As liberal as the air

Air is a traitor. 
It entered the enemy.
It reddened his blood. 
It filled his lungs,
expanded his ribs 
Made him puff up 
his chest and then
left to inform you,
that you could have 
the blue blood 
that you would have
to exhale all the hate
you held in your 
thoracic cage.
All the vitality 
sucked out of you 
as the air didn't
see you as a mirror.
Its eyes were 
none and several 
So it saw through you,
the whole world,
naked and didn't 
raise a finger.
Its gaze didn’t waver. 
It didn't read 
the Bible, the Geeta
or the Koran.
It flowed freely
and spied on all
but never let a 
secret out as 
it sang its own tune,
its own language.
It dried your skin
even as you shivered.
Where all scampered
to be segregated into 
varied families,
It knew all were
in the same boat,
only looking on
to different shores.




Global village

I am a fleeting lover.
Polyamorous making love 
to many countries.
I am battened by this promiscuity.
I am a part of continents 
that aren’t separate 
but are part of me in continuum. 
People love alike in all the cities
they have a hive mind.
This caravanserai
gives me a sense of future
in retrospect.
We aren’t separate,
The Sumerians, the Harappans 
the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs,
like anagrams we are jumbled. 
Line between patriots and 
xenophobes is thin.
Line between borderlands
is nonexistent until
we put a barbed wire
in the lush greens and
say ‘this tree belongs to me 
and that to you’, 
not knowing their 
roots have hugged 
and mated and are 
inseparable beneath
the dark surface.
So I never get lost in the dark.
It’s the sunshine 
that misleads me. 
All the light shining here
is but one sun 
then why those illumined
fight under it,
knowing none can
own it nor can they shun
it as foreign.

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Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor practicing in India, and poetry is her passion. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Shards, The Blue Nib, North of Oxford, Indian Rumination, Rock and Sling, the ekphrastic review among many others. She won the Craven Arts Council ekphrastic poetry competition in 2020 and was placed second in The Blue Nib chapbook contest in 2018. Her first solo poetry chapbook ‘The falling in and the falling out’ was published by Alien Buddha press in January 2021.

Instagram @akshaya_pawaskar