Home Coming |

Home Coming

Young boys and girls on the streets of my hometown

Sell empty bottles of vodka, and smoke fake Havana cigars.

Often, they stroke their heads

Kneel down in front of asphalt mosques of blood

Bleat monotonous prayers for their safety from saffron missionaries.

They ask me in Hebrew

If I have ever been to Arabia on a blind mule or

Tried eating eucalyptus leaves on the Solar express to the moon.

In leisure, they discuss our biological pasts;

One -eyed monsters are now extinct.

Fashionable Zebras from Bologna have extinguished themselves

I should not complain about

Apples rotting in the Himalayan snow or

dark fossil histories of age-less army dictators.

I am travelling in the bus with aliens

And my son is taught

Plato’s Phaedrus by Sea Gods in the boarding school

And things I don’t understand

Like red capitalism or green socialism.

Sometimes I wonder why South Americans love

Avocado, a live volcanic fruit.

I don’t believe

Prisoners love Mexican food and blood diamonds.

Next time when I travel

I will bring my camera, gas lighter and Aladdin’s lamp

It means nothing if photography is banned in the valley

You can still watch

Einstein’s brothers killing each other in the family dispute

These days your real crime is not disobedience-

But disappearance in the sunlight.

After quarrelling all day with curators of concealed truths

I am told

It is hard to translate in my native language-

Exile is the only way of going home.

← Ashwani Kumar