My Land Of The Living Dead.

With the suddenness of a dark winter night’s curse

It came upon us

Not in stealth

This fiercely burning winds of death

A ferocious gust of air

In sweet September came

A charging hurricane

Like an injured warrior

Bent on destruction

To all of us, both rich and poor

It came to my hidden part of town

Leaving death and destruction in its wake

It tore at lives without fear or pity

Those whistling winds, the roaring rush of water

Rising and rising and rising

Till we watch our souls drown and float

The waiting and waiting and waiting

Until we were all drunk with water and fear

In our land of the living dead.

I see myself

With disbelieving eyes

Watching as it engulfs me

Caught in a nightmare

Yet wide awake

As we are stripped of all hope, faith, and dignity.

We are all lost

Who is friend and who is foe?

Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters

Tied together by a tragedy so unreal

Children, so many children stripped of innocence

Filthy waters carrying us through once familiar streets

The looting and the raping and the dying and the living

All juxtaposed in this cursed land of the living dead.

I see death around me

And yet how can that be

For I am already dead, am I not?

I am dead with the crippling pain

This is the tragedy of a people, a nation’s shame

How suddenly a first world becomes poor

How suddenly givers now beg

This is a dream

I sit still.

I am enveloped by a blanket of sleep.

In the morning I shall yet arise

And bask in the rich glow of my beautiful city

I hold on to these comforting thoughts

But only for a while

For the stench of decaying corpses fill my nostrils

Who are these hungry, angry, pitiable faces?

Here, there, all around me, everywhere.

Are we refugees? Ha! Are we refugees in my homeland?

In our land of the living dead.

How it wearies my soul; but I’ll finish my story yet

I must share not just a part, but the whole of my heart

I must tell you now of little Jaya….

Jayamma! Jayamma!

With whom my journey started

But her tiny chubby fingers hold my hands no more

I did, I swear,

I held her tight

And then suddenly I held her no more….

Against whom should I take my fight?

I cried hoarse, gulping the brackish waters

And the storm did bring her to me

Only hopeless, cheerless, lifeless

A cherubic face now bloated

The questions, the anguish, the demons that play in my head

Did she scream? Did she put up a fight?

Did she go gently to the dark light?

I have questions and no answers.

Yet, this one thing I know for sure:

I am a lost dead soul

Wandering still

A shell in an empty drum

Unfit to be.

In the aftermath of the outside storm

Another will forever rage within

Drowning me, engulfing me,

In my land of the living dead.