Poetry

Kevin Frayer/AP

By

Quleen Kaur Bijral

Asking of Death is Murder

Irreverent, oh unholy Death, you are!

People how you malign it, Death gives no pain

Dying is the curse and sweet death a sweet respite

Respite to those who wish of death to flee pain.

In torment was a friend I loved, my beloved

Life could not be kept in her yet all did try

In such brazen trying my darling but became a prey

Of pain, of shame, of soreness throughout the growing day

Endlessly she bore the brews, and the potion.

Smelling what made me sick, she was forced to drink

As callous waiters about her preached about life

I fretfully prayed for her dying to die in a blink

On her deathbed lay her body, willing to exit

Only if someone could act on her desperate last wish

What a hidden stab is there in dying before death

That the asking of death is murder while dying blessed

Dying is a sign of life held on man’s gunpoint

Tell me, what is life if it has to be lived crippled in hurt

I felt how yearned her body to have Death, to have it!

And Death is called names, a calumny or truth is it?

Pain surmounts in a dying person

She bore it well to deserve heaven

But the contraptions of man where she lay

Dragged her away to live hellishly half-dead

Pain of Dying encircled my beloved

As painless Death was shamed to depart

Hurt in her eyes wrung me in guilt

That I knowing her pain didn’t pull the plug

Love, loss and conscience

O mom! Take me some place safe

Safer than the world of God

I don’t know why some wish me harm

Am I wrong in the eyes God?

O son! We are wronged like many

Like many at the feet of revulsion

No sin flows in our veins

Still we are sinned and so is God’s vision.

O mom! Why hope in despair?

Why smile in ache?

Why love a thorny flower?

O son! We hope so some can feel

Love, loss and conscience

This I say as I know no other cause

And it seems the only godly reason

O mom! Too many blameless die

Still more need to be slain…

The price of compassion is so dear

I pray our sacrifices don’t go in vain

O son! No one prevails forever

Still the good survive and outnumber the rest

 Let it be your solace to live.

And to live like it’s a heaven’s fest

Quleen Kaur Bijral

Quleen Kaur Bijral, known by the pen name Quleen O Queen, is a writer, journalist, musician and an avid lawn tennis player. As an alumnus of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Quleen clinched First Position in her Masters and recently submitted her doctoral thesis. Recently she launched her first novel titled “The Witch Some Witch” published by Partridge Publishing, a Penguin Company. Quleen works as a columnist at the Logical Indian. And as a musician, she is planning to release a music album on the great Urdu shayari of Iqbal, Ghalib, Meer, Dehlvi and Faiz. Stay tuned.