The pound of flesh

The Israelis drop bombs on Palestinians and the Palestinians return the favour.Americans did the same after 9/11 and did a lot more after that.Everywhere that feeling of revenge is utmost on everybody’s minds.This poem is inspired by that very emotion in war…

Retribution

You kill my man today.

I’ll kill yours tomorrow.

In these wars of retaliation and retribution.

How long before we lose count whose turn it is?

I have killed many in my lifetime,

So i know there is more than one kind of death.

The more I kill the more dead I feel.

Yet I obtain no sense of closure.

The enemy’s death is a momentary escape.

It couldn’t make a better person out of me.

But how strange that i didn’t realise the futility of it all.

Till I pulled the trigger!!

My enemy is somebody’s son, husband or father.

How so similar to me.

It just remains a matter of reference.

As to who is on the wrong side of humanity.

I sin and sin again and every time

I do it knowing that I have and am.

I remember so much that I have done.

Yet I have learned nothing at all.

The long gone memories keep notice.

All the bloody wars that we seldom forget.

The skies that are a darker colour of blood.

Our lifetimes fall short to wash them away.

24th July,2010        

                              Raghuraj S. Hegde