Unsettled

A bullet hits home in Pindi.
A criminal is dead.

Hours later, Karachi burns;
not with the grief of the masses,
but with the rage of the impoverished:
daily frustrations, otherwise unheard
in the concrete corridors of power.

In Karachi the dust does not settle,
but implodes in flames and
midnight cries of laughter
and looting,
colorful buses burnt
to black skeletons,
cycles snatched
and set alight:
an orange offering of anger
reaching up
in the midnight sky.

Even at dawn,
the dust cannot settle, but
must be broken, the dead
must be buried
while the earth is warm,
while mothers and widows can
mourn in open grounds,
before the military marches in,
under screaming sirens that drown out
the sound of their sorrows.

In Defence the streets are silent.
Our breath is held
behind locked doors,
our gates protected
by armed guards,
our ears deaf
with the comfort of distance.

Across the bridge,
tires send up smoke stacks like
rubber sacrifice,
attracting buzzing mobs:
men in cheap sandals
and second-hand sweaters,
men who smell like days without water
and nights in tattered blankets.

Tonight they smell singed.
Tonight they carry the fire inside them,
and blood on their hands.

And so it spreads, the
sickness of the disenchanted,
the song of broken glass and gunfire,
a war waged against concrete and
steel.
Banks are burned down by
men who have been looted of dreams
by birth.
Tomorrow, their brothers
will bury their own.

In Karachi, the dust does not settle
until scores are rudely settled with
an indifferent system, where
"Roti, Kapra, Makaan"
remains a fraudulent promise.