Nobody Lives Here - Free Verse Poem

You only release the tears when you realize,

That your mind did not make up these thoughts after all

The voices that used to comfort you and make you feel part of the parade

Leave you to be haunted by forlorn streets marked by debris instead of footprints

That would remind you that you were still alive, still here

But now you are only reminded by the rush of emotions 

The adrenaline that paced like the intruders that ripped your town

As if it was the rotting fruit of the street vendors, a cacophony of sounds

Of a raging hail of bullets beneath their merciless shadows

Didn’t even spare the skin, and kicked the bones

That once worked together to build this city’s heart 

They carved it apart with the single thing they were taught

That their laws would not consider anything in their paths 

Even the whimpers of a newborn babe

Because their nature was to only discard The Nature

That wanted to shield them from corruption till the grave

I wonder if they remember the sacrifice in the eyes of 

Mothers

Brought to be a mass slaughter of lambs, and their lullabies echo, grieves joy

I wonder when they will learn to speak the language of the tongue 

Instead of the quick-paced talk of the gun, not chosen to protect, but to destroy

Pushes us to the edge of borders

That have never been crossed except in the tales we’ve heard from our ancestors

I thought we could visit it sometime, feel for another destination

But we only plead for life, in desperation 

We don’t know how to swim, but I’d rather stain the sea with my blood, left forgotten

Instead of drenched across my land to cover the beauty 

Of my brothers and sisters engraved footprints 

And the shattered pieces of stone shaped with love, that framed our unity 

A unity that cannot be broken even with their weapons that warn us 

To segregate ourselves to be cleansed, like they’ve teared up humanity in their souls 

That is the only thing they have failed to have stole 

Failed to reduce my land to a memory, which now stands as a legacy 

In fact they have lost to their own

Their own power, their own city’s mud 

They claim to have won

But there will be no noises to cheer you on, no voices to call you Son 

To an oasis destroyed by their declared fears, built on feigned perfidious proclamation

Cowardly state your absolute words

“Nobody lives here” 

Written by Vidula Bharat Kumar