The Plague

 More than the global pandemic

Ripping through the lands;

Worse than the mighty torpedoes

Blowing away the offshore sands;

Angrier than the summer fires

Burning through the wild;

Or the highest tsunamis

That have the seas riled;

We have a plague of global concern-

And not the kind hard to discern-

Not air-bone, nor of the stars,

But inbred amongst human kind;

In the form of tribal wars

Of every form, and of every find.

Not of the rats, and not of the genes,

But the nurtured idiosyncrasies

Raging through us all-

Damaging body and soul-

Is the new plague:

Of clanism

Of tribalism

Of racism

Of fascism

Of otherism.

The cats that were

The cats lived,
And the cats died.
But in between:
They meewed, they ate;
They drank, they lied.
They chased, got chased,
Had happy days and sad;
They then left the stage
To those that never had.

Fragile

The truth might be hard and dry,
And the prospects might seem so bleak;
Alas! truth be damned life is fragile,
And though oft brutish, humankind is weak!
You might be poor, and you might be kind;
You might be rich, or of royal birth;
Or you might be the hardest working one can find;
You might be short, and the handsomest on the land;
Or that shabby chap with a deformed girth.
You might be athletic today,
Or you might be living with a broken heart;
You might be healthy and clean,
Or you might be full of the biggest of dirt.
You might think you have all the beauty,
As if, my fellow fragile being, it lasts for eternity!
Or you might feel sad and down of heart;
Filling yourself with all the pity!
But, you see, if there is one constant in all these,
It is that unexpected known,
Where the cry and laughter,
The rich and the poor,
The sick and healthy,
The diligent and wise, the fool and lazy,
Vanish into forever-after,
With equalized nothingness.

Hipparchia-1

Our little star, our breathe of air;

Our tears of joy, our joy of care;

Our challenge by day, and challenge by night;

Every-second's-worth source of delight.

Our definition of unconditional love;

And universal source of smile;

Our measure of times lived,

Responsibly worth the while.

Our source of hope, so big and wide;

Even the wildest dreams have nowhere to hide;

Our source of pride without bound;

Our love for life, all year round.

The Betrayed of Sudan

Sudan cried to the stars,
In the dark blue skies of the night;
And flooded tears to the Nile,
In the dry dust of the day...

It rose in unison:
From Atbara to Nyala;
And sent the shockwaves of hope,
From Kadugli to Dongola.

This timeless land of great people,
Hijacked by power-hungry men;
Shall rise again from the dunes
Of hopelessness; it shall, now like then!

These timeless people of a great nation,
In a temporary episode of gloom;
They shall shatter the yoke of greed,
And bring forth the Saharan bloom!

The bloods shed in Burri,
And the lives lost in Umdurman;
These shall only harden,
The kandaka heart in every woman.

The betrayed children of Bahri,
And the miskin people of the Port:
The winds of hope are blowing ashore-
From Damazin to Darfur-
And the ball of people power
Is right in your court!

Perspective

The living and the dead of life,
How different can they rhyme;
Except for a matter of perspective,
And a tiny bit of time?
Only time is of the essence,
In the face of introspection:
For everything stays the same,
In matters of evolution.
The brief twinklings of beauty,
Are the ugly harbingers of eternity;
The fleeting decays of yesterday,
The erstwhile hallmarks of modernity;
The arrogance of muscle power,
And the invincibility of youth,
The complacency of beauty,
And the infallibility of truth:
These are all no happenstance;
But all lost in perspective,
Amidst clouds of ignorance.
The good and bad of life,
The true and the fake;
They are all mirages of perspective,
Of a self-invented make.

I Wish It Were a Dream

My pain of loss
And denial of reality,
My self shattered to the core,
My heart broken for eternity:
Oh! how much I wish this were a dream,
And I would for days and days scream!
Screams of joy and relief,
That my beloved sister were here,
And there' be nothing more for grief!
Oh! how much I wish it were a dream,
That there were nothing for me to mourn,
But here I wake up and all is real,
My heart still heavy, my world still torn.