The After Effect
Sandeep Kumar Mishra
Why is it necessary?
A row of lights when we are supposed to sleep,
Colorful Neon fantasies when we are to dream,
Intoxicants slow our breath
When we should be panting with labor;
Why are there two personalities?
When we have our shadows;
Yes, they call it progress or may be
It is another name for self-destruction,
We intentionally suspend ourselves
Between the seas and the skies
When we have the earth beneath our feet;
Why, on the trees of thesis,
Grow the fruits of antithesis
While there is rich land of synthesis
As we stand among the crowd to
Feel the weight of empty space;
Perhaps we want to hear the whispers
Of stars and planets
But with dead ear to human voice,
Each face is filled with its own far away death
And all traveling with the pack of lies,
Why we not start everything with love?
Always conjoining unlovely things;
We count billion but
To consecrate the hour alone,
Why our consciences strive to be true?
Is it sensible emptiness?
We long to drink the pure mirage,
There is obscurity all around,
Every heart is dipped in dark India ink,
The sky nurses on black milk,
The earth trembles with its own movement,
Passing day by day are chances, beauty, and youth
With its burden of fear and hope of labor and play,
A poet is also part of this dilemma,
If a poem becomes an enigma,
If a poem does not offer a solution,
Don't read or look at it;
Otherwise, it will affect you like an after effect
Of a wrongly prescribed medicine