Without poetic seed there won’t be prose. The elaborate network of trunks, branches, twigs, flowers, fruits and leaves is nothing but a commentary on the small poetic seed. So all ye wannabe writers, nurture the poet in you, who understands the value of pause in life, who moves slowly to watch everything, sight and smell everything. Brushstrokes of poetry softly touch the soul without disrupting its restful muse and bring out the nuggets of love, compassion, harmony and peace.
Holy Harlots
Yamuna!
A black, toxic, putrefied nullah.
Cow!
A sewage-eating big pig
surviving on garbage dumps.
Two holy mothers turned harlots
in this age of Kaliyuga!
Delhi, meanwhile, pumps
more pride in its polluted lungs.
On stinking sewage-layered banks,
The skinny cow grazes on
noxious weeds and poisoned shrubbery,
Its beneficent, teary eyes
ogle at the human-industrial waste
mocking and mirthing over Yamuna’s sighs.
Who needs a holy bath now and cow’s blessings?
Two pillars of faith
now crumble down to pieces,
Any listeners to their dismantling shrieks?
Holy Touch!
With softly pining majesty, silence sings a song,
Shadows grow long,
Her soft fingers brace my face
and go along a tears trace.
Delicate tip of her finger bears the jewel,
The tear that would have been lost as salt on my
face.
Phoenix
In the fire of my passion
people say I will burn my wings,
And then I will not be able to fly,
How mischievously society takes a dig sly
at those who dare to be different,
For rutted path’s stranglehold is luring,
doling out short-cuts aiming massive gains,–
The ordinary paths avoiding the penanceful pains.
Burn I’ll myself in my own fire
to ashes and ambers,
Or the inferno will bake the skill raw
To turn gold in my soul’s chambers,
Either ashes or gold—
Though the path full of miseries untold,
But even this treacherousness has exceptional charms,
Its forlorn sand is pregnant with virginal solitude,
Its uncluttered loneliness, a mine full of possibilities!
Far away from the crowd
How brilliantly shines that prospect!
The solitary walkers on this path
either die a lonely, ignominious death,
To become the unencumbered particles of its ungutted earth,
Or if somebody carries through the desert,
He arrives at an oasis of gold,
where the creative bliss takes him in charming fold.
These sufferings might turn me into ashes
or turn me into gold,
If the ash is my fate
then I should not hate
my passion’s flame,
For I turned out to be a horse lame
that lined up for the toughest race,
Or with inferno lurking on my face
I play with the fire
and make it my mistress to sire
the golden-winged off-springs;
my consummation signs with the infernal houri,
That wedding night’s taming with creative fury.
The moth is aware of fire’s fury,
Still it doesn’t hover
around a desirous flower’s utility,
With passionate ambers smoldering in its guts,
It goes for a dazzling display around fire;
Its perilous, exciting, flirtatious orbit around the glow,
And the flame laying snares for the deadly blow,
Yet with intoxicated zeal
nearer and nearer it comes to kiss and feel
that finest nectar hidden behind the fiery eyes:
The honey sweeter than any flower for which a worldly honey-bee dies.
Fuelled and fired by every ounce of its instinct
it buzzes around with ecstatic swirls,
It lives life thousand times more
than the ones lured by worldly flower’s lore,
Even its death isn’t just painful plights,
It is merely the pinnacle of its
gradually graduating love flights,
And when it meets its end that explosion of its flesh
is the acme of its fiery passion.
Likewise, I’m the helpless satellite
of the sun of my art,
Hardest I might try,
but from it I can’t part,
Its my life and source of light,
Without it everything is a blind flight
and nothing of purpose in sight,
Hovering around my inspirational sun
is the only form of my fun,
Even if it means the final
crashlanding into the fiery ball,
For the artist it is still a regally carpeted hall.
MIRAGE
How possessed the show of life floats away!
Self-absorbed and self-satiating eyes
perpetually ogling at that last ray,
Shines which with trayful of exceptional mundanities,
delicious crumbs and specks of pleasant trivialities,–
Prize’s lesser essence exaggerated manifold,
How deceiving has’n this mirage since times untold!
