The following poem by Abhinav Shukla from Saharanpur, UP was selected as a commendable mention in Wingword Poetry Prize 2020
The creator created man in his image,
I have been told.
The way I see it,
The man created the creator in his own,
A warm rendition of light,
Was the answer of man,
To the dark, perpetual cold.
A drug that leaves my senses numb,
To the finite that I am,
Confronting infinity.
A shelter that I built,
Out of figments of my incoherent dreams,
For myself in eternity.
The creator created creation in his image,
Was the story I was told,
The creation created the creator,
To its convenience,
Is the belief I hold.
Battered on the ground was creation,
Inching to get back on its feet,
A fiction was created thus,
Beyond itself,
An ideal beautiful,
And convenient to believe.
Born out of heathens,
Nurtured by the mortals,
Is God,
An immortal art.
A touch of insane,
A hint of chaos,
To preserve sanity,
To bring harmony,
In the forsaken homes,
And the broken hearts.
Why did the creation create the creator?
Is the question I am asked,
After burning in hell,
An answer I bring unto you, at last.
The man created God,
In an image that was his own
For he was brave enough,
To know his destiny,
And coward so much,
That he succumbed,
To the fear of unknown.
He carved God out of his heart,
To be engraved on the stone,
The path of the devil then,
He embraced all alone.
You can tell a lot about a man,
From the God he worships,
For the sins he committed,
Stay forever in his heart,
Confessions of his murders,
Mumbling on the edge of his throat,
Almost on his lips.
The man created God,
To bear his unbearable guilt.
His dreams are cursed to an eternity,
With the sights of those he killed.
The stains and screams haunt him,
From the blood that was spilled.
To atone for the graves of his victims,
Were the churches and temples built.