They Can Only Hope

They can’t explain their hunger to you.

They can’t tell you they want your care.

They can only hope you won’t tie them up,

and drag them behind your motorbike,

until they rip apart, long after they strangulate.

They can only hope you give them a kind thought,

and allow them to crawl into the shutter gap,

away from the torrential rains,

your own greed has brought into the world.

They can only hope you won’t use plastic

to wrap their helpless newborn children,

and toss them in flowing or stagnant water,

or take time to bury them alive.

They can only hope.

Because they don’t know human beings.

They don’t know the stupid wars you fight,

and the way you shoot down anyone

who doesn’t belong to the majority vote.

They don’t know your history and greed.

They don’t know you have invaded their lands

and driven them out.

Your acts of genocide are unknown to them.  

They can only hope that you may give them a scrap of unwanted food,

under a godless sky, over a parched cement block,

and maybe just maybe 

let them be.

I Grew Up

I grew up.
It means that I don’t dwell on what I cannot control:
emotions and feelings,
the abstract,
an opinion,
a mind-set.

It means I am not interested in trying to change
something — or someone — that can’t.
We yell about environmental disaster,
but we don’t care about it;
we care about our future.
I am not interested in selfish rhetoric.

Children run with guns
and kill other children,
yet there is no end to gun shopping.
I have grown up.
So I understand how controlling women’s bodies
is more important than gun control.

I studied literature.
I have read history.
I learnt the horrors that war can manifest.
But when I grew up,
I understood that there are Iagos in the world,
who revel in motiveless malignity.
The power of a weapon is the only thing
that can promote uneasy peace.

I yearned for liberation.
I walked the walks.
I talked the talks.
As I grew up, I realised:
the leaders who walked ahead
were pretending to be woke,
under the guise of their materialistic agendas.

I get quieter with the passing years.
I smile when I have things to say.
I know how to deal with my tears.
I grew up late and slow —
but on doing so, I have begun to question
every little thing I know.

Pain

At this turn of fifty,
the pain isn’t figurative —
it is literal.
It’s a corporeal manifestation
of what used to be
poetic and tragic.

Youth broke hearts,
and feelings tore innards.
The joke is that the heart
still breaks —
and now it’s not just that pain:
the shoulder, the knee, the heel.

The validation of abstractions
into the concrete.
What divine irony.

Mary Carson said it best
all those years ago:
Nature is cruel.
Man, vindictive.

Age gives you wisdom —
and the price was always
pain.