The rioting mob, meanwhile, creating a stampede and storm—
Thirsty, hungry, eating and breathing sand,
Trying to outpace each other
to reach that coveted oasis land,
where the mirageful sweet speck lies
and the supposed spring of will never dries.
God created us to walk brotherly
on the lush green pastures hand-in-hand,
But we take the path lost in treacherous sand
to out-run each other,
Leaving each other dying
and lying to be buried under those sand dunes,
So much we lose and force others to lose
while running to catch those boons,
Blindly we trample orchids
to catch up with the call by those sandy sighs,
And see, so many die with sand in mouth and eyes!
See that fellow huffing and puffing like an animal
going after that ever-escaping destination,
Like an oxen sweating out the precious drops
to drain out even the last ounces of humanity
from those strained innards,–
The orchid inside suffers a drought,
Aah! How valiantly he fought,
But unfortunately always had’n taking unnecessary shot,
And then the chase became unbearably hot,
Desire’s hallucination sparkles in his eyes as the loser’s dot.
Ever pretending to kow-tow the pious injunctions,
most often we do the opposite,
How coquettishly we keep God
unaware of our motives true!
The characters outsmarting the creator’s real hue,
Betraying thus God and trampling orchards,
whose seeds He planted,
we move ahead,
Unaware the spirit is already dead,
And the title deed with the creator
torn and tattered to its last thread,
Then we go out without any dread
and tread over each other in blind race,
Spit each other in the face
to stop (or made to stop) finally at a place,
where there isn’t those presumptions’ single trace.
Highway Murder
Listen you all, men and nature!
They are killing me!
As the iron hisses, and kisses
across the rings of my age,
I stand benumbed in daze,
This end was not supposed to come so soon,
Wasn’t I fulfilling all the duties assigned to me,
entitling me another wintery full moon?
In self-imposed anesthesia
I just feel the saw’s butchering
into my bloodless flesh in my guts,
There is no blood in me
to give the evidence of a murder,
The sanguine darkness of my mass
is worth only stone for you.
On this hazily sun-lit winter noon,
The hounds are around me,
My murder has been sanctioned
by the state authorities!
For decades I stood for both nature and man,
During those beautiful days
this road was a simple friend
leading to common journeys and destinations,
Now it becomes a foe and highway
leading to some illustrious ray,
And I become redundant old,
standing in the way of progress
with my few square-feet of foot-hold.
If a healthy mass like me is no life;
no more than a mile-stone,
I hope to tell my murder story
till the axes, scythes and saws
send my tiniest of branches to be turned to ashes.
We trees never wince with pain
as your axes spray around chips of our flesh,
I understand we had equal rights
till mankind was just part of nature,
Now this saw going deeper and deeper
into my bloodless guts,
reminds me of our inevitable fate,–
Every tree on earth now has a deadly date
with the greedy most, treacherous and unforgiving mate.
They know that I’m massive and big,
So they are afraid of my fall,
Haa! The cowards!
They don’t know, while they rob me
of my few square feet of space on earth,
My saplings are still doling out oxygen
under this winter sun,
Even my murder can’t change me
because I’m helpless due to my nature.
Now the saw has gone sufficiently deep,
And I get some signs of that eternal sleep,
I feel some unbearable pain in my painless mass,
For death is death after all,
Hope you will understand!
Like hangman’s noose, thick hemp ropes
are tied to direct my fall,
From a safe distance, the tractors pull
to bring down this wooden bull,
And now I feel the pain
as cleavage breaks through that portion
still holding me to my mother earth,
From softest saplings to rock hard tissues
my whole body is panicked,
Saplings are crying like purely innocent children,
Hardest of trunk tissues are shamelessly crying
like battle hard, handsome soldiers after losing a battle,
But who cares!
This big snapping sound is my death cry,
And I fall with a thud,
Yes, man you win,
I’m dead before I thought I will!
SPRING SEEDS
⋯and now the April has also gone,
Where are the seeds that I’d sown?
Like a ploughman I worked
in the summer almost melting bones,
Removed the stones,
Rattled which the spirit like someone
caught in desert’s sandy moans.
