Maharaj Kaul

You ask me why do I keep my lonely ways.

The nature in me longs to come out of the convoluted depths,
To reconfigure my life, to enrich my mind.
I am an element of nature seeking the grand experience –
But there are an array of forces fighting the elemental urge.

Heart asks for peace, justice, and brotherhood;
Mind sees them as fitting architecture of ideas to live by.
But the world is soaked in greed, blindness, and ignorance.
It suffocates the grand visions of mankind;
It sows war, falsehood, strife;
It corrupts pure, natural impulses;
Replacing them with narrow earthly concerns.
It supplants natural freedom with material cages;
Poetry with petty survival wisdom.

Another human is a reflection of existence.
Human relationship is a door of liberation,
But culture and world have turned them into functional ties,
Laced with selfishness and insecurity,
A mirror of the inner disorder and turmoil.

We live in a world of insane goals;
Of acquisitions, ego, power;
An existence woven in hollow, tinsel strands;
A life punctuated by mad, pointless rush.
Success is designed to curb, not liberate;
Manic economic competition sours our soul toward the fellow human.

You ask me why do I keep my lonely ways.