Ananya S. Guha- A poem

I Dissent

decently I speak to people

who nave no clue about it

but throw tantrums at every 

ghost they meet. their delinquent imagination

stalks haunted geese and wild animals

as they do their sojourns in jungles of cities. 

they take a book or two and read in coffee houses 

and restaurants. debate on the latest situation in the country

not forgetting to gag history in armpits or inflated chests. 

this is a dialogue of the self, not a diatribe.

the folks I am talking about have become skeletons 

impoverished by hunger, yet out to attain Nirvana

which may be elusive, but they see it not as mirage

but a collage of reality. thus speak many worlds

in my world of writers, poets, free thinkers, rotten thinkers

good men and women- motley crowd  of disdain, love and money.

but all intellectuals, where their brain teasers hover mainly 

around the populated world of the internet.

am I going insane? a trifle maybe, since insanity 

is contagious, simply to shrug it off will not do. 

now the latest gaff is to read aloud your poetry 

in public gatherings and pretend how insane you are.

read social consciousness and dissent.

I dissent with the filth around me

I dissent with the sky  scrapers I witness

even as at it's foothold you watch rags of clothes with 

a body secretly  holding it. 

I dissent at the decibel of noises pretending to hold

the conscience of a country where the money makers are teasing 

people with cricket and games of cards. the king and the queen tucked 

away in their palaces, weaning the rich.

I dissent, when over the hullabaloo of floods, drought 

people remain like statues with water flowing silently under

bridges of euphoria.