Ode to a friend
Tell me the day when you insisted
to trespass and visit that sacred land of mine
Did your feet also get pierced
with those sharp broken pieces of a shattered dream
Tell me, how did you manage your way ahead
Did you sweep the debris with your bare hands
Or just marched on trampling and crushing
Dead-rusty leaves of that frozen land.
Did you meet there a wandering soul
tired, lost, sobbing in the maze of mind.
Did you hold its hands, share the dreams
and guide it to the brightest star.
Or simply turned away
leaving it all far behind?
That tree is not blooming
Just shedding its leaves
with unopened flowers
Like that child who is sitting
Alone on his window
And forgotten how to play!
Let us all rise together!
Swimming that dark, fluid river
Time has reached again shores of an aftermath
that thorny forest
in search of all our lost tomorrows.
The air is heavy with stillness
Bleak without love, hatred or fear
Like a blood-shot sky, filled with spears
A red-hot tired sun scorching already burnt mind-fields
A staunch, stink claiming all once beautiful and alive
We watch with a deep-down sorrow
Smiles and tears of those numerous people.
Now just a number in a photograph only
Senses sane and intact, without sensitivity
Bleak eyes open, dead still we watch
those dead hopes, breathing last
Dreams shattered, fume unburied.
What a waste of our civilisation !
my grieving mind in a whirl——-
The world is lost to a frenzied moment
Why this heart rendering cry now
We all have to share this sorrow
We all are in it together.
Our reckless decisions and actions
Culminating in a total destruction.
In this desolate realm of death
this faceless monster is having a feast
on our crushed hopes and endless greed.
It is a dawn whenever one wakes
Think, mull and chew my pensive heart
Life’s poignant seeds wither many a storm
Oceans do form when small streams gather.
Ambition must rectify these killing fields
Frenzied pass-times must be stubbed
Let us all rise together!
A prayer in the end
Heal me from my sorrow
So I can be free of hatred and jealousy
Heal me from my ignorance
So I can understand other’s pain and misery
When there is no light give me the courage
to hold the hand of lost and lonely
Give me a compassionate heart
So I can still share my loaf with the hungry
Be on our side, guide us
Through this darkest hour of humanity
Shail Agrawal
