Natural Man

If purple graces a butterfly’s wings
yellow embraces the other
unique nectar and fragrance
manifest in each blooming flower
some set apart by stipples
some stand out in color.
Every sparrow chirps in its distinct fashion
varying flecks on each Kingfisher’s bosom.
Every creeping python
crawling lizard, humming bee,
aquatic beauties swimming the sea
each kind is different from its own
that’s the splendor of life
of being alive under the sky of rainbow and sun.

So was man
before books bent his back with a hunch
and his tender feet were enchained
to classroom’s bench.

Reading unending rows of alphabet
fonts of print on paper
bellowed out repetitions
that taught the same charter
- think alike, know alike and be alike.

I was barked at with canes
whipped on the buttocks
knelt on the burning ground of pains
sat on thin air with my back to the wall
and shamed for being different from all.
The word is “discipline,” but they instilled fear
claiming to groom, they robbed every year
manufacturing puppets faceless and formless
a machination for machine tools
of a dumb army of robots.

My soul was arrested
mind was cremated
and heart was broken, I didn’t know.
Like a flying bird,
a sheep in the grazing herd,
a swaying lily in the valley,
and a Herring in shoals of merry
I discovered not myself.
I know histories of distant lands and mysteries of cosmos
mathematics on both hands and lingua franca of hosts
have a computer on palm
but know not who I am!