If Only

Pulkita Anand

We stop deceiving through language 

With names and meanings 

With sounds and spellings 

With dangling sentences and silent letters 

With words piling on words 

With the mob of vandalised words growing 

With defunct adjectives and rudimentary words 

With clichéd idioms and repetitive slogans 

With many languages buried and trampled by time 

With semicolon and period not able to end hatred 

With the diction of the past blurring the future 

With people like sentences suddenly knitted and put in parentheses 

With linguistic mutilations and marriages between tongues 

With queues of hunger in clauses 

With capital letters capturing completely 

With the discourse of excuses and limping efforts 

With italics immigrant impoverished 

With charred forest in asterisks 

With innumerable dead words 

With the long quotations of leaders lingering long 

With broken grammar, dissolved words 

With question marks and exclamatory marks left 

With no full stop to hatred, war, and misery 

Category: Featured, Poetry

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