Nothing

The stars are like flowers

Emit light akin to fragrance

Though they may be dead

The dead speak to their kin

Through the ruins of time

Across vast distances

The distances do not matter

When the mind wants to know

If it came before or after

After or together or was there always

Always seems plausible for

Nothing cannot precede everything

Cordelia knows nothing can compare

What she feels for her father who has

To lose sceptre and crown to learn nothing.

Three alphabets

The nationalised bank greets clients

With a novel secular 'golu' of

Docile animals and meek humans

Whose days are as numbered

As the rest of us though we may

Find ourselves breathing longer

Than we would normally like to be,

The visually impaired are now offered

Magnifying lens to fill out their forms

Maybe even read the day's Hindi word

And go home and be inspired to learn

More such words the smart phone teaches,

Imagine learning a language under duress

Initiating a child into three alphabets.

Love in the sky

The air force planes rehearsing

For the coming parade, break

All civilian decibel limits,

Across  the sky copters draw the hearteen

Expressing their love for the nation

Finding new limits of the constitution,

One recalls the air raid sirens heard

In the clips from the West Asian wars

It wouldn't be fun to be at the receiving end

Of bombs, shells, missiles raining on us

Not to be a spectator sitting with a plate of cookies

But to be part of the chilling TV spectacles

Watching dream houses crashing, newborns

Blinded, maimed, killed, or worse orphaned

Would we cheer bombers heading out on missions

If we could see the targets as flesh and blood?