Then during winter my toil lit up a bonfire
amidst blinding blizzards and nature’s icy deeds,
These were my spring seeds,
embedded, impregnated in earth through my earthy deeds,
Spring seeds meant to
conceive, germinate, grow, ripe, flower and fructify,
But the spring came and went with a sad sigh,
Sorrows in my barren fields hit another high,
My spring seeds thus lost,
And me the farmer standing forlorn
without that harvest of which I used to boast,
Now the scorching May sun
beats down the dusty land with a fiery pun,
Peasant and his field thus stand mute,
Almost complete has’n the plunder and loot,
To gallows was sent my crop,
The hangman just mechanically pulled
the handle at the hanky’s drop,
Efforts’ dead body hangs from that noose,
And even the last strains of
faith, will power and hope getting loose.
People say that too much is my browbeat,
‘Why not clear another stony plot
to get something to eat?’
Perhaps they don’t realize
the blind, illogical passion’s treatise
which I wrote over stones with a pure soul,
Impractical, insane I stand out
with cracks and brain’s hole,
How could I expect fruits from this very plot?
And now I stare at the nullifying dot,
The desert storm meanwhile hisses with its lust hot,
Seeds have most probably been killed,
Aah, with amazing precision
the Goddess of infertility drilled!
While the songs of my fertile efforts in a chorus trilled,
But She has’n successful in its swipe,
Its blinding gung-ho and macabrous hype,
Lolloping its greedy tongue to
dejuice and deflower everything ripe,
Now I lay my back against a
hard, hot, unshaded rock,
My weariness, fatigue and torture
put me in a sleepy dock,
In that short uneasy sleep
I get some relief from the pain of this injury deep,
A luxuriant crop I see in my dream
and nearby gurgling goes a stream.
The Invisible, Untouched Debris
A painful churning goes on
in the deep, deep recesses mine,
Outwardly I manage to look well and fine.
On my skin sweat beads shine,
These tiny outpours of my desperation
are the struggling vestiges of battles
that I failed to win.
There is a salty sea of sufferings inside,
which the clothing and the mask hide,–
The sea of tears accumulated from yores,
Here mournful, tragic waves strike
the forlorn sand on gloomy shores,
There were deep, hollow pits and spaces
that could have’n easily filled up with
sweet freshwaters and lifeful braces,
But that wasn’t to be,
Rather the tears of endless traumas
made up the sorrowful sea,
Outwardly I just tread on the ground,
And even try to dance
to the social puppetry and civilized sound,
But in the deep recesses of the sea of my being
sharks shred the flesh like the bloodiest of hound,
Thousands of leeches suck the soul’s blood,
And the salty sea gets another torrential flood,
Surrounded by such deadly gloomy waters,
My being’s lofty peaks
shudder with protesting shrieks,
In those vales, precipitation born of miseries
sends down dark showers,
Creating mudslides and breaking stones
from the lofty towers,
Deep echoes of this sea’s triumphant storms
go rumbling through the inner being,
Rains, floods, earthquakes
storm the soul’s citadel,
Their combined fury unleashes mud and sleaze,
Carries which the ensnaring breeze
towards the salty sea of gloom,
Even though outwardly I manage to
keep up some bloom,
But the tremors from inside
reach new high day by day,
And the afraid soul runs helter-skelter
to find some solacing ray
that might say
a valiant nay
to the horrible avalanche pouncing on my soul,
But unmindfully the rocks of
my ideas and principles fatally slide,
and painfully the debris glide
towards the salty sea.
If the erosion from inside
goes on like this,
while I try to maintain the appearance
worth a lady’s kiss,
Then it will leave a huge
cavern overlooking the sea,
Collapse it will then,
And that shiny façade and that wren
will crash with its glittering,
broken eyeglasses still facing the sky,
With the last imprint of final worldly
shot with a cry,
What difference will it make then?
Perhaps, people will still
shed tears over the shiny shell,
And muse,
‘He didn’t die as a broken man.
He was as starry as anyone can.’
