Do not blame them if they speak Each other's language
Or drink from
Common rivers
Or the fact that they can reminisce their
Systematically robbed pasts in
Mostly unintelligent, yet
Somehow touching
Songy-dancy costume
Dramas.
A shared hodgepodge of
Emotional clusterfuck.
And don't be surprised if they’re awfully close to each other
A kite flown high enough in
Amritsar could easily be spotted from
Lahore
If sufficiently colored with dyes made from Henna,
Mustard, and
Saffron
It is high summer in
India and in Pakistan
A season for
Mangoes and cool evening breezes
The otherwise outliers on the
Edges of hellish hot noons
A Koyal’s Mellifluous call is heard
He refuses to be suppressed by the
Roar of expensive war planes
Middle-aged men and women suffer meltdowns
On national television
Froth billows at their hard-lined mouths
Convulsive paroxysms of misplaced pride
A meadow is crimsoned
And villages are destroyed
The Himalayas shudder with the
Bright-burning, loud war birds flying amok
Chests are thumped loudly on both sides
Haphazard claims of victories made
A slow poison
Crawls its way into billions of hearts
Displacing hopes of a meaningful co-existence
How’d we get here — what happened to all those
Loving, affable people otherwise used to
Exchanging cringy Bollywood songs
And Meaningful Ghazals
I am tired of the
Barrage of misinformation
Blasts on my phone
My hairline keeps receding
And the world keeps going to shit
Every hour, every day.
__
Anant Dhavale
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