They Heard The Unheard Cries Of Laughter

There walked the pigeon

On the edge of a wet precarious terrace:

Looked left and right,

And flew away.

They built Red Grilles to constrain spirits—

Crimson-red flowers

From the interns of a sun-baked hovel

Were being taken to graveyards.

Dubious ceremonies of confused happiness—

Scatter a pinch of salt over this

Ocean of falsity,

And drown with the crowd.

They are ignorant.

They are heartless.

They are false.

I dreamt of a giant last night—

He was distilling waste water

Into the ocean—

And thousand fishermen with

Scattered boats

Were keeping their rods bent.

Listen to the cheer of the crowd

And watch smiles staring at you;

Don’t go deep in your thoughts

Or the giant might invade your dreams!

An empty bottle in an empty classroom,

Rolling and rolling—

No water, no colour—

But still rolling.

Sounds of hundred feet beyond

The Barbed Wires—

Soldiers marching?

But where to?

Beyond the wires

There was but something else to be seen:

A ‘battalion’ of ragamuffins

Dirtying the street—

Spreading foul stench that irked

A school-going child.

There are ways to look at the world—

Fake faces storming households, or

Real faces loving each other—

What we see is but our own vision—

And as they had said they ‘flock together’.

They beheld the great ocean—

Some rich eyes went till the farthest

Fisherman—

Some wooden eyes went till the cruel shark

Beneath;

While the rest looked straight up—

Didn’t know if the ocean was blue.

You were mistaken—

You saw

Shameless laughter, Inebriated teetotalers;

Flasks of water waiting to be distilled

And hundred emotionless sights.

And you were awestruck.

You were enticed by the beautiful cloak of

Relation.

The cry of laughter—

When your rib-cage was waiting

To be ruptured,

Nothing much happened.

You laughed to cry—

You just laughed to cry.