Our madmen… can crack open continents… like eggs

‘They had begun using ice-cream trucks to store bodies, bodies of children’

By Bharat Shekhar

TO  RETURN, ITEMS MUST BE IN THEIR ORIGINAL PACKING

Having run out of space in morgues,

they had begun using ice-cream trucks 

to store bodies,

bodies of children

their unidentified, unidentifiable, 

mangled remains

that just a few precious days before

had been the laughter of running feet

lining up to the vans to get their favourite flavour.

But it seems that there were

not enough sweet teeth among the kids,

or just too many deaths among them

in too few days 

for the morgues and ice-cream truck 

to accommodate between them. 

And wrapped in white sheets,

(tinged red on the parts

where life leaked out its last gurgle),

their bodies now line the corridors 

of hospitals

as they await burial, or another blast.

II

And still, yet anything but still

the wrath of Israel

wrapped in bombs

rains on and on- 

each screaming explosion

with its howling echo,

“Hit hate with hate with hate with hate…”

to bury under rubble, rebels

with crushed skull of babies,

and collaterally, permanently damaged 

retinas of old women

praying to a god 

they can no longer see,

and who cannot hear them

above the staccato stammer 

of sirens and rockets.

So He God sighs,

“Oh, kill them all.

Let me sort them out in Jannat.”

Then, as a post script,

he paraphrases

the motto of the famous retail shopping company,

“But remember,

to return them,

items

must be in their original packing.”

And that, they cannot be,

for how do you gather together

limbs scattered through the rubble

back to their original packing?

How do you put back brain fluid

that has already leaked out 

into the dust?

III

So they remain,

suspended

between

half-life limbo, and limbless death,

while ‘wise men’ in sharp suits 

debate heatedly over

resolutions 

on the amount of ‘humanitarian’ aid,

and pauses between pulverizing

the besieged.

again and again and again

in the name of a revengeful justice- 

not that of Hamurabi

that spoke merely for an ‘eye for an eye’

NO.

They already have taken 

three eyes for each ones they lost,

and they want more 

and more 

and yet more.

So parents

now write the names of their children

on their hands and legs,

or make them wear bracelets,

not as talismans,

but so that they can recognize

and bury them with dignity

in case  their bodies

are no longer in their original packing.

DISSOLVING THAT SANITY

Our madmen

no longer tilt at windmills.

No. They are the mills

with burning wings

of imprisoned butterflies

turning round and round

to make the winds catch fire.

Our madmen

can crack open continents

like eggs,

and imprison their own countries

by tying down borders barbed with hate.

They can drive a stake

through their own hearts

to exorcise from them

the impure blood of the other,

turn their eyes into searchlights

and surveillance cameras,

so that they can hunt down the ‘unfaithful’.

Ah, these madmen

can cast aside their own leg

because it wants to walk

in another direction.

They preside over

a mad melee of fingers

of hands at war with each other.

Dipping deep

into the well of hatred,

they turn the ‘Persian’ wheel

over and over again,

to irrigate the land with blood,

even as the earth cracks open

its intestines with hunger and famine,

even as greed grabs

everything else

that’s worth grabbing,

even as jackboots

perform the usual routine

that jackboots do

to stomp over rebellion

of hungry bellies.

II

But look, LOOK

the flower of love

crosses the boundaries of hate,

and the ass

carrying the bathtub of the madmen

is beginning to arch its back

as its belly feels the burn of hunger.

Soon it will tilt

them back into the dark abyss

from whence they emerged.

IV

That is the hope,

the true hope.

For it tells us

that our madmen are not mad.

If they were,

they would be far more sane.

No. Their utter insanity

lies in their unshakable faith

that they alone are sane.

And once we can shake that,

this sanity of the insane,

this insanity of the sane

shall indeed end.

The two poems above are a tribute to the living and dead of the Gaza Genocide. Especially, the children. And to hail the Oscar/Academy Award for the best international documentary film given to ‘No Other Land’. The film has been made in extremely adverse and difficult circumstances, by a joint ‘solidarity’ film crew of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers.

The film documents the brute violence, and demolitions of Palestinian homes, by Israeli settlers, backed by their army, in occupied West Bank. The film has won several awards, including at the Berlin Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Palestinian Basil Adra made the film with Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, along with Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal and Israeli filmmaker Rachel Szor.

Bharat Shekhar is a poet and writer based in Delhi. He has written two acclaimed books for children (and adults), Crocodile Teeth (Zen) and Talking Tales (Tulika). He has also authored: DK Indian Idols: Mohandas K Gandhi (Doris Kinderslay).