The mother of all wars

 

Fighting is gender-neutral

even war, even men-men war

is femaled

for men take wife to frontline

take mother and daughter,

and war visits as anxiety and wail

but this war was differently femaled

for it came with fighting women

with some among them

made to explode;

but in the uneasy fleeing

from tyrant shooting to kill

into the arms of considered foe

timeless tenderness

was a flower that burst

through war-rubble,

a flower

easily crushed,

easily ‘warred’. 

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Summary Execution

This is not post-war

these times of claim and allegation

of selectivity and double-speak

of world-is-flat

and humans flatter theories

and theorists

these are times of self-righteousness

these are war-times

without explosives

suicide-bombers or assassinations;

these times came before another time

of a nation under siege

a time thirty years long

of everyday anxiety,

but this was a moment

a representative capture

of a summary execution

the world will not recognize,

the execution of kindness

unthinkable of a war criminal

the execution of the Manual of Hope

an introduction to the Book of Tomorrow,

the quintessential api venuwen api freeze.

It’s written not in act nor reception

but in the face of the saved.

Indelible.   

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War criminality*

War is simple:

killing and getting killed

threat and negating threat

an exercise where life is a breath held back

sometimes never to be released,

a love story unfolding

under a terrible sky

on an exploding earth

lovers making out as best they can

under an umbrella of bullets

and debris

war is blind to the precious

baby’s breath

mother’s milk fragrance

horror at the gaping wound

even after you’ve seen ripped out limbs

war is not delicate nor delicacy

and war criminals are divested

of tenderness,

they don’t care

and no mother, 

whether war-torn, bruised or poor

will gift baby to brute.  

*inspired by the photograph of a Tamil woman who had fled LTTE-controlled areas handing over her new born baby to a solder in a truck (presumably before she got in herself), smiling all the while.

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