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

Morning Symphonies

The Morning Symphony 1

On quiet mornings before the sun swallows darkness,

Up are the mynas, the koels, the pigeons and the babblers,

Singing songs of joyous greetings for the soundless riser,

The silence between the cacophony fills up the air

With expectation and hope, of sustenance and tomorrow.

I too rise with bright eager eyes and thoughtless prayer,

And He rises, with me and in me, over the blue horizon

As we rise together in unison, the world ours to embrace,

In me, his light lives to survive the darkness of  nights;

Red blackness of emotions that turn green and grey.

He sets off a vibration that resonates and amplifies,

In cells and it's electrons, and all spaces in between,

Bells and chants and fragrances, lamps that light up,

In the silent quiet morning air silence settles in silence,

Stillness and animation in each reverberation.

The Morning Symphony 2

On quiet mornings before the sun swallows darkness,

Up are the mynas, the koels, the pigeons  and the babblers,

Singing songs of joyous greetings for the soundless riser,

The silence between the cacophony fills up the air

With expectation and hope, of sustenance and tomorrow.

Blaring microphones of the church, temple and mosque,

Shatter the quiet, scatter the birds drowning their greetings,

In the cacophony of praises, pledges and pleadings, 

A reminder of sins and of hopes and desires unfulfilled,

A reminder to renew your password to the heavens.

It sets off a vibration that resonates and amplifies,

In cells and it's electrons, and all spaces in between,

Bells and chants and fragrances, lamps that light up,

In the noisy edgy morning air, unsettling anxiety pinches

Every nerve-ending animated with the reverberation.

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