Their analysis will just
mull over the debris shiny,
But nobody will give solace
to the agonic corrosion going inside,
Because those who couldn’t
see it while I was alive,
How can they now
when I take the final dive?
Obituary lines will be written
on those broken shiny shards;–
Farcical symbols of my worldly struggle
and puny success,
While the real struggle
thousand times valorous remains unsung,
For it lies scattered at the lowest rung,
What foolhardiness!
Soul’s sanctum-sanctorium
remains in deadly pals,
while they kiss only the temple’s
outer walls.
Golden Noose
With that invisible love story
tied with an unseen cord
to my tightly sewn lips,
Let me kiss the last drops of her memory
from the cup still brimming
with her image.
The last spiritual door
opening finally for His light,
Preparing for something more,
somewhere in some other world and form,
Where down the distanceless
space-time continuum
lies the timeless face of an
untold, unrequited love tale.
The tiny waves of breathing
can now no longer carry the boat of life,
Last moment’s stormy seizure
quickly subdues the feeble efforts to stay afloat,
And down goes the body,
Hanged by the cord
of a painful love story that was never told.
The Defeated King
The night was very long
and all moments thronged
with frustration, angst and despair,
The darkest faces yelled for anyone to dare.
Like a terribly lynched mule
sluggered away the day
without bringing a new ray,
Now, the night’s long sinewy hairs
cast ghastly shadow over the battlefield lost,
And battle scars get bandaged with frost.
A cumbersome long-long day
when his efforts got butchered
by some mysterious force’s riotous ray,
Now stars shine on darkness’ face;
Like tiny lamps they twinkle from
some fallen hero’s mace
and point to hope and smile
somewhere still holding onto tiniest of trace,
Their poking raylets brace
the frozen blood around scars,
‘The day will come’, they say,
‘and the next sun will light up a new ray!’
‘You will then forget these days dark
and still fearsome nights with a terrible hark!’
The wounded, handsome soldier’s hands
clenched a fistful of earth all blood-soiled,
There were more moments to be toiled,
Somewhere fire in his blood still boiled,
The enemy’ll return in a couple of hours,
‘Let me see how many heads my club covers!’
For the mace handle his hands fumbled,
But once again his feet stumbled
and he fell down,
But that effort’s majesty shone on his face,
Succumbed he then to his injuries and died,
Aha! Immortal was that last shot of pride,
It was found frozen on his face
when the victorious hound
arrived later on the trophy’s trace.
Invisible Scars
Too often I’ve stumbled, staggered
and fallen headlong,
Cuts and wounds mercilessly throng
the bodily stranglehold mine,
Deep fissures reach
where the soul’s diamonds shine;
Injuries so deep—
Aaah! Invisible, invincible dragnet’s richest reap.
Nobody sees the gaping holes in my spirit,
Here the destiny’s blind force
so venomously hit!
God! Why is it that deepest scars
are invisible to the society’s eyes?
Why remain unnoticed
cuts and wounds of such mammoth size?
Injuries like deepest trenches on sea’s bosom,
Above on the surface
the worldly water waves normally,
Below the scars lurk dreadfully
and darkest of dark roam
in the gloomy, depthless womb.
I, the perpetual peasant,
Always engaged in the sacred labor duty,
While the foe doing
its undoing spadework continuously,
Its ensnaring checkerwork grinning cunningly,
I meanwhile rise up again
to get some littlest bit of gain,
Alas, my mountainously bulky efforts
only but go haywire!
Not even a little mice I find,
And sorrowfully the tiny lamp goes blind,
The invisible scars
get enlarged and multiplied, of course,
But not even a single eye
sees the bloody bath and the loss!
Last Hideout
Here I sit in my cold, secluded corner
and take stock of the
pleasant profanities scattered around,
The world basking in its
majestic, unholy mundanities,
while the unhindered morality singing unbound.
The corner with its stagnant stench
and mucking air;
where my tortured holy-self lie,
Cruelly contriving world meanwhile tempts,
‘Why thou become the fodder of game fair?
Son, now have an unfair try!’
‘Succeed thou will,
the moment thou unshackle
thyself of poor righteousness!
