Idealism is one glorious
iridescent flame-
a magnet to young blood
swathe in innocence. How
with our simplicity,
our winged resistance-
singed and burned. Died
until our ashes will mix
in the wick, obliterated
by mediocrity and irrelevance.
Our lives wasted and fading
to wisps of smoke-
in a country where poverty is
a usual sight. Everyday
like cockroaches,
we swarmed the sewers of society
and its livid pavement. Of placards-
waving vituperatives.
Flaunting invectives for a change
we vaguely understand. We
solicit publicity.
We paraded wearing black
signifying protest. While
those frigid walls, we painted red
in grafitti seeking sympathy-
disguising under the mask
by being a pro-masses. A peasant.
A proletariat. Civil
disobedience. We clasped
our fist imitating Che.
We lined up first against
tear gases and waterbombs,
provoking a phalanx
of uniformed men.
Maximum tolerance. How
dangerous, how close
we have trodden
by knowing so little.
We advertise poverty
as a face to a cause,
bannering struggle for
autonomy, sugar-coated
manifesto of national democracy.
A sovereign common rule. Blindly
we morph
into mouthpieces. And fronted
as cynical puppets,
high decibeled in echolalia-
against powers in the high places.
Contending reasons
constricted within the bounds
of our manufactured rhetoric
on utopia. We are
pre-conditioned
to see the world
as our oyster. We read
in our books a twisted history
of our beginnings. Taking
a stand by that rostrum
endlessly kvetching
the capitalists.
We became subservient,
as willing subjects to-
a coward. Who
shielded himself in
the backdrop of its
Nordic friends.
An ailing lion,
such an imperialist-
remotely controlling
his serfdom, extending
influence. Like a poison
to the minds of the horde
of pseudo intellectual-
moth as we are.
His Past Smells
Posted in Books, Current Affairs, Literature, Memoirs, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Relationships, Social Commentary, Society, tagged above, across, air, all, angel, armpit, ashame, bad, belong, broken, buses, buy, care, cars, childhood, churn, clothesline, complain, cough, cover, cranny, crowd, cruel, detergent, ditch, dreams, dry, dump, earth, else, emanate, empty, every bone, exhale, fart, feeling, fish, flag, flap, fly, fortune, garbage, gift, grease, grime, he, heaven, hill, hope, hopping, hours, images, innocence, life, line, linger, little, locomotion, long, memory, money, mound, mud, neighborhood, nook, nor, occasional, odor, One, past, pavement, perfume, pierce, poem, poetry, poison, poverty, promise, putrid, rag, rice, rise, sanitize, sauce, scavenged, scent, sewer, skin, slow, smear, smell, smog, sniff, someone, sour, squeeze, stale, steam, sting, stink, stomach, street, suds, sun inhale, survival, swarm, tatter, throb, today, trash, turn, urchin, walk, wet, whiff, yesterday on March 11, 2012| 4 Comments »
His past smells of a ditch
drying up its putrid stink
as stale as the street air.
It belongs to a smoggy neighborhood.
In the memory of tattered rags
flapping like flags on the clothesline.
As if dreams can be scavenged
out of the hilly mounds
of garbage, dumping its gifts
of someone else’s trash turning
into someone else’s fortune.
No one cared about armpits
getting wet and sour for hours,
as long as the bad odors
can promise him little money
to buy fish sauce for rice.
Sniffing heaven on earth-
little angel never complaining
about life, about the linger-
of those occasional whiffs
from the broken sewer.
Nor the rising sting of steam
emanating from his broken skin
pierced by the cruel sun.
Nor inhaling the dry cough of cars
and buses farted poison.
The way he exhaled yesterday
walking on a pavement slow,
feeling the throbbing locomotion
churn on his empty stomach.
A street urchin squeezing the crowd
like a fly hopping on a hope
above the grease and grime
that smeared a childhood.
He won’t cover the past
with today’s perfume
nor sanitize its images
in suds of detergent.
He’s not ashamed
of the scent of his past-
the smell of poverty
that swarmed his innocence
and have walked
the muddy line across
the nook and cranny
of his every bones.
He survived them all.
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