no curse....
Read more
-
The wrongs that men do often live far beyond their mortal time. For wrong is an intent, and no power that we know or understand, beyond time, can kill intent. Intent, like many other thoughts, resonates in the minds of like minded people, and seeks those who would think evil, if only their minds and behavioral patterns be changed to suit what needs to be done. Wrong here, for definition, would mean something that goes against the well being of your fellow man, unless the action prevented a further aggression against someone else. While sounding convoluted, its quite simple. Anything that endangers life, in all it's myriad forms, is wrong. And this wrong is ancient as it is evil. The thoughts that formed in Cain's head escaped into the vast ether and to this day, they can be heard in the heads of those who would hurt their brother, whether of flesh or mind. Such is intent. Even that intent which one does not act upon, is dangerous. For it desensitizes us, over a period of time,...
Read more