This load will always find you a loser,
for too old is now the history of uprightness!’
And I shiver and snivel
in my little, dark hole
to keep the little flicker going,
The dark-race however gets
perpetually stormy and cries,
‘Let’s us see! How long you’ll keep rowing?’
Too small is the boat which carries me
across this deadly sea,
Big waves pound from all sides
and each crest devilishly neigh.
How foolish of me
not to surrender to the cozy
seduction by the compromising short-cut!
Cut after cut they give me
to break open my little hutment
whose wispy door is bravely shut.
Passes as the time,
graver still become the urgency to
drag me out of my hiding hole,
Too far and wide is the
swash of ‘only feasible game’
in which all must play a survival role.
God! Let me see how long I can cling
to my altar-like holy den,
But times are really dark
and the moment will surely come,
The little lamp will go blind then⋯
Birth
This tiny flower
becoming a fruit;–
Transformation of this
once petalous soot:
Its beauty and color
now turning into a tiny vase,
Old flower and the infant fruit
transmixing for nature’s laws.
Flower’s beauty being sacrificed
at the fruity altar,
The Goddess of fruits
watches this pleasant hatching from far,
She muses with a midwifery glee,
Sings then a playful lullaby for the
fruitling in the flower’s womb,
Oh! How glittery is this little
juicy lad in the petalous tomb.
So, the soft flowery curls
take a hard, fruity mould,
The petals bold
vanish into juicy, hard fold.
Love Storm
When love smiles like a rose,
some famished heart gets a dose,
Cupid’s arrow breaks the shackles
and that unemotional, hard crust crackles.
A pumping machine is heart no longer,
as the softest turbulence gets stormily stronger,
Love-storm knocks at the rugged coastline,
There for a new dawn, several suns shine.
The Love like a flower
sways to sizzling dew-shower,
Dew-drenched, a new life sizzles,
and moments rejuvenate in precious drizzle.
The heart dancing in the rain,
Pleasant madness; nothing to gain!
Sheer abundance of all giving,
Gain-lorn is no longer the being.
Heart’s orchard in full bloom,
Archaic-old now seems that gloom,
Brightly starry is the night,
Self-esteem soars to loftiest height,
And when the storm ebbs out,
like a panicked fish heart’s angels shout,
‘Oh, thou uncertain tide,
when will thou again arrive with thy sweep wide?’
The Game
How hard and how long
I take to reach near
the summit of my hardworked hill,
All battered and bruised,
final steps I still try,
Above, the peak brags its highness,
while the caterpillar’s soul doth cry:
‘Yonder, still uphill sweet cups lie!’
My eyes ogle at the peak,
And heart ready to render
a full-throated victorious shriek,
But eyes then see
the hard taskmaster’s glee,
Awaits who there to teach
that solacing sips are still out of reach.
Oh! Its quick ascendancies!
Always galloping ahead
with mammoth mirth in hand,
It is always the first
to quench its thirst
from the cup at the crest,
Then uproariously beats its breast:
‘There lies another one!
Pal, let’s get promptly begun!’
Oofs, its insatiable thirst!
It claims exulting victory every time,
And I get my weeping, mediocre rhyme.
1412TH Toy
So they are clapping for their achievement!
They are celebrating the 1412th tiger in this land
where my forefather roamed to make legends.
But before they take all the credit
for saving my species,
Let me—a mere skinny kitten—clarify:
A tiger born in a zoo is no tiger!
An animal opening its eyes for the first time
among self-vaunting humans is no animal,
It’s a mere flesh and blood toy
conceived by semi-dark conscience
and mechanical techniques.
No man! No I’m no tiger!
I’m just a tiny means to allow you mighty
people to get some solace,
The genes in me have been broken
through your rampages across my lands,
You people know me as a mighty
hunter galloping after my prey,
And here in the confines of this cage
My parents forgot that they were tigers,
Your cages just define we poor animals
Just as poor dependents,
The showcase items for your kids,
To be hooted at,
To be laughed at,
To be mocked at,
No man no! I am no tiger!
