BEB: Sun

S U N

C E

N T

E R

what we knew

eons before your

birth, you claim to now

have discovered. you believe

you were Enlightened. you believe

you are the first. you believe it is your

divine, cosmic duty, the center, the giver of

light, to now proselytize our charcoal-skinned,

onyx-eyed, ebony-maned, melanoid existences.

now, you grieve. warmth real as the moon’s

you expel with your apologies, and yet

the suns we conceived you enslave.

the luminescence that belongs

in our skies still sustains

your blood-stained

histories.

R A

Y S

you are

now entering

the star. have

you felt this

fire? do you

feel the warmth

coursing here

through my blood?

my body is

pure flames.

here and now

you sailed

into the sun

and it has

turned into

my soul; into me.

take your fear

take your life

take it away

from these

tropical rays.

who ever said

that you could

deserve them?

you are an

empire. you

will conquer,

yes, but never

will your pallid,

cadaverous hands,

your deathly dreams,

own my gold flame skin.

S O L A R

W I N D S

you should hardly be surprised.

is it the speed? is it the velocity? is it the heat?

what did you not see coming?

did you suppose that it would be

invisible, easily silence-able,

that you might be invincible?

you stirred us into geomagnetic storms,

pushed us until we were nuclear

took 3000 histories and created fusions,

and now when you feel the fever, the blaze,

feel us pilfer our own khadi, our own kesar,

you sit in your blue white red towers, astounded.

you came to the lands of the sun.

you will not leave without having felt it.

you stole from the lands of the fires.

you will not leave without burning alive.

you shouldn’t be shocked at the pain.

is it the reality? is it the regret? is it the truth?

did you wake up today with blood dripping

from your fingers onto your cashmeres?

did you rise to the sounds of reckoning?

did you wonder where you went wrong?

your burden, you saviors, you messiahs,

bringing us into civilization, saving our

souls from our pagan with your perfection,

did you expect gratefulness? did you believe

we’d fall to our feet willingly, without your

two-century-long swords at the napes of our necks?

you came to the lands of warriors.

you will not leave without a fight.

you ravaged the lands of a million gods.

you will not leave without descending to hell.

you mustn’t be aghast at your future.

is it the disillusion? is it the guilt? is it the irony?

remember, you built it. you constructed,

using sanguine bones and futile lives.

your empire founded on deceit, your glass houses

of lies, your courthouses of theatrics. all on you.

and still, as you are reeling from the power

of the staggering beast you have woken,

the starved, trembling, fiery-eyed monstrosity,

you find ways to carve it up. tear its limbs

so that heart, soul, mind, lay scattered, breathless.

and the gold remains trapped in your eternal grasp.

S A T E L L I T E

one

does not

exist without

the other. you are

always meant to be

a part of me. you will

own all my brilliance

as though it was yours

as though I was process

and you were the perfect

blameless, quiet product.

you will haunt my ends,

orbit my borders, think

that your moon birthed

our star. in some way

you’re responsible

for our anant

agleam

sun.

D A W N

for the first time,

we will open our eyes in freedom.

we will see without feeling that our eyes are

not our own. and while our minds will belong to them for

decades, perhaps more, perhaps generations to come, at least our

limbs, our loves, our lives, will be our own. tomorrow, as the sun rises,

how will it be to sense our vedic, primordial, pure, untouched surya touching

our earth skins, our soft terrains, our marshy braids, our silken rivers, after centuries?

tomorrow, as the sun wakes, so do we. a future tinged with hints of oppression, and yet our

tongues weave their primeval notes, our skins find their pristine tones. we are finally free.

R I S I N G

From the earth where you stashed our bodies

From the massacred lands that you watered with our blood

We are rising, slowly, quietly, surely

Into our centuries-tall ultimate flood.

This time, the deities you displeased are in the thousands.

This time, no God, no arks will give you shelter.

You will return to your land of nothing. And we will

Lift our heads to our sun, to our god-given swelter.

We will return to our savagery, in which

We were free to love, to please, to create.

And you, emptied, exhausted, expunged

Will have only yourselves to desolate.