DYING.....

Have you ever thought of dying
and not have anybody know about it?

I did.

And it was the most liberating thing of all.
The innuendo of freedom that it instills;
the reckless abandon that taunts,
swims in my panoramic thoughts.

Have you? You should.

For in such manner you will feel
this autonomy that I feel.
The same liberty that young-lings,
(whose rotating bodies dance to the sound
of wildering cars and rushing trucks,
as you savor over your lavishly priced dinner)
wish with their eyes closed and stomachs emptied,
that the light of heaven would hover over their heads,
for light never passes the boundaries of their worlds,
underneath bridges and dimly-lit roads.

Have you ever thought of it?
That one day you’d just go “poof”
And no one would ever think,
that your likeness ever existed?

I did. For a brief moment I did.
When I looked into the pools of their eyes
And I saw nothing----
nothingness that screams desperation and flight.

And by that I have learned how much paper
their world is created out of.

Cardboards, leaflets, old newspapers and worn-out napkins.
Industrial leftovers that serve as shed, utensils, roof, and skin—
flood their shacks of urban rot and civil decay.

Symbolically represents how much space is left between
their lives and the other side (if you know what I mean).
The separation between sanity and insanity;
The room that hollows between life and death;
Between imprisonment and freedom.
How thin is the difference between living and demise?
Ask them. They would answer.

Thin as paper.
For they know that bereavement is a path of unknown realms,
a perpetual conduit of emptiness; like an empty canvas.
an acceptable detour, a heavenly promise---
compared to the emptiness that hollows their dreams
and squeezes their grime-laced and drained tummies.
And once they leave, no cross or maker will be set
on their final resting place; for no one would really visit.

So death ain’t so bad.
To them the thought of it is a fail-safe hatch.

So are you starting to think now?
To die and none of your shadow would even be written
in the corners of urban relapse.
If that still doesn’t make sense,
let me fill you in.
Think of the thought
when you leave a room that you just farted in,
and no one would think it was you--- a sweet escape.

In the world of towering egos and demonic technologies,
when daily miniature wars are fought not by tanks but ideologies,
when adolescents choke on pop culture’s colloquy,
when a double-decker sandwich confuses
the dream of a beggar’s mind about heaven.
A tiny vagrant life is as valuable as trash.

Put your ears upon their hearts,
and hear the words throb like war drums.
“in a world that has abandoned my words
and ignored my cries,
I wish nothing but my own demise.
That this realm will never have to suffer
a preposterous image that is mine;
and that this skin-raked bosom would not endure the shame
of being a part of the underbelly of this putrefying cave.
But please, when I die,
let them forget me, or rather, do not make them aware
that somewhere along their streets a soul will be spared;
spared of the suffering and wishful reveries--
from the dark insanities conjured by metropolitan poverty.”

So think now. And think hard.
Every time you sign in on your techno-social hub,
Every time you put on your finely-pressed clothes,
Every time you warm the engines of your sports car,
Every time you open the pages of your costly textbooks,
Every time you enroll in your exclusively-priced university,
Every time you have yourself a million-dollar dinner,
Every time you have a sumptuous meal with the powers-that-be.

Think, that somewhere, maybe just around the corner
of the street where you are,
Somebody does not want what you have.

Instead, they want something else.