by O.P. Jha
it’s like the disappearing
of smell from the soil
current from the streams
speed from the winds
tides from the oceans
smiles from the lips
seniors from the society
& kids from the family
heard, seen & felt disappearing
of the stars from the sky
trees from the wood
peaks from the hills,
humanity in the flashes of missiles
falling on both sides of the Hormuz,
civilizations submerging in the wings
of drones falling on both sides of the Dnieper,
& aborigines disappearing from the maps of ‘Cultures’
it seems more chaotic
when scaring imaginations imagine
the loss of all words that make a poem
from the glossary of mankind
when nothing will be scribed on
the recklessly flowing broken stone slabs
in the great apocalypse
someone may not look scared
and may proclaim to be civilized
even after fighting thousands of wars
but there’ll be no honest words
in his voluminous dictionary to narrate a story
with the concluding sentences: “Once upon a time,
there was a human civilization on the Earth.
Now, the Existence has no knowledge of its existence.”
Yet…
someone is really longing for an innocent smile
but the pain is frozen in the flowing wind.
O.P. Jha’s works appeared in more than one hundred journals including Rigorous, Mantis, Punt Volat, Discretionary Love, In Parentheses, Shot Glass, Lothlorien Poetry, Odessa Collective, Backchannels, Poetry Pacific, Five Fleas, miniMag, Iceblink, Infinite Scroll, The Rome Review, Valiant Scribe, Kelp, pulpit etc. He holds Ph.D. in “Translation Studies”. X: @OPJha17