I’m just a proof of your outgrowing
your shoes,
What tiger is a tiger that is tame,
It hangs down its tail in shame,
Yes man, you win!
And I bear the burden of being a tiger,
even though my genes have been changed!
Kiss of Death
Life! My purest kisses on your lips
were the honest stamps of
genuine love and loyalty,
I was in supremely pure love,
Even though my delicate, soft smooches
were returned by you as bleeding bites,
I always smiled,
ascending higher and higher to loftiest delights.
Each moment found me unprecedently crazy,
infatuated and caught in the sweet
tentacles of unreined, unrestrained love,
You but always bit back more viciously,
Oh thou heartless seductress!
Taking the poison as sweetest honey,
with bleeding lips I always smiled,
Cuts after cuts you gave,
even before the previous blood dried.
You only sucked,
I just gave rosy hues to you,
and you returned deadly blue,
Still smile and sweetness never
left my bloody lips,
How crazily I shed those lifeful drips!
Blindly I surrendered my being before you,
And you tricked me,
for I always saw life in that deadly hue.
Greedily gasping with venomous sighs and winner’s hiss,
You now approach with that final kiss
to deprive me of final breaths,
Life! Aren’t you ashamed of cheating someone
who perhaps loved you the most?
Flying Kiss
In these slumberous vales
and shy, silent dales,
My spirit escapes the clutch-hold
of my confined being,
And ecstatically saunters away
to those snow-melting peaks,
where the March sun breastfeeds
many a tiny rivulets,
Like a helpless, rooted palm,
I assuage myself and put balm
on my constricted conscience,
Cold sighs I vent out,
as the pinnacled majesty winks
from far with a seductive pout,
And my forlorn spirit runs amuck
and flies to kiss those
coyly surrendering, shining crystals,–
Away, away where rock’s snobby
ego melts maternally!
A Plump Hatch, and Tiny Catch
The day rose
after that stand-still, dark pause,
Like an infant’s mysterious muse,
pinkish horizon took shape
with dreams huge.
Warmth and light fastly spread,
Light prevailed and darkness retreated
with an uncharacteristic dread,
Shadows first lengthened
and then shrank to become bold;
clung firmly to get noontime foothold.
With crowning majesty,
the moments moved towards the zenith,
Everything warmed for brightest glory,
With a firmly straight venture
written was that glorious story,
Roses, roses all the way,
Endless seemed that ray,
Meanwhile the pendulum
swung the other way,
During the lazy afternoon’s lugubrious sway,
shadows silently crept away,
In that slumberous silence,
many a leaves gave away
to the titillating pulls of
mother earth’s gravity song,
Shadows panicked and slowly-slowly
ebbed away to become long,
The other horizon now crimson and red,
It sprayed colors sad,
Lolloping tongues of its funeral fury,
firmed up like death sentencing jury,
Tired voices, slow steps, ebbing strength:
The day that had risen
with such pomp and show,
It was wiped away after that
feeble twilighty ‘no’ .
Criminal Moment
There were times
and there would be times,
But endless is the moment
that still chimes
with the evil song and music of a crime,
A crime when it plucked a life
like a thief sneaking away with last breath
amidst heartbeats missing their mark
imperiled by that chaos and strife.
I bear witness against that murderous moment,
when I was left fatherless and
put on an unprotected plane like never before,
Like a boatman cast away
countless treacherous miles from the shore;
Like a pariah face
Bumping against a slammed, shut door.
No a fatherless being can’t be
the same anymore,
Moments will come
and moments will go,
But the steely vessel of my being
is almost cut to depth by that perilous hoe.
Betrayal
Life! You are plainly a treacherous friend,
He loved you more than himself,
Nurtured you with the most potent,
pious and vigorous juices of innocent childhood;
Fattened thy fibers
with the impassioned heartbeats of youth;
Increased the aura around your hallowed head
through graceful wisdom and talks of ripening age.
He made you the charming queen of his dreams,
With decades of love and toil,
he prepared a glittering palace for you,
And then you eloped,
Eloped with dark-winged shadows of death,
You crazy one!
Right from the start you were in
blind love with the angels of death.
