Protest, Words!

by Sunil Sharma

Time

words shed their obesity
passivity
baldness!

These must become:
weapons forged in fires.

Lexical units, not disjointed
disconnected
but
with talons and claws
to tear
the collective apathy

unveil bleak reality
of corporatized worlds
in
dew-fresh
syntax.

The poet must howl again
like Allen Ginsberg,

in an idiom that sears
and cleaves stony hearts!

They must rage against

the thin-hungry child working in a carpet factory
for ten-twelve hours,
sweaty and hungry
sad
in dark-dingy dungeons!

No new Dickens anywhere,
no challenging of social-conscience about
sweat shops in the third-world countries…elsewhere.

Again -

when the wordsmith finds
the girl-child being denied

the angry poet should use words
with sharp edges

to fight
practices that turn men into monsters

and rape, kill and pillage!

The words should hurt,

where it pains the most,
arouse the vestigial morality
buried in layers of urban aloofness;

expose the abuse of a widow, a mother,
a sister or daughter,

the beatings of a poor silent wife
sobbing at midnight,
while her drunk master snores.

The words are jaded.
A complete disconnect
between fact and expression.

Charge them!
Like the cell phone!

Look Back in Anger, again!