On The Edge

Photo credit: http://esciencecommons.blogspot.in/2014/10/top-10-reasons-to-learn-to-make-stone.html

The heart bleeds in agony

As the news breaks on the screen,

Another lynching in another town

Another grave filled with politics

Another nail in the coffin of harmony.

On the worktable, a black granite block

Chipped and chiselled into God Almighty,

Unfolds beholds, a perfect human creation

Standing there amidst designed destruction,

Debris of a beautiful-whole lay all around

Will-less to be the whole ever again.

And one stands out as if by providence, 

In that vast debris is one sharp stone

With a razors edge that will sharpen perfectly,

Just right to be grasped in the hand of the one,

Whose heart overflows with sorrow of the lynching.

Who’s God Almighty better than who’s,

Which hand does HIS work to HIS satisfaction,

The hand that lynches? Chisels? Or Which sharpens?

For sure, it a hand that held a microphone

To spew out words of communal trite!

Like little mushrooms on a dead tree trunk

That need just a splatter of the first monsoon rain.

Hearts and hands burgeon in millions to answer

Those faceless faces in the ocean of emotions

Whose voices sound shrill  bugle calls of hate.

Speak up! 

You and I!

 Speak up!

Or all roads lead to the hell round the corner

A Hell of our making in which we'll broil alive,

In cultures that suffocate, and traditions that smother

Burning our innards with the fascism we inhale.

Speak up! 

You and I ! 

Speak up!

October 2015
© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved