Our Angels

With every dawn, there comes news,

Of angels being destroyed.

The nightly battle of good against evil,

Of innocent freedom against arrogant dominance.

How night after night, beauty is slain,

By beasts drunk with pride and power.

Stories that make news, to other beasts,

That terrify with lights what darkness had traumatised,

Questions where simple comforting words will help.

Eyes on the victim, while the vile thrive in darkness,

Names in bold of the survivor, as the cowards survive boldly.

And all this under the cloud of dirt and sweat, uniformly woven.

The cloud that, through thunder that follows lighting,

Destroys through voice, whatever is left of our angels,

After beastly force has had its way.

Among the beasts and the clouds and lightning and thunder they live,

Our angels with their wings constantly clipped,

Grounded in humility and shackles of “feminine behaviour”

Stifled by the norms of moral police and regressive minds,

And yet it is, to these angels, we look to,

For knowledge, wealth and courage, denying them the same.

So the next time we walk in hordes, in antipathy to the powers that be,

Let us also kill the apathy within us.

Every time the angels of our grownup dreams are forced,

To give up their growing dreams, let us unite.

To give them the knowledge, to give them the courage,

To give them the wealth of their wings.

So they may fly, not just freely above us,

But also bravely among us.

Memories

What happens when one forgets to forget?

Does memory layer itself one over the other,

Like feathers in a bird’s plumage?

One lying over the other,

Gently crushing older, or memories less wanted.

The brightest feathers stay,

So do the most desolate ones.

The cerebral plumage is often a collage

Of feathers bright and grey.

One wonders, would every bird not want

To have a plumage, bright as the peacock’s.

Why then do those grey thoughts seep in,

Of losses incurred and humiliations encountered,

Of conversations had and words left unshared,

Of faces loved and lost, and lost forever.

Wrinkles visible, weeping voices,

Stories hidden in their rough creases.

Each step, a footprint, grabbing as the sands,

A nail here, a toe there, biting as frost.

And yet feathers layer on, more colour,

And more grey, here a festival, there a farewell.

And a day where festivals are farewelled,

And farewells celebrated as reunions.

With grey on grey, pressuring a plumage,

A nest of monochromatic memories well rested.

Grey ravens call, and dark do the nights fall,

A final flight, a final fight, in search of light,

Reality dawns dark on lonely vanity.

Aging peacocks, shorn of winged glory,

Wings clipped by the blades of memory,

Unforgiving in their sharpness,

In remembering to remember

And forgetting to forget.