There are you, arguing with me unconditionally.
Is it your way of hiding underneath an armored cloak?
Nothing else but a sinister scam to prove
that you are right in the eyes of the storm,
war of common sense put to ransom, which
has crucified compassion on the stake of ruthless
vanity,
ever ready to think to terminate instead of
preserving life. Has this
achieved anything but mindless ravage
that could have been avoided for a cause
we, humankind could live, love for.
Could it not be better if all lived, none destroyed,
certainly
not for vain reasoning that spells doom for all?
Better it would be if truce stepped in like angels,
flying to
achieve stability amidst debilitating insanity.
Without tolerance, we are no longer alive within. The
war,
it is a dying opportunity to plow mental fields
of rehabilitating harvest.
* This poem is based on a prompt from Day 6 of https://www.napowrimo.net/day-six-9/
which is "a variation of an acrostic poem. But rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I’d like you to write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first words of each line. Perhaps you could write a poem in which the first words of each line, read together, reproduce a treasured line of poetry?"
The words that I have taken are from "There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it" by social reformer, Havelock Ellis.
At this age, this time
of the day
I turn towards Nature
beside me to stay.
When family humans
float around on conceptual islands
it is the crow, the
squirrel that save me from emotional drylands.
Just the other day, a
young crow cawed bitterly on my windowpane
I wondered ‘cos I had
already left food on the steel plane.
Peeping out to see a
scurry of squirrels munching hurriedly on grains
leaving the poor crow
agitated finding hardly any refreshment remains.
The striped squirrels,
in no mood, to relinquish their share
unmindful of others,
downing edibles like hungry hare.
With no support from
the anthropoid kind
the crow picked up a
squirrel with its tail in its behind.
A jaw-dropping scene
it surely was
like the killer whale
striking flesh in Jaws.
Moving back to my
daily quietus
I floated around in a ritualistic riotous.
There is but a mere blank space,
a nail bending out like an old withered woman
on a wall decorated with peeling paint,
remnants of cobwebs that had made the place
behind the clock, their home.
I have nowhere to look to know the time of the hour.
My mobile, happily charging on the table across the bed
like an infant feeding on mother’s milk.
My back hurts from a sudden overdose of exercise
resumed after blameless months of exhaustion.
I sit, my eyes darting across the room,
searching desperately for avenues to gauge time
something, our ancestors did quite easily
looking up at the sun or, judging the shadows of the trees.
Minutes of the hours planned by a casual stare at the clock
out of service, away from the constant cluttering sounds
of the house it made home
whose inmates run their lives
staring at it as if it was a prisoner being interrogated
every minute of day and night.
Today, it lies free in the company of other clocks
in a resting home of repair, while its ungrateful human family
lies handicapped during its absence.
A trip to the land of Lord Vishwanath where Ganga flowed abundantly drove me compulsively to the ghats, my mother and me holding each other's hands as we stepped carefully into the ever flowing lap of maternal warmth.
Dipping our heads in ritual obeisance,
hearing the melodious gurgle of water above us, I believed naively I was on the last leg of survival until the moistened moss of head could take no more and I rushed up gasping for air.
For my mother, a sharing of rituals of the mystics, a custom she underwent in the land of her ancestors, a legacy she handed down to the next generation accompanied with flowers and a clay lamp carrying the offering of two women lost in the ravages of testing time.
Forever might be short.
What I desire, is today which slips from my hands
every other day. Tomorrow is a million light-years away!
In my palms to forge, to carve mere clay
for now, to mold into a sculpture of my dreams
to manifest into reality like potent Kratos.
The here and the now is my throne of execution.
The day after, not my mug of cappuccino.
Forever might be short.
Prompt motivated from https://www.napowrimo.net/one-day-to-go-and-an-early-bird-prompt-3/
celebrating the April Month of Poetry 2022
