Ah! Maa,
You smell of carnations and overwork.
I bought pearls for the neck you strangle to bed,
Every night.
Smear Kohl wears off, from mourning cruel fate
I am enamored; with the hypnotic glow of your tired eyes.
You put lotion on your chapped lips, but they wither with the excessive lies you have overeaten for Thanksgiving.
Tonight, you must seal the wounds and call it Art.
Why is that you speak to me of possibilities,
While chiseling hope out, of the first page of your crimped Bible?
You dream of planting wild wisterias in your backyard-
While your limbs wilt, every morsel of you
Wither in the godforsaken neglect of the present.
Tonight, I invite you to my ruinous space- a bleak land where little children build civilizations out of quicksand.
Bring to me the cracked plate; with grease on your fingernails; from no appreciation of how tonight’s dinner
Was just the delight.
Your limbs unfold like a newborn with each word you utter
But you detest poems of joy, as you detest anything that makes you stutter.
Rue the day; history is changing dimensions,
I wager, they won’t talk about your bruised skin and fragmented fibers.
They’ll ooze the soul our of your tired lungs, you’ll gag and choke on the inevitable cruelty—
The cruelest collapse of mankind.
I wonder why your God taught you to love everybody
But yourself;
As they feast on the blood, you bleed for them
Oh! Will your motherly misery ever end?
Yet do I marvel,
How you’re the soldier’s sweat in the battlefield,
The beauty of the freshly cut grass after a year-long revolution.
Wiping the wounds off mankind’s heart
You called the world a museum of art.
And here I try to tell the story of your survival to the crowd.
Of you, who pawned your dreams, only to live the dream of being a mother.
Thus, I write a homage to the home that you are; just as helpless, just as empty;
Still hoping that the sordid world would return your love.
Read more such poems here.
