Poem: The Flour Deaths

Do we need?
The Prime Minister House
The President’s palace
The great old parliament
The Muppets of our bureaucracy
The old feudal lords,
And the thousands acres
The old hands of dictators
And the warmth of lies
From the leaders of our present

Do we need?
The ruins of our existence
From one crisis to another
In the land enriched in its soil
From the fertile plains of Indus
To the rivers of the north
The old seasons of harvest
In the mockery of our times
From the creation of promise
To the hardened crimes of our elite

Do we need?
The remembrance of our times
From the questions of the youth
To the analysts of the past
The words in abundance
The absence of action and work
Delivered for the benefits of our hearts
The rotten souls and their dreams

Do we need?
The education and our health
The dream of our existence
Or the reliance on the west,
From its mercenaries to its aids
The disease, inhabited in our land
The crisis of the times, our lives engulfed

Do we need?
The question on their lips
The hatred in their hearts
As they died in the stampede
Of our failures and demise!

Asim Khan


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5 responses to “Poem: The Flour Deaths”

  1. farrah shah Avatar
    farrah shah

    The lowest point in the person's life is when one tenders the crops with blood and sweat but see the fruit stolen just before his very eyes.

    Be it our sons or daughters or the grains from the fields everything is robbed and stolen from us.

    What is this place?

    We live without childhood,youth dreams and laughter…..

    fear,anguish,pain,lament are the synonyms for life…….

    Since Pakistan came into being it has been looted and plundered by its rulers,shamefully democratically elected ones were the worst…

    Pakistani citizen is like an orphan…….

    Pakistani citizen is a victim of police,justice,social order and the business and feudal class……

    Corrupt ruling class have divided themselves between US (civil government ) and them (the military government)

    If people survive or live it is solely because they have strong faith and believe in Allah ……

    Religion is an opium working very well for the exploiting class,it is your fate ……bear with it ,we the citizens are told……

    and we wait for miracles from Allah,for food,for justice,for medicine,for cure…….

    ———

    Our farmlands are being sold to corporate companies and the crops we grow ,we would have no rights to it…..

    Would it happen to landlords….

    No it would happen to us the poors

    The noose around the neck of the poors is tightenning and we the masses look at it helplessly

    We who are abused ,tortured,told to shut up ,blackmailed and harrased

    Thinking is a sin……

    "Kiya Lazim hai kai hum bhee daikhain gai"

  2. Unaiza Fatima Avatar
    Unaiza Fatima

    But at least we achieved free judiciary…that was most important. People forgot their hunger and disease when they see JIC back in his office, in full health and wealth.

  3. anonymous Avatar
    anonymous

    Poetry's all very well, but Real Pakistan Nationalists has a much more realistic representation of affairs, rather than casually offloading responsibility as 'lies of the rulers' at:

    http://www.new-pakistan.com/2009/9/23/another-sto

  4. Anti-Anonymous Avatar
    Anti-Anonymous

    who is this stupid guy on new-pakistan.com? Are you trying to tell us that Taliban are the real threat and USA is not? Ridiculous. How much are you getting paid from Pakistan's prime enemy in the shape of foreign funding? I wonder who allows such ignorant, rather, treacherous people to have blogs on web about Pakistan…! You want a quick survey? I request responses from all of us "completely unaware masses of Pakistan"- yani sada awam – (as implied by your new-pakistan.com's august intellectual highness) on which is the bigger threat to Pakistan: the Taliban or the USA? Pakistanis… speak up please…

  5. suhaib Avatar
    suhaib

    @ asim: your words are moving, keep it up!