by Vinita Agrawal
Nothing can be more shatteringly painful and shocking for humanity than witnessing its young minds become victims of bullets fired with hate. Vinita Agrawal shares her shock through a poem on the theme ‘Mystery & Crime’.
I am the Laburnum tree by the school parapet
where bodies were butchered, lives were shred
Now I stammer when the sun shines its light
I reek of blood by the howl of the night
Yellow no more, I am blisters of red
Red leaves, red trunk, ghosts of red, red red
I grow no more – burnt I am by the crying winds
I shall stay this way for by hate I’m singed
My roots know not how to take from soil
Moisture poisoned with hatred’s toil
Weep I shall over bulleted walls
Like mothers who wept, cried and called
Tender names of their children brave
Now brokenly buried in three-foot long graves
The bullets – they made smithereens of hearts
Shattered whole lives into excruciating parts
I’m that Laburnum by the school parapet
where bodies were butchered, lives were shred
Vinita is a Mumbai-based, award winning writer and poet. Her poems have appeared in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Open Road Review, Everydaypoets.com, Mahmag World Literature, Miracle Magazine, Spark, The Brown Critique and Mandala among others. She was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 and awarded first prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2014, commendation prize in the All India Poetry Competition 2014 and the 2014 Hour of Writes Contest twice. Her debut collection – Words Not Spoken – published by Brown Critique/Sampark was released in November 2013. She was featured in the ten questions interview series on Fox Chase Review. She has a Masters in Political Science with a gold medal and is a full-time writer, working freelance.
Pic : http://www.flickr.com/photos/nadirtozenith/
