Middle class Audacity

 1

Middle Class Audacity

When my message inbox flashes on

with messages

"Stay well, Stay healthy"

I feel nauseated

the foods that I have been eating

since I have been born

as a strange indifferent creature

we ourselves named human

seem coming out

I can feel the taste of biles.

A robber says another

robber to be healthy

from one comfort room to another.

 

I am worried

are the potato leaves dying

they need love of

those hands which fill our plates

in every meal

I wonder how the blades of wheats are

fighting with the grasshoppers

when their parents are walking miles on the roads

I wonder selfishly

from my middle class audacity

 

I leap out from bed seeing a nightmare -

all onions have turned into gold

the hoarders are busy making

thousand crore noise free room to sit on the peacock's tail and lotus's petals for shouting

and hurling chairs and papers

(similarity with parliament is purely coincidental)

 

I am more worried about the tomato plants

the late blight disease has attacked my

middle class plate

The curers are trembling in the cold.

2

    My Lover's City - Kashmir

My lover's city is always drenched

sky is always cloudy

the grimness overflows from

roads to homes to my lover's plate

in his dream he always slips and falls on the wet roads

sometimes the darkness is so dark that he

misses the lanes of return to his mother.

In his city not returning is normalcy

the darkness falls without knocking

the drooping homes count its inmates every day

his city is forever drenched

I taste salty rains

that run from his eyes, faces to his pheran

in our every kiss, in his every touch

I try to suck out all the salts

my taste buds become saltiest forever.

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