social justice poems

Mortgage bodies,
transport children to another
area for domestic work, pimping, begging and whoring.
This is how we bring a new dimension to the
education of child slaughter.

When nothing is understood
And people’s ways hold out great warnings
Rule of law as rule and law only reigns
When people find out how some of these were made
To perpetually suppress them into silence and vivid action
When they are sure that people who need think of them
Instead of doing things for their health and hearth
Do things that only prove that people can’t see
People can’t say and people can’t hear
As under hand and seal for terms
Into undoable centuries of pledge
They have for reason in mad euphoria
Committed themselves to embrace the path
Of the Rule Book where the only rule is
The rulers’ wishes clothed in promises
For unborn centuries of rosy hue and gold
Only an unborn eternity dons and knows
As deeds done in ways set best only to undo
Every hope that comes ever in mighty shapes
Making life a thing of dream looking not impossible
To be achieved to wipe a tear from every eye importing
Happiness in small and great doses till those who suffer
In some very confirmed sunny times fondly find or feel
They are not hounded and wounded and ever more in fear
To be hurt and to hide lest people should expose them
In their safety exercises in one clear concealed choice
To find when times turn ripe if they are different and able
As knowing, seeing and thinking gods and can with care
Shape with conviction and credible proof structures of support
That tell people their destinies are made of stuff that knows to last
And when necessary blast from within to offer a safety net to all
The forgotten, neglected and lost for long futures that when
Combined should make eternity of happy living a robust reality.

On a rushed Mumbai morning, December– 2015
— The sudden overnight chill caused by climate change–
The office goer notices an elderly couple on haunches
Eating hot street food with bare fingers, near the busy cart,
— The plastic spoons are not for the beggars anyway–
Their mouths working hungrily over the little snack
As if it were the last meal of the day.
He makes a detour, despite getting late
Pays for the extra two plates of poha and resumes
His walk to the nearest bus stand and
While looking back for a fleeting instant
Finds the Narayana smiling on each gaunt face.

More at http://www.drsunilsharma.in/.

What others think of
When we suffer woes
Inflicted on us by crooks
In nasty ways all foolishly woven
To distract discourses from sanity
In false and saner looking words
Bent only under designs
To beat sense into madness
That way to madness into sense
To turn would take centuries
Of law and lawyers and courts
That know that Truth is what looks
To be true no matter how proper Truth
In knowledge supreme in complicity of all
Bent to dig up and bury in truth to erect
In its place what may be visible to eyes
Where nothing despite the truth of things
Would be unbelievable because acceptance
In the world matters like nothing else
Truth in all its purity of form and semblance
Not excepted.

In utter disgust still cursing
The times wretched for neglect
These people in anguish cried
For help from all quarters
Even calling adversaries to show
Kindness however little they could
In situations of human woes.

In great shame for humanity
In great misery they lie mired
In more neglect their times still passing
In more help from all they meet desiring
In more distress their lives go rolling
In every advance to kiss bitter retreats
In humility to dare the forces thus preparing.

What they want from us they know still
We never in good mood promise them any good
To calm their flames of anger of dishonoured rights
To make them in love laugh ringing bells of union great.

We are natives of a land that none of us owns. Yet this world offers
no place; none except the outskirts, where the abominations of our
kind are left undisturbed.

Privilege is as rare as desert rain. The pigment of our skin is darker
than fair. We are unlettered. We are voiceless. We have nothing but
bones and dust on our plates.

We are made obscure– mere footnotes and appendices. Our shapes and
faces not as inspiring to paint. We are unclean. We have addictions
and demons to conquer from within.

We are silenced for we see the world with nonconforming eyes. We take
the road less traveled; the unpopular choices, we make. We are
deviants, simply too different to embrace.

We: You and I. I am each one of you.

You are outcasts in this realm but not in mine. No one speaks of your
death but your lives, honoured in every word I write. Your home is
this soul, our existence, intertwined.

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