When clothes first came to me

In all their glory

Not a kingly alm or its consideration

Not a renaissance to hide self corruption

From the corrupted

Necessity for political nakedness

Or its capitalist subjugation

Skin was suddenly not warm

Cold was now winterwear

Emotions and monsoons soaked by underwear

World wore soft where

It’s an employer and employee

Soldiers dying in governmental camouflage

Extremists proclaiming uni-colored skin

Life of a job holder lives inside thongs

Culture out of a speaking rock for others is a sin

Global beggars waiting for their turn

Exposed, exclusive and explosives

Class of man covering would be middle

Farmers, their soil as second hand blankets

When it’s not the Sun

The ragged thigh post war

Would watch the footpath war

For a carefully torn thigh

Violence with its initial ramp walk,

Its quick effects, the future marketing products

Fast investments, faster profits

Stitches and bleaches for new age survival

Would have its revealing reversal

The eye learning, watching

An endless slavery

How to forget the skin truths

Of its ‘below the neck’ territory

What’s to be hanged, the only exposure

As a baby in wraps hardly breathing

Unlike the choked collar of your Son

The scarf of your daughter

And when it does at last

All that remains is the silent

Blast of a bony mannequin;

Its philanthropic coverage.

                                            ~ Daipayan Nair 

                                             Silchar, Assam