The Advent of a New Monsoon
The language of our confrontation,
Well, there is another million sleeping with dreams
Of footing with us tomorrow,
When the autumn will set in place,
The thick patches of our blood will be
Covered under the yellow leaves!
You have fired so many shots;
We are still not pulled,
Your tanks have rolled upon a lot of us;
They are further on the move,
Our hope will push us towards
These giants of metal without “emotions and faith”
With the pronouncement of blood for liberty as our jingle!
Let my land soak all our blood
Make it lush for realization of a dream,
Oh no! The Reality of tomorrow I connote,
This is the dream of our past
When the autumn transcends into the frost,
Of the laborers, this time the snow will preserve
The patches of our blood, keeps the spirits of our
Farmers and clerks alive!
An evil bullet has targeted the retina,
Of our another combatant,
Whose vision gets brighter and takes us
Miles frontward towards the next summer,
A summer of lakes, gardens, flowers and exquisite evenings,
A Summer of identical body perspiration and equal rewards,
A summer of Justice, no more for the few
A summer of my dreams
Before he falls down to another shot in his belly,
Passes on the batons of defiance to her!
She marches forward with baton
Like the women of tomorrow and Rosa of the past,
In desperation of a coming defeat,
The noise from their tanks and the roar
Of their air jets are thunderous now,
Though we walk determined
Towards our monsoon,
While they keep us silencing,
With their bullets and drones,
Another millions of us who were
Asleep in dreams of footing have roused,
To the call of the final monsoon of liberation,
Liberation of the farmers
Liberation of the workers
Liberation of you and me
Before the patches of our blood on the land
Gets washed away in the rain,
Making the soil fertile
For our farmers to
Sow the seeds of a crop for all!
I see Fascism Coming
I see Fascism coming
In the pool of blood of fetus
From the womb of their mothers
Shedding on to the streets
I see vagina’s screaming in horror against the barbarity of saffron trishuls
Breasts suckling red blood
even before babies could be fed
Yes from a distance close enough I see fascism coming
This time not from Weimars Germany
but from Gandhi’s Gujarat
Soil has no static culture
I turn sides in my bed
Reading the history of past
connecting Gujarat to Germany
Muslims to Jews
Who calls them enemy?
The chain of historical fascism unites them together
Surrounded by the countless others.
Yes I see fascism coming and knocking our door steps
Images of Qutubbin Ansari and Annie Frank
their many sisters and brothers, dampen my eyes
I wipe out the tears with a handkerchief of spirits and passion
Yet fascism looks to be tomorrow’s reality
and the piece of cloth stained in red imitate the fascism I look at through my eyes.
I see the skyscrapers buildings in Ahmadabad from the windows of my room,
And not miles away from there,
the deserted farmlands with a plant of Nano on it,
the miseries of farmers ,who grew their crops on it once
and their malnourished children, do not escape my sight
I see fascism in those skyscrapers buildings with paints of fancy colors
Hiding the cracks on its walls.
Yes, I see the fascists coming
Before I sleep into a dream
harboring a new crop for the fields where industries stand now.
The Journey around the Clock
Unwinding the cells above the blinking eyes
Boarding a ferry hooked at the corner of time
Preparing to float around the hands of c lock
Spreading over a decade and more
There are infinite harbors engrossed in the oblivion’s of time
Some violently lonely and others full of noise
The shadows are still reflecting a thousand objects
Who were left by with time
Each one of them leaving a mirror
Forming a distinguished image
Some similar, others very differentiable
Some prized some unworthy
All these tightly clutched into knots
Forming one self
As the ferry floats on the surface of time
Balancing the weight of melancholy and joy
Again of the hush and sounds
The cries and laughter’s
Of the deep and shallow
Of the frost and dry
It passes by the terrains of sufferings
With the script on its rocks
Protected by the legacy of tears
And the thin forests of contentment
With bright leaves glimmering in yellowness
Absorbing all the beautiful images
Of the old lady and the young girl with snow on her face
It ignores all the calls of the time and refuses to move in compliment
Slows down at the deepest stream of past
Unbalancing itself against the ills of future
Prepares to get drowned at the deepest point
Encompassing with it all the images formed
Some in the heart some in the mind
Some with elation some with soreness
Tear mixes with the water up surging the ferry
And the smile loses its relevance in the same formation
As its sinks deeper and deeper
The sound of crackling comes off the mirrors
With it fades all the images
Barring the one in search of which
The eyes were blinked and the cells uncoiled
This will find its place at a corner beneath the water
Till the time this river dries
And loses itself in a dark oblivion.
Death Stalks On The Wall Of My Room
Bierut is burning inside the bulb in my room
Children of Gaza shot right in front of me
Grotesque posters of those killed in Afghanistan.
Blood on the walls of my room.
On my wall
In my room.
Can you see the dead Blacks lying on my floor?
I must wear my spectacles to see
So I pick mine
Only to see the world burning in my room,
The smoke choking my throat
I have become schizophrenic , I think
Perhaps, that’s why, I cant see the dead in Paris
In Lebanon, in Baghdad, in Gaza
In Syria, in Afghanistan.
The world would christen this as my Schizophrenic imagination
They will take me to a doctor, tell me that everything around me is fine !
But I know, like you know, it’s not just Paris that is burning
The world is burning.
Like you and I.
About the Poet
Asad Ashraf, a full time journalist with Tehelka Magazine. Having studied conflict resolution, his interest lies in International and national politics. He is also working on his memoir of living in a Muslim Ghetto in Delhi for over a decade. His friends call him an occasional poet, Since he writes poems occasionally to shed away the burden of frustration he carries in his mind against the society in which we live. He would rather call himself an amateur poet. He derives his poetic inspirations from poet like Habib Jalib , Faiz Ahmed Faiz , Pablo Neruda, Agha Shahid Ali and other poets of resistance.
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