You built a castle
Where you hold literature hostage.
You call your castle
Canon.

Gatekeepers
Guard your big iron gate,
Brandishing
Weapons of exclusion.

Your accomplices,
The moguls
Who publish the words.
The critics,
Those self appointed
Judges of worthy literature
And the translators,
All are on hand
To give you helping hand
In your unholy task of exclusion.

We have gathered
On this new square,
Not to invade your castle,
Not to beg to enter your castle.

We have gathered
To build alternative canon
With no wall and no gate,
With no gatekeepers.
Alternative canon
Where none will be denied entry.

We have gathered
To build alternative canon
Where the consumers of literature
Will be the judges of worthy literature.

(1)The Artificial Humans:
Weird world evolves,
Weird creatures
Wired to gadgets
Evolve.

They articulate
And gesticulate.
They giggle
And tread
On the trajectories of living.

Their brains brim
With artificial intelligence,
They act like humans.
They are
The artificial humans.

Technology savvy humans
Reconstruct our humanity,
The religionists
Resign to the new humanity,
The ethicists
Seek to etch
Unethical on our minds.

The elasticity of our civilization
Stretches
And stretches,
Our civilization overstretched.

Years to come,
Our civilization
Overstretched,
Will snap.

(2)I Am Poet Of The Streets:
I am piqued
When I am profiled
A protegee of prominent poets.
I am pained
When I am pronounced
Just a poet.

I am poet of the streets.
I walk the streets
And sing
My strident songs of protest,
Giving succour
To the indigent indigenes
Of the streets,
Impoverished
By the scoundrels who rule over them.

Mother muse
Mills my inspiration more
When I straddle the podiums
And sing for the streets.
The scorn,
The sneer
Of the scoundrels
Give flip to my resolve
To sing
And sing for the streets,
I am poet of the streets.

(3)We, The Poets, We Are Protesters:
All day,
All night,
We, the poets, we protest.

We protest
All week,
All year,
We, the poets, we are protesters.

We, the poets,
We seek
Neither protest partners,
Nor protest sponsors.

We, the poets,
We have no empty pockets to fill,
We have no opponents to witch-hunt,
We crave not
For the potentates' positions
Or their mouthwatering morsels.

We, the poets, we protest
"Cause this domain is *****
Made *****
By descendants of the devil.

We, the poets,
We are protesters,
We are the mouthpieces
Of the Supreme Deity.

They massed on the square,
The army of the masses.
Fists clenched,
Brandishing few swords
And few guns.
Not garbed in combat gears
Chanting war chants.

They advanced upon
The fighting force
Of the deep states
Garbed in full combat gears,
Fist fight ensued.

The fist fight
Turned into a sword fight,
The sword fight
turned into a gun fight.

The fighting force
Of the deep states
Vanquished
The army of the masses,
Melancholy enveloped the land.

Justice and equity
Became prisoners of war,
Accountability became victim of war.
Deprivation
Became companion of the people.

The deep states
Without conscience
Clicked wine glasses
And rode
In siren fitted automobiles.
The roads littered with potholes,
The streets littered with dirts
And emanciated beggars.