Eating beyond hunger, drinking beyond thirst,

Dissatisfied, yet he meanders with wanderlust.

Come! Have crumbs of food to satiate your appetite,

And gallons to moist dry oesephagus,

Which go to your head instead of stomach.

The heady cocktail of food and drinks,

Quite eclectic and exotic in their sources,

Remain constant your favorite sports.

You compel us to ignore all except ourselves;

To be unsocial, unkind, irreligious and non-egrigious,

To suspect our neighbors, insulate ourselves

From all convivial bonds of love and humanity.

Though we'd been not so kind and caring,

Nor gathering for any commonweal afore,

The shadowy notion of being social animals ,

Yet somehow ferried us ashore.

Lessons in charity and piety

We'd learnt for long, stand questioned

As useless platitudes, alike for learned and laity --

Knowledge and understanding,

Concern and forgiveness are comatose,

And humanity walks barefoot, empty pit and thirsty,

Aimless, hopeless, dreary!

Wails and shrieks for help and compassion

See no succour, only the delusion.

Hope in the garbage, and in the good samaritans;

Alas! They're too few to be help for pain.

Blind is their march of doom unto your fiefdom,

To become the charge for your brutal game.

You give us nothing but scare

Of disease and pain in life,

Disgrace in death!

Why touch me, even with a bargepole,

Why burn, why bury, why dump?

Leave me to evaporate into nothingness;

At least, the cosmos is mine.

I've been around so long here,

Why smother all my linkages .

Death, be not so cruel !

Let me have my last chuckle,

Seeing, feeling my fellow beings,

On penultimate journey, lovingly cuddle.

You've turned the world a prison,

Every home its dark, dungeon cellar,

Incarcerating us like

undertrial prisoners,

Waiting for judgement positive of His court

To set us free.

Free as birds, as animals, as the seas,

The streams, the wind, the mountains, the Sun,

The Moon, and the forest green.

Will we be ever free again,

That free, as before?

Wouldn't there be any more spring(s)?

Or the new world will

Invent one perforce.

For spring one must ever have,

In this world full of autumns and winters fierce!

Pray for a world ridden of your captivity and harassment,

And hope for the same verve and merriment,

Not so unbecoming of an spring!

Gluttony, a cardinal sin, is your commission.

O Lord! Save us from the gluttony and the Glutton!

By Dr. Gulrez Roshan Rahman

From: India