This Mother's Day

A glossy print ad seduced

 The Kumars in Delhi very much:
Cooking range slim and smart

Comes free with mixer/grinder/juicer

Buy as a lovely gift for your dear Mother

On this Mother’s Day and please

Brighten her drab life up;

They literally got hooked

And went down to the gleaming showroom

 And bought

The advertised wares with glee,

And said, Mama dear, here is your

Costly gift from all of us, your son’s big family,

They clapped and clicked, while thin widow beamed,

And thus cleverly enslaved Mother

An old rheumatic woman,

 To the small smelly kitchen

For the remaining of her sad lonely life.

Bring your words

Bring your empty words

I will re-charge them again

And make them potent;

The hollow words---

Bring them to me and

I will make them sing,

In the summer afternoon

On the glistening lips of

The workers in sweat

Working on construction sites;

Bring your faded words

I will make them shine in the forge

Of blacksmith whose sinewy hands

Will form them into forms that appeal;

Bring your sad words,

I will make them smile

On the faces of war-orphans

Street children

And cancer patients,

Because when sterile words

Of poetry come into contact

With unsaid suffering of the

Larger silent humanity,

They become fiery,

Gleam,

Mesmerize and

Truly become

The sweat-soaked words and entire syntax

Great transcendental poems!

Difference

Lady walks

Under a red

Parasol,

Rouged,

Aviators on,

Left hand carrying

The Vuitton clutch

To the mall,

Male gaze following

Her delicate steps

And anorexic figure,

To her secret delight;

Woman works

Bare-headed,

On a construction-site,

Carrying head-loads of gravel

Non-stop,

Covered in dust

Thin and dark,

Scorched further

By the sun,

Hardly seen by anyone.