Poetry 2014 Longlist, Debasish Mishra

SMELL OF BLOOD

Smell of blood...shrieks of pain,
The entire earth seems a graveyard;
The Supreme creatures are all insane,
Killing and dying for some paltry reward!

The greed to gobble a greater share,
The tantalizing lure of false vigour;
Have spread the violence everywhere
While the understanding lacks any rigour.

Somewhere the gory fights erupt
In the name of promoting religion
Though Gods everywhere have never talked
Or endorsed brutality and rebellion.

Somewhere the urge of fake glory
And the call of hysterical patriotism
Flares the flashes of burning fury
And refutes all tenets of humanism.

But fire has that strange force,
It will burn the world in entirety;
You,me and everyone,of course...
Till the last trickle of humanity!

Before we paint the World with red
And plan for another World war,
Why don't we sit and scratch our head
And realise what we really are!

Races and oceans may divide us
But there is that one uniting thing-
Beyond the flakes of fabricated fuss,
Each one of us is a human being!