War and Pieces

Image : Google Images

The victor's loot

and the vanquished's shame

the woman in every war

without a name

the destroyed homes

as the shadows of 

kids' tombstones increases

the collateral damages

the unsaid tale of moms

daughters and wives

in war and pieces !

H for KASHMIR - A Mother's Monologue

Bloodshed is always ominous here
for I know I am being stripped
of another relation
the burnt house
is a pyre
love is a shackle
life is a handcuff

Faiz and his poetry
have long drowned
in Jhelum on
the curfewed nights
that feed on human flesh
Ikwans * and half-widows
and the disappeared
meet in nightmares

Bismil, Ashfaqullah and Paash
are imprisoned in history forever
in books oxymoronically labelled-
Revolutionary Poetry
My young men now
prefer stones

the masks
are lifeless
despite their colors
love, peace, democracy
and the biggest farce of all
FREEDOM

gravestones bear
just numbers
names and people
complicate statistics
so madness is the method
only mad monologues
can bear the truth

like Yorick's skull
the conflict has
dead players
and an active battleground


truth and lies
wear the same shirt
like identical twins
they blur
only the ghosts
have tales to tell

the world is
an interrogation camp
with endless torture

only the gravediggers
can sing
death is a business,
dead, half-dead
mutilated,mad
and the rest
massacred
forced to flee
to nowhere

all end
chutzpah/AFSPA
as the bard said
"The rest is silence"
I am a mother
called Kashmir.

*armed counter-insurgency renegades

HOPE

Broken homes
burnt memories
lost childhood

only the taste
of violence
and the rotting smell
of hatred

the hills,roads
and rivers
the colour of blood
washing away
traditions,
fear drowning
shared history.

Kashmir ,Punjab
north-east
the wounds don't heal
the pain doesn't lessen

only hope is
a thin silver -lining.