Freedom Is a Bitter Fruit
This prison is all I yearn to escape,
I wish to be free!
I long to sing the song on my mind,
I long to taste liberty!
We were taught of our freedom when we knew not to question,
When they knew that questions would frame the grandest confusion,
Whose root was but one simple fact,
Our freedom was but an exhibitory pact!
You may point at those rivers of blood,
Mountains of bones interred into heaps of mud;
That had been sacrificed by those who held their head high!
But you weren't there in the ditches and alleys where they went to die!
You think you can buy your freedom or exchange it for pride?
You think you can hold a flag and in its shadow hide?
Hide that child of 12 years who had woken up to a day,
A day when she was supposed to celebrate her freedom, not get slayed.
You stand up when you hear the song being played and call yourself
A proud citizen of the Mother and back into your chair you delve,
You proceed to scroll down and 'love' at every mention of the Flag;
Yet you fail to spare a change for the homeless kid tugging at your bag!
You say you're proud of your motherland, you praise her every dot;
Yet you seem to forget about her dark, unimaginable clot.
Denial is a word which wages a war against itself,
The number keeps roaming in my head;
Twelve, twelve, twelve!
If everything you see happens to be an error on behalf the 'them';
Then why don't you hold 'their' hand and pull them up and tug onto their hem?
All because you were taught that he and you,
Were not different, lest you found out that you were, in the end, the very same...
Copyright © Rishabh Pal | Year Posted 2017
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