When identities
With sharp piercing contours
Wound and injure
The ‘odd-men-out’
When free-speech or free- will
Is mother of all sins;
Don’t look at my words
They are either not words, or
Not mine anymore.
Words, thrown at you,
Pushed in your mouth,
For gains unknown to you
To pacify one, hurt another
Unnerve you.
When the ink gets mired
With the muck of
Class, creed and lame loyalty;
When your passions
Pure and sacred
Expressed in honest words
Get stalked and trolled
By a collective madness
The hearts go blasé, and bleed.
Before my words
Shrink, shrivel, and
Fall like dead pawns,
On the chessboard of
Hyperbolic Nationalism
Let me gather and wrap
These little babies
In cotton-wool,
Make them take a sabbatical
In the deep caverns of my mind,
Away from the
Cacophonous, puerile patriotism;
Or should I…
Scatter them around
To get singed,
Like the first rain drops,
In the burning sand;
Hoping… One day,
They’ll take roots, and
Give shade to those
Lost in the blind desert
Roaming rudderless.
**
Narinder Jit Kaur is a retired Associate Professor from Patiala,who taught English Literature for 31 Years in various Government Colleges of Punjab. A writer and a translator, she has five books of translations, from Punjabi to English, to her credit Including Voices In The Back Courtyard(Rupa & Co.) -An Anthology Of Short-Stories By Punjabi Women Writers. She writes articles, poems and short-stories in English, Punjabi and Hindi. You can read more from her on narinderjit.com