Now that routine is tiptoeing
Back to the four walls
That there is a shift in focus
Let me scratch the scab
Until it bleeds afresh
For this is a wound
That won’t be allowed to heal
Recoil your tongues of hatred
And hide it under your armpits
Your words fail to justify ‘loss’
They only smell of the pungent rot
Carried in the livers overflowing with free whiskey
And someone else’s hand burns
The clenched fist today is an omen
Of the fight that has started
In spaces that have made home in our bones
This soil has tasted us many a times before
It rests on the greed that you planted
Freedom that you buried under the plush seats
Strung from the skulls of hunger
That never understood
The right, left or the centre of it
While you demarked us as casualties
Sacrificed for a cause only to keep your mouths full
Load your revolvers with our blood
While we spill you back with words of truth
Bare as the rising sun
You are a mere coward
Faceless as the night
While we are the shifting names that change to resist
Dabholkar, Kalburgi, Pansare, Gauri
The trail of fire is lit
Aim and Shoot
You will chew the bullets you have used
To rip the sense of freedom of this land
The unrest that you unleashed
Will now consume you in full
Poornima Laxmeshwar resides in the garden city Bangalore and works as a content writer for a living.
