SANJUKTA DASGUPTA

RELIGION and POLITICS: A Dialogue

Religion:
Man-made scriptures
Are used and abused
All in the name of God
Goodness gracious God

Politics:
Religion is such an enabling tool
To tear and threaten
Rip and Rape
All in the name of God

Religion:
Making me user-friendly through the centuries
My hymns and mantras chanted and twisted
By such carnivores and cannibals
Heaven is now so hellish

Politics:
Without you I am immobilized
With you I can lie like truth
With you I can kill and shoot
With you I can be a ferocious predator
All who question or resist
Are pulverized as rogue regimes
All in your name My God
All in your name Dear Good Lord
You are truly my user-friendly trusting God

Religion:
My lips are sealed
My heart is riddled with bullets
Spears and arrows are lodged
In my heart of hearts
I bleed incessantly
Blood streams down
Into the good earth
The waves in the subterranean
Sea of blood, wave like hooded vipers
‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t endure anymore
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t let poisonous politics
Insult me anymore!’

January 27, 2018


Rain in Autumn

Like a spoilsport
The grey skies
Sprinkled water
A drop on a grass blade
Glistened like a sad tear drop
All on a sudden the
Streams of pouring rain
Seemed not to be rain at all
The skies were weeping
The Gods were grieving
Teardrops like raindrops
Poured from the sad skies
For we were no longer human
Our eyes were dry
We could not weep
We had forgotten to cry
Our eyes were dry
There were no teardrops
In our greedy, envious bloodshot eyes
Just hunger for blood drops
And the dropping dead
Of our own kin
Till the rain from the skies
Was transformed by the gods
Acid rain singed and scorched
And flooded out of the beautiful earth
The perverted, cruel and violent human race.

October 21, 2017