Death in the marketplace

December 31st, 1998 admin

Happy souls tried spreading cheer
as best as they could,
The business they knew was better than good.

The spirits were high
And so was the sun,
The crowd at the market place was finding life fun.

A shot rang out,
a voice was heard,
no one cared any more for a bird.

Blood gushed out
And on the pavement fell,
Whose face it was no one could tell.

A child began crying,
a body began to fall,
the crowd circled outward,
and became a staring wall.

Heavy was the sound of silence,
The child too stopped his cry,
Time passed as they watched in awe
the writhing body die.

Soft murmurs of dissent,
Louder began to grow,
“Why didn’t somebody call for help?”
was what everyone wanted to know.

They all moved on pretending
to have done all that could have been.
The change was fast from a crowded
to a deserted scene.

Soon they had all gone,
all except one.
A little boy was sitting tight,
waiting under the sun.

(Anil Krishna, 1998)

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To the point of no return

December 31st, 1998 admin

Time flies, they say, but you flew faster,
too many to beat before the disaster.
Things are too hard to explain, too easy to evade,
you’re gone before you came, only wishing you stayed.

You lost all you had in trying to beat
the few you hated,
the few you loved were slow,
but you couldn’t have waited.

As you higher,
in a frenzy fled,
forgot that with each step
you crushed someone’s head.

You relished no victory,
for you knew no defeat,
you stood so tall
that you forgot your feet.

You had too much to do,
too far to go,
too many people to be with,
too few to know.

You had too much to promise,
too much to dream,
till you knew you were going mad,
but had no time to scream.

Faster, faster, faster still you flew,
crossed every limit, every star you knew.
At last you knew you’d won the race,
but then it struck you that there was no one to face.

No one to see how much farther you leap,
no shoulder to rest your head on and weep,
no one to care if you laughed or cried,
no one to notice if you lived or died.

Anil Krishna
1998

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The most beautiful eyes

December 31st, 1998 admin

I saw her standing on the old overbridge,
The one that goes over the river of Ridge,
She stood there watching the sun go down,
I stood there watching her in that lovely town,
As the sun was to disappear and to go underground,
My heart leapt up as she was turning around,
Her hazel eyes were a sight to behold,
Her face was a picture worth framing in gold.
Her constant gaze made me look down and smile,
The larks returned to the rooster after a while.
I looked up at them and then at her again,
She was walking alomg the rails, in her hand a cane.
As she was tapping in the fading light,
Her cane looked pink, I knew it was white.
She vanished into the darkness and that left me,
And my memories of the most beautiful eyes
…that couldn’t see.

( This was written more as a song rather than a poem…
Anil Krishna, 1998)

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