Harthal: A Miscarriage Poem by A. Jayaprakash Jayaprakash Panicker

Harthal: a miscarriage

It is a potential tool
Against the dubious will
And vile wishes
of the powerful.

It is a social defense
An individual token,
A means to nobler ends
And genuine human causes.

It is being waylaid
In the broad day light
And left bare to be licked
and lusted up:

By hooligans and goons
Drunkards and thugs
Demagogues and unionists
Fundamentalists and rogues
Pressure groups and power brokers
Vote bankers and their votaries.

Harthal,
“All things under lock and key”
Is being left in the lurch,
Bared and scavenged in the street
By bloody beaks
and blasphemous bills.

Alas! What it breeds is rancor.
Castrated guts is what it shows.
Harthal gets impregnated
In regular intervals.
It carries and miscarries venom
and begets stillborns of the same.