When education was restricted
They ran to religion
When solace was stripped away
They ran to martyrdom
Loved ones fell
Hated ones rose
As hearts sank
To the depths of the maelstrom
Fueled by the unholy trinity
Value, vindication, and violence

Bombs decimate Afghan villages
With the precision
Of a needle hitting a vein
And as casually
As a contractor putting a dollar in his pocket
The rubble of their town
Lost in a mist of dust
The rubble of their minds
Lost in a mist of vengeance

The rabid dog chases the subjugated raccoon
The raccoon discovers a sacred hole and hides in it
The predator attempts to encroach the void
The raccoon quivers in it's sanctuary shelter
Finding relief as the hound becomes stuck
And laughs as the infected beast starves to death
But ecstasy turns to terror
As the raccoon realizes it's only way out of this hole
Is being blocked by the gargantuan corpse
Terror turns to sorrow
As the raccoon starves to death
Alone
In the dark
It's holy land now hell
For once it had protected the raccoon from unbridled rabies
But since the hound's death
It's Cerberus size obstructs all progression
Holes become graves
And prey are left to pray
For someone to drop a bomb and clear a path

Running out of time is a big lie
And age, is nothing but a numeral

I was messing around with words,
For people once messed with my mind.
Words carve truth
And sometimes are part of foul play.
Sometimes words are used in games,
Sometimes words carry wisdom
In disguise.
And all in all, words are human
They are flawed and they are metaphors.

I had a question
Of all the questions I have.
I baked it into simple bricks
To build symbolic sculptures with it.
But what use is a question
If it in itself is indecipherable,
Answers need a structured path to unwind.
I was looking for an answer
But I wasn't expecting one.
I feel most questions
Are there
Because they have indeed
No answers after all.

These are our constructed truths,
I used to say
When he used to accuse me of lying.
I always have a dark, dark humor.
But I have the luck
To meet bright people too.

I believed there could only be truth,
In absence of which there is a lie.
But the world isn't black and white,
White itself is of several colors
That serves together.
So who was I to question
The ways of the world?

Words from different mouths
Different they sound,
And different answers they form.
A house of cards
We live in,
Too light to sustain,
And yet some remain for days.
A blow would end them
And yet we don't.
We could build a whole world of it
And someone might as well try.
We deal with a deck of cards he said.

There is this big flaw
You must have heard.
This rebellion of bumblebees
Who fought over physics to fly.
Are nature's laws that sustain us
A lie too?
We deal with an illusion they said.

One card by itself can be torn to bits,
But cards appear too strong
When they build a sturdy skeleton
On their own.
Which one is the illusion
    -the one card that acts weak
     Or those in a heap, strong?
On behalf of the bees flying,
Of people revived after death,
Or people who survived poison
Or saved by the devil,
I have to ask,
If everything is indeed an illusion?
What exactly are we dealing with?

Then he came with the most important question of all
For what shall
We do with the answers,
What good does a truth do?

I don't have enough answers
It seems only questions.
Maybe in them hides answers
But maybe it does not matter
                                                   After all.
What did you pick?

(Questions exist because
There are no answers
                                      Yet?)

I’m coming apart at the seams
No longer sprint like a deer
Except in occasional dreams
I struggle in my yoga class
Since getting titanium hips
The lotus and pigeon I pass
It’s so difficult to apply
Mascara to my lashes
I look in the mirror and sigh…
I can’t see without my glasses
But it’s difficult to ignore
Those itchy, mystery rashes
It’s over, now, wearing short skirts
Got to keep knobby knees hidden
While I try exercise in spurts
Joints in my ankles hips and knees
Are letting me down so fast
That climbing stairs is no breeze
I’m shrinking, less one inch this year
My hands crawling with blue veins
Spelling out, “THE END IS NEAR"