A Poet Cries For Mahatma Gandhi On His Birthday

The blaze

it's not easy to talk

to the prisoners

of the past

they never joke

while talking revenge

flames race through

trains

lanes

homes

leave behind

smoldering shingles

blackened bones

stick out of charred flesh

hot streets are colored

with scorched blood

triumphant flags flutter

on a poet’s tomb

no one follows me

down the street

the silence is not a delusion

and the bad news is

vultures shriek in the distance

for their turn

clouds shaped like caskets drift by

while naked cadavers

wait for shrouds

party flags sponsored labels

of pain and suffering

enact farce of protests

you can’t rely on the savants

to tell the truth

the mahatma stands forlorn

on a cracked pedestal

back bent

the loin cloth sullied

a broken walking stick

dangling from his fractured hands

layers of bird-shit on his spectacles

nobody loves the dreamer of lost causes

 

When we failed the angel

roses in sunset die

atop griped grasshoppers

we invent our memories

cause thunderstorms

darken our vision

as hot breeze sweeps

rooftops in the dusk

above the ruins

a bespectacled angel

appears in the sky

seems strangely near

watches dogs

chewing roasted limbs

in blazing streets

waves his bamboo-wand

nothing happens

warped reflections

just keep getting uglier

fading light flares

the forgotten tombs

begins to die

sizzling droplets

fall off skies

into dark streams

roses continue to die

atop grasshoppers

writhing on black grass

shadows whisper

the guardian angel’s

forgotten wisdom

The riots

in this land of Krishna

Draupadi gets disrobed

regularly on the streets

by those who swear

to protect her

a mere swab on canvas

is enough for the hands

folded in obeisance

to turn into lustful claws

to get her

trusting Abhimanyus

are roasted alive

on the spits of spite

while Dronas look away

vultures in piety’s garb

feast on the fruits

of macabre frenzy in full sway

Excerpted from Randeep Wadehra's "Singing Through The Nightmare"