Vote as you travel

You should see how my country travels
The non-AC kinds
No one can say we are divided
Squished we go
Perspired we come
All children are ours
All women deserve a seat
Wish we voted
The way we travel
Together in pain
Making space
Tolerating dirt heat and cold
Determined to get somewhere
Safely together
Hopefully in style
Defending our retiring disposition
Yet always interested
in each other
at least
For the duration of this ride.

Empty Vessel

Love an empty vessel
Watch it shrink
To the size of grain
quickly formless.
Love a hungry man
See them eat
The meat of your labour
And run,
At the sight of your bones.

God of Small Things

Last night on Delhi roads,
A pristine white horse lay overrolled
By a male-raging-war-waging 'fortuner'
Bloodied stark dead and cold,
Collectively our days unfold.
Indian misfortune has been fortified
With 'temple' walls of stollen gold,
Screaming blind with no control.
Sita awaits, unconsoled.
If your Ram is so profoundly true,
Liasioning heart's greater pursues,
Will they show up within you?
At night with no camera in view, when
Your institutions crumble askew
As did Ram's, and as mine do.
I will thank you for the lesson,
On what god is not and won't be.
Where shrines reside and you won't see.
I won't be anywhere,
I should be.
This may feel like an end,
but it won't be.
My gods are of small things,
You'll see.

Highly Classified

Perhaps we learned from ants,
To carry dead bodies home.
Skipping the lesson on Careful Apathy,
With which they ferry
A skinned lizard,
An undressed butterfly,
A baby bird,
And all the rest is the same
Of colour, glamour and size,
For the small grave diggers.
While we lay our bones
Highly Classified,
And figure not cry when it's not us,
In front of the gun.
Not until it's too late anyway,
And it's our turn to be ridden home,
At the hands of ants.