The City Poem by Saroj Padhi

The city swallows me like a python
with smokes coiling up from greedy chimneys,
concrete roofs searing the chest of sky,
like smoulders of fire in the eye,
stifling the voice of the breeze
as leaves dead, drop from Autumn trees;
stench from heaps of garbage awful
travel miles of crowded street
killing the vestiges of romantic spirit
forcing us to our lone cells to retreat;

you know how difficult it is to stare beyond
my window unless i wriggle out of the stuffy room
smacking of sweat, dried flowers and wounded dreams,
my vision interrupted by rising walls
on all sides whereto masses of clouds fall
like swooping birds to land and crawl
before fizzling out as faint mist,
we're the unreal denizens here
burrowing holes like rodents of rude night,
rarely bothered about season's cold or heat
as only worries always in our life do repeat;

gruelling hunger kills us every moment,
we fail to see beyond the yelling belly
beauty doesn't stir us around monuments to rally
we ‘re the voice of the times
growing ripe with our uncanny folly;

poetry doesn't move us beyond the traces
history has lost meaning in forts' distorted faces
there's romance enough in our skin
we're the gen Z fed with the virtual to the brim
with hardly anything for tomorrow to dream
let me slip away from the high-tech ghetto unseen…

give me some moon beams, give me some rain
give me some sun rays to see through my pain.