Saturday, June 25, 2016

The Songs Of The Dead

The songs of the Dead
Are the hardest ones to hear,
They resonate with the voices
Of the unseen and the unsaid.
They carry the timbre of futures not lived,
They are heavy with the baritones
Of memories not made.
The songs of the Dead
Are sorrowful to hear,
They are burdened by secrets unknown
and are weighed by words left unspoken.
They are riddled with puzzles not unravelled
And with hopes never fulfilled.
The songs of the Dead
Are the cruellest ones to hear,
They are embittered by hard circumstances,
And are forced by events unforeseen,
They are played to the tunes of injustice,
And are written by the hands of the undeserving.
The songs of the Dead
Are melancholic to hear,
They reverberate with the aspirations
Of men no more.
They speak of lost love, of lost hearts,
Of lost lives.
The songs of the Dead
Hurt the most,
For they remind
Of what has been lost
Forevermore.

(Thoughts after the June 12, 2016 Orlando Shooting.)

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Mock Not A Woman

Mock not the pride of a woman,
For she struggled hard to claim it.
Mock not her meekness,
For she always had the courage to stand with, and against, man.
Mock not the serenity of a woman,
For it bore her company, where men failed.
Mock not her confidence,
For it was the only commodity that she could afford.
Mock not a woman's weakness,
For her resilience lent her strength.
Mock not her determination,
For it gave her hope when times were bleak.
Mock not a woman's embellishments,
For she was seldom credited for her wit.
Mock not her emotions,
For words were never hers to speak.
Mock not a woman's silence,
For it was society that robbed her of speech.
Mock not her willingness to fight,
For equality was never hers for the bidding.

Friday, January 29, 2016

A Clockwork World

PART 1

The World once ran on clockwork,
Each human akin to a toy,
Which, when its key was wound,
Would begin its daily ploy.
Each day was perfection,
Each morning crowned by the same dewy glory,
Each night a starry calm,
With nary a long face, or a sad story.
Every life was the same,
The same routine,
There was the security of a life of repetition,
The safety of monotony.
The sun was just as bright each day,
as it was the day before.
The clouds merely repeated,
Their dull encounters from afore.
The people found comfort within it,
For they knew what was in store
Beforehand. After all,
Each day was merely
A mirror of yesterday,
And an image of tomorrow.


PART 2

Until one dawn,
Hours before the clockwork day,
A mischievous child,
Stole out, and away,
And pocketed the shiny little key,
That ordained the smooth functioning,
Of the puppet-like world.
The town awoke, to a certain missing something,
The sun was bright, ayy,
But it wasn’t quite as lustrous as the day before,
And the cloud, quite abnormal,
Darkened and murmured low grumbles and rumbles,
And everything was quite, quite awry.
The folk were clearly surprised,
Puzzled and bewildered and befuddled.
Never in a thousand years could the have surmised,
That their picture perfect land,
Could stumble, and teeter, and crumble.
There was panic, there was chaos,
Their was uncertainty amidst the worries and fumbles.
The kid, meanwhile, welcomed the change,
He skipped along to the brook nearby,
And while he whiled away the hours,
The golden key mumbled its farewell and goodbye,
And slipped into the bubbling stream,
Where by and by, it was searched for,
But never found, much to the people’s disappointment.
It had far to travel, to meet the golden shore.


PART 3

Months passed, yet the key was lost forever,
The world was upside down,
The weather, the day, the sun,
Unpredictable, And many a frown,
Dampened the world, those few months,
And many a conflicts,
Shattered hearts across.
Yet, one day the sun dawned bright,
Brighter than it had ever before,
Awe stuck the citizens, was their golden land,
To return again, so that they could relive,
The harmony from before?
However, there at least, they were met with disappointment,
For the sun shone, not on a bygone time,
But on the future that lay ahead. 
There was violence, perhaps, there was disquiet,
Yet there was a break from monotony,
From the repetition.
There was independence, freedom,
The lustrous glory of adventures,
A land of unpredictability.
And while, the men and women alike,
Mourned the loss of the security of the clockwork world,
They rejoiced
In the uncertainty, and the opportunity,
Of their reformed little world.
And so, once upon a time,
A naughty kid lost a golden key,
And reformed the world,

To a land of mystery.

Friday, January 8, 2016

The Window

The room was hers, hers to paint.
It was all for herself, each wall, each shelf,
Was hers, and hers alone.
She lit it with her own sunshine,
She stuffed it with her own joys.
It was a medley, but it was full of her, 
Of who she was.
Each smile was a trophy within it,
Each tear, a crack in its toughened walls.
The ceiling was a riot of colors,
Each hue a representation,
Of what lay within her heart.
The walls were embroidered
By the grubby prints of muddy hands,
With the mindless squiggles of an artistic hand.
They were the canvas
Of her vibrant memories.
She was satisfied within her room,
Within the littered floor of a childhood
Spent dreaming of the sun and the stars.
She was satisfied within her room,
Within the ornaments of her mind.
She was satisfied, until
Her eyes landed on the little ray of sunshine
That peeked through the curtains.
It unsettled her, it piqued her,
It made her wish to look afar.
It scared her, it intimidated her,
For she could not imagine
Pulling the curtains apart.
The outside was scary,
She was safer within her chambers.
Yet curiosity, curiosity beckoned her
Until, she found herself fingering
The hems of the smooth fabric
That separated her from what was on
The other side.
She pulled it back at last.
What lay behind, left her agape.
At first, it seemed but a mere reflection,
Of her own little haven full of fantasies,
Yet, the more she looked, the more she saw,
The little touches, the subtleties, that made it
Far, far more dearer to see.
The window showed her, not just
Yet another room,
But rather, yet another part of her.
She had found a room to share,
And a person, to share it with.