Bribery
- Shub Atpug
Money changes hands,
The flagellum of vice,
The liaison for a jaunt,
A jejune,
Advancing,
With paper,
Bearing denominations,
Worthier than its worth,
In giga-tonnes of purpose,
A greasy clumsiness,
In connivance of,
The giver, the taker,
A diabolical throttle,
Spinning, whistling,
Intermittently, yet,
Ubiquitous,
Treacherous, betraying,
A conscientious blasphemy,
A Jihad to reach,
The pinnacle of the ‘red-hand’,
And the lowest ebb of,
A monetary debauchery,
An incongruous filth,
Incommensurable,
A misplaced priority,
With ignominious terms,
A flagitious rape,
Of the conscience,
A raging conscience,
That's lost,
Corroded, eroded, given up,
Upswings, tidings,
That used to rise,
And show its head of piety,
But now no more,
Rather, which thrives,
In abject blandishment,
Of a deathly chasm,
Intent, to rake in,
Chew, spit, spurt,
The conscience,
And make sure,
Its lost forever,
In the debris.
Lost and Found
Sweta Srivastava Vikram
Lost and Found
Today a part of me dies
when I see Libyans
weep for their missing relatives
in a land where I found laughter.
Power and politics evict bees,
demolish homes with hands of protest.
The sand dunes that caressed my feet
witness shapes that don’t belong there.
How can a parent kill
knowing the dead child won’t come back?
The wind has changed direction,
camels are drowning in the water they store.
The journey looks lost,
I gasp at the time that’s gone by.
Eyes don’t keep written evidence,
seeing the revolving doors, memory suffers most.
Revolutionary Road
Sweta Srivastava Vikram
The news headline pounded Libya,
like a butcher batters meat until it loses form,
sensationalizing survival instincts,
broadcasting that normal citizens had become rebels.
How do you define normal
when the world around you is far from it? Losing
your mother, an eye, your home
isn’t normal. When normal changes form
would you still call it not normal even though
the standards have changed.
Echoes of promise.
