I hold onto the ledge of
sanity by the edges of my fingernails
polishing a tune that i heard
long ago on radio Kashmir,
sandwiched between propaganda
and farmer's show, where they taught
how to sow blood in fields of saffron
to reap a harvest of dead bodies
mutilated with joy and skinned alive
by bayonet edges and threshed by
a machine made of army boots
I hold onto the ledge of
sanity by edge of my fingernails
playing an imaginary santoor,
made by the last santoor master
of Srinagar, its wires made of
Human tendons and its small
wooden hammers, bones of young poetess
its fickle frame crushed bone of
orphaned children trafficked from
mortared houses into army camps
disguised as play grounds
I hold onto the ledge of
sanity by edges of my finger nails
dreaming about refuge in the asylum
of ugly emperors and handsome beggars
hiding behind masks of iron, smelted
by gunpowder made behind the mosque
made of stone, where the pulpit never
roared and no men ever bowed
eyes ripped out by the majnun
driven to despair when night refused
to dull his pain
I hold onto the ledge of sanity
by edges of my fingernails
Comments