Where The Streets Have No Name Poem by Hindukush Ojha

Where the streets have no name

We all look the same,

Where strangers meet and sing together

Dispossessed of their souls…

Each soul, with an incandescent halo

Ferried across, one after another

Inside wrought- iron wheelbarrows

That move on their own...

A slow rickety plodding pace,

On their three skewed wheels,

And balancing your soul

To across scratched and smoothened

Counters...

Deposit you, upon the shelves

Of a pawn shop...

A one time stop,

Where innocence is mortgaged

So innocently you know,

That a dream, odd and surreal

Such as this,

Would have you believe

An earlier arrival

In this town, without hope,

Would have drowned your pain

In a flood of ecstasy.



Oh here,

Where the streets have no name…

We all look the same.

We look just the same

But for a difference

In the way

We spell out our shame

Like in a wallet

With a card on an exorbitant credit

Just some odd coins remain,

To ring out our net muffled worth

With the dampness of a sweat:

Nothing more or less...

For the utter labour

Of lugging our soulless worth,

Does call out for one virtue

Of all that remains,

In bits and pieces, to be proffered

For what is essentially a game

Whose rules we apotheosize

To suit but our needs

At that given moment,

Like counseling to creeps

That we really are

Just below skin deep...

Though bleached shining white

But in actual, all black sheep.



So sweetheart,

Why in utter disbelief,

And full of regrets,

With a tear in your eye

And such a sigh in your breath...

Hold to a lost realm

When like a child at night

You bawled out in tears

To a mom to return

From the woods,

Of your fears.

Why, tell me, why

Beseech that angel with the wings

Who, over these streets

Without a name

Should sweep down sometime

In some midnight dream

To shower old joys amiss

And refurbish your faith

Like a gentle rain

That cools down your cheek

When even tears have dried up,

To leave their tell tale stains.



Your fortitude, your beauty

Your grace and your poise

That angel is you

Left without a choice

Your wings of gossamer

Soft like a breeze

Glitter and shimmer,

Wherever you be...

And fly you should

Ever so high

Over streets, nameless

With mortgaged souls

Your love is needed

Ever so more…

In this indifferent town

Where the streets have no name.