Yesterday your mother said,
They will give us onions and bread,
And you slept by her by the tracks.
Don’t try to wake her today, she’s dead,
Tomorrow, you’ll wake again in soot,
And your plight will they turn into a vote.
Prejudiced Gods got temples worth crores,
And saviors with pockets bursting in cash,
Our cracked feet and parched mouths were worthless,
Our mothers had no money to buy us coffins,
So they gave us funeral beds on trains,
And bread and blood on railway tracks.
Ignoble faces of authority wore masks of commiseration,
They walked past us and threw tens and twenties,
With masks on their face and Adidas on their feet.
They reaped our sweat and remitted peril,
And announced for us funds in worthless figures
When we needed a pyre, a coffin, a burial.
I am haunted by the raven returning home at dusk
And rats on squalid pavements by gutters,
Where we sleep and wake and my wife gives birth,
And my famished brother is relieved in death,
My mouth curls as it drips in foul foam and I laugh,
And I laugh till I’m free of this vile world.