Contemporary Literary Review India | Print ISSN 2250-3366 | Online ISSN 2394-6075 | Impact Factor 8.1458 | Vol. 10, No. 1: CLRI February 2023
Sonia Singh
Selves of the Concrete
The conqueror of our concrete jungle
Swings on the vines of skyscraperish gloom.
And reeks of rotten smiles and feigned perfumes,
Wears expensive cloth of human skin
And tries to talk like a dictionary.
Can you speak human?
Can you know what is human?
Have you evolved past that stage?
Don't run past me.
I shall not race with you.
And stop howling for the massacred garden
When the axe is with you.
Why are you trembling to see me?
It was you who searched for me.
I do not read your browsing history.
I read your dreams.
Dreams fighting sane ambitions,
Dreams lost in the hurry of the day.
Dreams that hide in the corners of a mature night,
Dreams of freedom and wayward ways,
Dreams woven by spells of imagination,
Dreams that can defeat rationality’s frown,
Dreams written on a yellow crumpled sheet,
Dreams you desire
But fear to meet.
Yes, I know you for I am you.
For you my view would perhaps be primitive
But it is true.
Here lie you.
While a crumbling skyscraper forms the headstone of your grave.
Let these bricks crumble.
Let the grave scream aloud.
And let my voice trace those pits in the spirit
That you fill out of skill.
Don't drop the sleeping pill inside their mouth.
For I speak
From those pits,
From those graves,
From those caves.
I speak not for the "Men" but for my human.
Your depths reach out to you.
Why school yourself to rule life?
Why swing and strife to fear the fall?
Why tie a watch around your neck?
Why swim on a boat made of cheque?
Why sell your brain to prove your brain?
Why aspire to be a leader?
Why be a slave?
Why be a cannibal?
Why eat your self?
Yet, you will die of hunger if you don’t.
Yet, I will die of hunger if you do.
Sometimes, hierarchical selfhood becomes lethal.
The concrete jungle makes the jungle inside scarier.
What to do,
When the bundle of selves on a lonely human's head
becomes drearier?
Rise and Fall
We all live…on a battlefield.
Tired soldiers stand on my sides.
Members of the same clan
Glare at each other since civilization began.
One is a wrinkled white haired soul.
One is a young spirit with new goals.
And as they turn their backs at each other,
I go and stand between them.
One screamed in my ears—
“Fidelity to the memories and stories of our forefathers,
Steadfastness of polished experience,
Do you desire to lose the reliability of a community?
Can you bear killing a legacy?”
Then the other squealed in my ears—
“To snatch my opportunity
Of creating legends,
Of building legacies,
Why inherit a community that can't pity
The desires of an individual soul?”
The old attacks to survive the new.
The new attacks to survive the old.
Then those who have lived in communities never felt more alienated.
And those who live in communities never felt more trapped.
Both weak, fire at each other.
Both meek, cry for each other.
Both try to seek
Their wishes from the other.
While trembling with the fear of one another's wishes.
And so we all live…on a battlefield
Wondering who shall yield
While soldiers stuff their ears
And place loudspeakers in front of their mouths.
The failure of one's beliefs is conviction's price.
Everybody is afraid of looking,
Lest the ground turns out to be thin ice.
So each generation shall wait a hundred years.
Today is not the day I am willing to encounter my vice.
The pulse of time beats through hundred hearts
Between the fissions and visions and transitions of generations.
Single era becomes multifaceted.
The day and night begins
From the movement of the same sun.
Perhaps human brain is too dunce
To read two truths at once.
And the soldiers shall remain
Until you and I have played both.