The Little poem was scared…..
All the long and famous poems were buried
There were bombs and missiles flying around
It was dark and it was cold…

There were flashes
during which the poem read itself.
It was little, small, naive..
there was no depth in it..
it thought…

It was not the only little poem..
there were others like it..
They played by sliding on every pen
they even played hide and seek behind books
they even dreamt of growing up..
to be long and famous and powerful one day..

They are all gone now..
bombed, shattered and buried
fragmented words and letters
littered all over the pages..

their stains will never be washed away…
they are the stains of genocide..
masquerading as war and conflict
where is the poetic justice…
that useless poetic license…
the poet’s freedom to write…..

why do they do it…
the little poem pulled its title up
to see if it could read…
read something other than itself
there was nothing left.

Some were written in black ink
some in blue ink… some in blue and black
They are all gone….
and now all it could see was red..
red ink all over…
shattered lines.. severed words… orphaned letters

The little poem folded itself
and started tearing up
one letter after another..
it pained.. but it continued to tear itself..
each letter dropped on the floor
powerful than the bombs
precise than the missiles
one by one… it fell….
P…………
E…………
A…………
C………..
E………..
P…E…A….C…E

-Vinod-