you don’t know their hidden lives
their motives
their pain their joy
you don’t know your father
your mother
your brother your sister
your neighbour
your husband your wife
your children
your friends
your enemies
even yourself
we are a world of strangers
and strangeness
and estrangement
and we are disoriented
and disconnected
and like balloons
we burst.
the wife grieving
over her dying husband
shot by terrorists
the man moving
breathing his last
and her narrating this
to a camera
moments later
it is devastating
it leaves you heartbroken
it leaves a nation heartbroken
this terrible tragic incident
these killings
and the war and the threat
of war anytime again
there is a lot happening
that is bombarding
the mind
struggling to hold on
to sanity
and the children
we don’t know
how this affects them
their tender spirits
the girl who carried
her father’s coffin
shouting Long Live Mother India
it shakes you up
and I wonder where all this
will end
how many more lives
how many more people
have to die
before it all comes
to an end
if it comes to an end
at all.
Thirsty for their fellow human blood
they go machete in hand
men and women and children
licking their lips
and then they chop down people
and eat their flesh and drink their blood
and they dance and roar full of evil
and you know now it’s a situation
of neighbour killing neighbour
and then parents killing children
children killing parents
husband killing wife and wife killing husband
so you start running until they catch you
and cut you down and you are dead
and they eat your eyes and whistle in devilry.
of my mind
remembering funny things
once I saw my neighbour
Panchamma slap Manikandan
her husband
and I remember him
looking at her in shock
he really looked comical
and I remember the day
my classmate Francis
in school took off his shirt
and started beating his chest
and singing and how we all
exploded in laughter
and how Shyam our monitor
quickly closed the class door
although he too couldn’t
keep himself from laughing
and now these little girls next door
talk and laugh and I melt in mirth
in their ringing voices.
Dominic Alapat 