When there is no tomorrow

So the prompt was to have a tagline as the title of the poem. I chose the FedEx tagline; I think the poem itself sounds a bit like Rudyard Kipling’s If. What do you think?

When there is no tomorrow

When there is no tomorrow
and when yesterday does not push itself like an envelope under your door,
when you don’t have to gather raindrops to build waterfalls,
when you don’t have to keep a magnifying glass between yourself and the rest,
when you can laugh like a cloud pouring itself into a bay, not caring if it forms a rainbow,
(talking about rainbows, let’s forget Vibgyor and think of one having brown and black and white and shades in between),
when our mouths can stop being clams and write scripts in any font we choose,
when you can pull out the spike that nails your foot,
and we all, the ones that nail our brains,
maybe then we can merge into the other,
melt our continents and recreate Pangaea,
unfold our bodies without worrying about the creases,
and write songs without muting screams
so that no word is filtered out and pushed into the sea.

When there are no monsters to be hidden under blood
and no angels to be cut out from paper,
maybe then we can start living
without our feet dancing on either arm of a weighing balance.

NaPoWriMo 2017, poem 25

What if?

Noticed a lot of the poems – some of  mine too – I read these days has activist tones. This goes out to several poets, myself included.

I wonder how poetry would thrive
if the spikes of suffering,
of sadness
had been flattened out.

How many would write about
the magic in an orange moon
as it floated above the horizon?
How many would talk about strings of smiles drawn over streets?
How many would talk about tongues fumbling for the right words on a first date,
the sounds that seemed awkward but came out just right?

Would poetry miss the chaos
of brushstrokes ambushing each other
and creating thunderstorms?
What would fuel it when there are no fires to be put out,
when there are no worries wrapped around constellations,
no anger jumping over borders,
no words speared from one class
into the ribs of another,
no cliffs waiting to be jumped off,
no wars to be ended, or started,
about who would annex whom and for what,
and no floods to rise above?

You, my poet,
what would you write
when knives have been blunted,
when fires have been transformed into flowers
with stalks that spell peace in all languages,
when streams of blood have been replaced
by rivers of stars,
when we are all a billion continents
with no oceans to separate us,
when the sky stretches so thin
the space between humans and gods
is less than a hair’s breadth?

My friend, my poet,
what would you write about
if the earth’s pulse
became a steady flatline?

NaPoWriMo 2017, Poem 24