Don't go alone to the streets
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(by Sreekumar K)
Maybe we are dead
Dead and gone
Buried, inherited
Cremated at night
Ashes
floating on water
Certified to be deleted
From Twitter, Instagram, FB
No way we can go to the neighbour and ask
Am I dead or what?
No way to get someone to pinch us
Am I dreaming or what?
Transparent crowds in the streets
Have eaten the rest of my family
Now they eat our plants and the compound wall
The Big Banyan tree in the city centre is gone
The corporation had sold it as firewood
The man who bought it is in tears
To see his money vanish like that
The river is dry, no fish, no boats
The corporation was planning to dam it
The company which bribed the Mayor
To get the contract
Couldn't move the court
So, they murdered the Mayor
On a smoggy morning
When he went for a walk
With his German wife
And his Austrian dog
They cooked his wife
Made dog biriyani
There hasn't been a sun
Let alone a sunset or a sunrise
For twelve hours regularly
The clouds turn a sickly white
We call it day, the other is night
Factories had been closed down
Long before they were burned down
Their owners were murdered
In pale daylight
Their homes and banks,
Looted by the work force
This is really the good news
The bad news is about ventilators
About children, women and the aged
Who are not at home, at home
Parents only miss their hobbies at the office
So, they read newspapers instead
They had their long nose vaccinated
It is the nose the crowds go for, they say
There is an invisible crowd out there
And we don’t know if we are dead
There is an invisible crowd out there
And we don’t know which way to run
There is an invisible crowd everywhere
