DARK DOWRY
Disappear
The imperfections of mortality
Your soft sensuality
neglected, resurrected
Who was there
To help you arrange
Your dark dowry
Sleeping on the mantle's wing
Awaiting your return
The debutante ball
So dark
Day will never enter
Dreams will never leave
I bought you
Three bottles of dowry
The Barman is my witness
Then you staggered away
Leaving me on bended knee
You called out Mama and fled
Clutching on the chronicles
On a Sunday midnight
when we roam
What brought you to the bar
I bought you three!
bedecked golden bride
golden goose for gruntled groom
golden noose or life
~25 Jun 2016~
A commentary on the odious practice of demanding dowry from the bride's side in an arranged marriage still prevalent, though outlawed by law, which is often the cause of great harassment leading to suicide, or even murder of brides. The present Law in India provides for immediate arrest of the groom and his immediate relatives on complaint from the bride. Any death of the girl within 7 years for any reason is considered a dowry death unless conclusively proved otherwise. Cultural and societal pressures (including extra-judicial "kangaroo courts" often prevent or hide dowry related incidents. It is either a life of servitude and submission or death in cases of Dowry Deaths.
The practice of Dowry is on the decline in present times, but indirect demands are often made.
Dreams are approaching my Love
following the stars to your heart,
beside your body I breathe and gaurd your lips
the sentinel of your stellar song, the heat along your lyrics
listening to your language of smooth beauty unfurling lunar fabrics
wasting all the wrong that reaches for your innocence,
demons dare not the sharp sheen of my devoted dagger,
death will not tresspass within the life of your love,
There is a sweet ancient spirit in you
born from the sun and salt of sorrow and seduction
a sad nobility that fights for fragile kisses, to uplift the underworld,
bring the drum beats of savage, hot lights into focus on the firmament
hush the stars that wait softly for sweating bodies of fire -
J.A.B.
Marriages are made in heaven,
but dowry has made it a business transaction,
Tears roll down from my eyes,
When i think about the burning brides,
Stop dowry,stop dowry...
Prayerful countenance, my soul's own veil
has aptitude in keeping mind's involve
to follow true poetic thought's portrayal
and hold in dowry's distribution ~ love!
A parasite, distrust, does muster fail
that groveling of lust from out its cove
does terminate resumption of faith's hail
to usury's assumption of truth's strove!
That music, consequence, denies sort's time
by its incessant mitigating's fine
thus grace unfaltering in its pensive rhyme
is Heaven's calling, echo's true of thine!
Significant react solves undermine
as nuance of regret is so assigned
to journal's keeping, studious as mine
aforethought's mention holding in consign!
I trail this vestige in consent's refine
insolvent, rough suggestion, veering crime ~
exacting, while saved virtue not define,
and calling names assumes its new combine!
Convention then so claims my lonesome pine
away from thy quiet peace, God's given sign,
and that small claim in thee to wholeness line
is in my poem . . . dowry's adept divine!
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