My ripped jeans

 NAPOWRIMO 21 Prompt 9 Radhakrishnan Krishnan 

My Ripped Jeans

My jeans are a statement that I’m a human not a cow

And can skip and jump much higher than it’s silly fence

Be they ripped or snipped or studded with silver and gems

They’re my choice of dress, not an undress as made out by you men 

I command Dreamliners across the world

Trans-Atlantic trans-Pacific and across the North Pole 

While your vision is stuck on a patch of frayed threads 

My vision transcends the skies, the stars and the moon

I’ve seen you balding old men staring through the necklines

At the ample cleavage of poor cleaning maids in saree 

As they mop your dirty floors and bear your dirty looks

All for a pittance of a salary 

Rather than mock decent ladies whatever they may wear

You better teach yourselves and your sons to revere 

As you would your mother and sister and daughter if you had one 

Which I know you’d try your best to kill in the womb

There are matters more important in this world to care about 

This country that needs to be saved from within and without 

Gentlemen if you’d be, give a thought to this 

The earth and environment that’s caught in a  crisis 

There’s more worries on this planet than a woman’s ripped jeans

©️Satbir Chadha-09-04-2021

Radhakrishnan Krishnan Ampat Koshy Reena Prasad

Autism awareness

 NAPOWRIMO 21. Prompt 8 Ampat Koshy

Autism Awareness

 PLEASE DON’T

Please don’t hug me so tight

I know you love me Ma, but

The banana I ate is poking in my chest Please don’t hug me yet

Don’t hug me right now

That’s not what I want

I want to eat that mango

Papa got in the morning

Along with milk and vegetables I can’t see where he kept it

Or I’d point it out to you Please don’t hug me right now

Don’t hug me at the school gate I’m bruised and hurt

So many times I fell

The kids laughed when I cried From them I want to hide

Rub me with your balm ma But not at the school gate

Everyone just hugs me

See what you have done to me

You hug me and squeeze me

And make me bleed between my legs I’m scared I’ll soon be dead

Like our dog when he cut his leg Still everyone just hugs me

Don’t hug me in my loose gown I want to dress up like a bride To wear glittering gowns bright And dance and dance all night

To music and drums and disco lights

I want to be free I want to fly

Don’t dress me again in this loose gown

Don’t hug me Ma that’s all you do 

Yet every time you understand

All that I cannot tell you

In silence you let your tears flow Come Ma let me hug you

Even as my tears flow

Mamma dearest let me hug you

©️Satbir Chadha

Illusion

 NAPOWRIMO 21 Prompt 7 Sunita Singh

Illusion

SPECTRUM

The child stood staring at the sky

Enthralled by the spectrum of colour

In the perfect arc.

Her eyes squinted as she counted

All the seven colours, separated, but mingled;

Lifting her hands, she spread them wide

Till they held the rainbow, from end to end.

What a delight! 

The moment was hers forever.

"Holi hai!" Called her friends,

And she came out smiling, and hugged them all;

Colouring them with love, 

Fun and mirth,

Peace,

Colouring them with music and song, 

And chants of the divine.

"I've caught the spectrum in my hands," she said,

"I need no colours from outside. 

It colours me from inside my soul,

Colours my thoughts,

Wishes and desires, 

Colours my life all the time.

And oft the colours move so fast, 

I stare and stare,

For, actually, ALL IS WHITE!

Satbir Chadha-07-0402021

When angels danced on their heads

 NAPOWRIMO 21 Prompt 6 Santosh Bakaya

When Angels Danced on their Heads

Demons clawed and guffawed

As strips of oozing flesh

Made heaps like spaghetti

Eyeballs full of clotted blood

Collected and played with

As in a game of marbles

Fingernails put in catapult strings

To hit the hovering scavengers

Vultures crows and eagles

To scare away the birds

Or do the birds scare the demons?

The dawn does, the dawn scares

Theirs is the night, dark and hollow

To grow fat and dance

Their special dance of horror

In all the devilish thunder

Demons and Devils brothers

Draw evil designs together

Here a single ray of light

Can herald a new dawn

Minimized to tiny dots

Erased to a wisp of smoke

Deleted by light

They stop to exist, they are no more

Light lights up land lake and lark

The world's aglow again

The world's full of hope

The light brings faith

The light brings love

The light brings peace

In the land and in the mind

Now demons and devils fear to tread

Now only angels dance on their heads

©Satbir Chadha

Ekphrastic Reena

 NAPOWRIMO 21 prompt 5 Reena Prasad pic

A moment a sculpture for an extinct race

Of children who read from books at a leisurely pace

The drone hovered overhead soundless like a silhouette 

The tourist guide with yellow earplugs 

His mouth trapped in a weird looking slug

Droned on about the sight below

His charges, curious little kids to show

“The sights you see are of an ancient city, 

We’ve made life size models of it all so you can see

How people long long ago used to live

The grey area you see was called a road or a street

On which everyone would travel just look

They travelled in vehicles that moved on wheels 

Small and big and some low some high with wheels two or four 

Or even eight ten or sixteen”

A gasp of wonder thundered through the drone 

“You mean to say people travelled on the ground? “

“Yes isn’t it amusing, they’d be crawling all day long

And there on the side is a market place

A ‘Mall’  they called it those days

And right below is a monument most precious 

Dedicated by this museum to the extraordinary race

A replica of ‘learning’ as it was for millenniums 

People you see read from books or parchments 

Words written or printed and gleaned by the eyes 

They began the learning at a very young age

And those who mastered learning mastered the globe

This then is the life size model built for visitors you see

Of the civilisation then as it used to be”

His charges little children of another future

Clicked their tongues, virtually, at the virtual speaker

And wondered how it could possibly be

To live in that pre-historic fantasy

Satbir Chadha-06-05-2021

The lazy music is still

 NAPOWRIMO 2021 prompt 4 

The Lazy Music Is Still

In the still of midnight

They sounded like notes from hell

The ghastly shrieks tearing the silence

Of the city fast asleep

They were cries of deep pain 

Maybe hunger but sounded like threats

Of a lion roaring to tear apart its prey

Amidst the sound of spattering raindrops

These cries ripped my soul

I’d heard her often before the stray brown cat

And poured her some milk

I did the same today, milk and some bread

For the sound of those ghastly shrieks I dread

Yet the screaming continued 

Now it sounded like two cats fighting

Now like a cat in terrible pain 

I finished with cursing and also praying

O Guruji relieve her please

Then painfully tossed in bed

Despite the unearthly strains

Till by dawn they’d become moans

Yes now she feebly moaned

Moaned to the passing night

Moaned into the quiet dawn

Till her voice was a silent wail

Reduced to a trembling whimper

Then the whisper of a lazy purr 

As the quiet sky became a shy red

And sleep finally began to overcome me

The beast was finally silent

The lazy music was still

A litter of four kittens opened their eyes to the world

Yes birth is a time to play the lazy music

Welcome to new life ne beginning

©️Satbir CHADHA-04-04-2021

Monster under the bed haibun

 03-04-2021 prompt Monster Under the Bed Haibun

Gauri Dixit

It is February and the afternoons are longer as I move my chair around the veranda every little while to soak my old bones in the warmth of the glorious sunshine that comes like sprinkled gold in the hills, after going through the near zero temperatures of corona quarantined chills of a severe Delhi winter, now I gaze into the woods, alternatively knitting,  and reading and sipping sweet tea. Ah me! 

The shade of the trees

Define

My place  in the sun

©️Satbir Chadha-03-04-2021