Is it Love or Hate?

Is it Sunrise or Sunset?

Is it love for power that leads to terrorism?
Or is it hate of a people, of personal poverty, that leads results in mayhem?
Is it love of a nation that leads to military attacks?
Or is it hate of feeling threatened that results in this mad act?

Is it love for one’s community that leads to caste and race politics?
Or is it hate of losing face that causes us from inclusion to desist?
Is it love for one’s God that leads to riots and ravage?
Or is it hate of the strange, the unknown that results in this carnage?

Is it love for knowledge that leads to better ways?
Or is it hate of helplessness that results in constantly striving to update?
Is it love for money that leads lack of principles?
Or is it hate of powerlessness that results in breaking free of such shackles?

Is it love for a male child that leads to killing a girl baby?
Or is it hate of a sense of burden that results in this deed?
Is it love for a daughter that parents don’t tarry?
Or is it hate of ‘societal disapproval’ that results in forcing them to marry?

Is it love for the children that leads parents to pressurize?
Or is it hate of ‘personal failure’ that makes them so much criticize?
Is it love for one’s parents that them one doesn’t abandon?
Or is it hate of feeling the least bit beholden?

Is it love that makes the world go round?
Or is it hate that results in the merry-go-round?
Two sides of the same coin are Love and Hate.
Yet, we never value both the same.

- Written on October 22, 2006 Sunday.

- In response to A Father’s Appeal I guess. Was definitely written right after. I hate this poem though if I can call it a poem.