Culprit!

I have walked many a mile,

And it gives me no reason to smile.

And, when you were sure this was a happy place,

You should have looked back and seen my face!

‘Cause there I was, silently observing,

Listening closely to every man’s craving;

It was then that I understood

It was desire that hid behind that hood!

Dissatisfied men with insatiable desires,

Rove the streets and burn fires!

It isn’t a disease, it’s a plague

That has every man in a heavy daze—

Brutal, never-forgiving, ever-controlling—

Its grasp has him always drooling

For zillions! For maybe a lot more—

It’s high time he swam back ashore.

Where we go from here is left to be seen,

The future doesn’t paint a rosy picture,

It, actually, is a scene—

Of mayhem, of carnage, of slaughter

Of one man at the hand of another,

Of races against races,

Of lives against lives—

This is where Satan happily thrives!

The face you look at is no longer human,

It has the eye of the devil—

Red as a ferret’s—

Desire bubbling deep inside it;

The wicked face contorted in a malicious smile,

As he holds on to jewels and dime—

He loots, he plunders, wreaks havoc

Just to fulfil his desire, his whim, his fancy.

And the world is never the same...

It never regains its normalcy!

A small note:

Everything wrong with the world today boils down to desire- man’s unnecessary need to have everything, deservingly or otherwise. The whim to conquer the whole world consumed Alexander, the Great. The British had a similar plan. George Bush was/is in the hunt for free oil. Hitler’s agenda was to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. Investment bankers caused recession because they believed 1+1 could make 1100 in the stock market.

Why is the history of mankind so maligned with documents of wars, peace treaties and wars again? Why is it that kings needed conquests to remain kings? Why is there the need for another million dollars when you have already earned your first one? Is it only to be called ‘successful’…? Isn’t it an unbridled ambition that eventually does more wrong than good?

‘Culprit!’ tries to raise many such questions. It’s a lament on the state of affairs that have remained unchanged since time immemorial and hence have been accepted as a norm. The lamenter in himself is not so important- it could be Nature, Mother Earth, God or just an onlooker, an observer. The poem ends with the realization that man, in the ever so powerful clutches of Greed, has become synonymous to the Devil; all hopes are lost and the world shall never regain its normalcy.