It’s Not A Wonderful World

I see love killed by families

Kindness corrupted in holy places

Compassion poisoned in hospitals

Knowledge disabled in schools

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world!

I see creativity sold to the highest bidder

Justice cruel inside courtrooms

Freedom censored from the textbooks

Peace gangraped inside parliament houses

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world!

I see happiness auctioned to war mongers

Courage panicking right on the stage

Anger equated with rebellion

Wisdom losing it all in rage

Violence glorified as heroism

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world!

I see nature deliberately being harmed

I see children burnt alive

People forced out of their homes

War replacing politics

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world!

Kashmir

She is selfishly as promiscuous

As she is passionate in love

Her nights are like secret affairs

That never stop before the dawn

It snows every time

When she breaks her heart into flakes

There are times when

She chooses a life of ascetic piousness

Covering every inch of her spotless body

Like clouds shroud the sky just before it rains

Oh! she loves rain

When it rains

She lies down on the soil naked

Letting her soul soar higher

Above every baser desires

Leaving her body to melt away into the earth

At times she cries whole night

For someone she knows would never return

She adores her bed

Like a garden she owns

She loves God like an old hermit

Passionate yet intensely composed

She maintains a strange detachment

Of a long-distance relationship with God

At times she becomes radically rebellious

Like a teenage girl who doesn’t understand

Why she can’t go on a trip like everyone else

She is full of contradictions

In fact she exists in paradox

These days I hear

She sings songs of home-coming

While she is losing her eyesight