Yet all he did was to love you,
Love you from the core of his soul.
Blossomed he a flower
that was always love-lorn for the
ghastly clutch from the other world,
Now, here lies your lover’s corpse
and you make merry with your evil playmate,
hidden in the darkest chambers.
Spring Rose
Spring rose!
Pampered by nights’ dewy dose
your full-lipped pout
invites stingy, sucking bites
from black bee, the lout!
You but mind it not
and give fresh flashes and fragrant shot,
Your lover’s impassioned gasps hot,
shake you up like a storm tossing a boat,
You but still smile,
Pure, unstinted, without any guile!
You have the softest, petalous lips,
And like a rapist he just sips
the feminine juices of your blood,
You rosy red and he black,
His crazy, blind passion lets loose a flood,
His darkish, sweating, contorted face,
How murderously he responds
to your innocent, breezy grace!
Greedily he goes on,
Those fiery grunts, subduing your softest moan,
And reaching the dangerous peaks
where his unquenchable thirst shrieks,
The plunderer flies away!
Away! Where more fresh faces sway,
You but still smile,
His love bites prominent on your lovely face,
Aha, undefeatable is this grace!
Vandalized Rose
Full moon night and this pond!
The sky flaunts its full-faced beauty,
The pond too kisses
the mirage, the reflection!
Love-lorn, the gentlest waves
caress the lovely, tricky mirage,
Ducks quack!
From the shore-side bushes
a bird suddenly goes for a night song,
With expert ease
and like nimblest breeze
suddenly a pack of night-fliers arrives,
And the hawks go for a hearty feast,
for every hungry belly is a beast,
Sharp talons, strong beaks, sturdy wings,
The air with pugnacity sings,
They swoop down on the soft delicacies
enjoying the soft bedspread on ripply waves,
That lotus too bears a talon scar,
The birds of prey swoop down for one-sided war,
Soft flesh; rock hard claws,
How easily soft life’s skin saws!
There is blood, noise and shrieks,
This softest of solitude creaks
And breaks down in the tight, lusty embrace of the storm,
A piece of black cloud takes the milky full-face
in its dark, mating brace,
There is darkness, blood, bites and noise,
Those dreamful moments lost of their poise!
Now, the oblivious cloud,
free of its impassioned hinges,
flies away, surrendered to the winds,
The sad beauty smiles again,
And throws its tired, tamed milkiness
on this torn serenity and pause,
lying here like a vandalized rose!
Illustrious Sun
He was great in his own ways,
A small but substantial sun
brilliantly scattering its rays
across his being’s orbit,
We the planets majestically circling,
Sourced by him and always in debit,
He was fiery
and spun on his axis with copious fury,
His eyes had dreams,
Dreams of all of us becoming stars,
But fate was always at wars,
In the infinite and mysterious cosmic gloom
disposals were always in full bloom,
He and the family spun,
The supreme intelligence had pun for a fun.
We had our fire storms
and titillating, exciting bumps and smooth rides
in our small cozy orbits,
The burning core of his being
sucked fuel from the happiness born of
big dreams of his planets becoming stars,
But dreams are what?
May be they are the pyres in disguise!
In his own fire he collapsed,
From a distance the chunks of his own body
saw him being consumed by the same fiery tongues
that had zealously chorused his dreams,
There was an explosion,
His pieces were blown into
the depthless void of eternity,
And we the plants,
Shook, sobbed, stopped;
fatherless in our cradling orbits,
With horror and sorrow
we watched the cataclysmic fire,
Then helplessly driven by cosmic forces,
we were carried ahead by time’s horses.
A Moment Lives, Dies, Becomes Immortal
A dead mouse lies,
Forlornly the April air sighs,
Water in a nearby puddle dries,
A dung-beetle hurriedly tries
to roll its trophy; take home as pies.
There on the infinite, blue calm of the skies,
an eagle air-dives for ecstatic highs,
With death, decay and destruction,
its hunter instinct vies,
From the faded, sunburnt petals of that flower,
the short spring says byes.
Lower and lower the hunter comes,
It eyes the humble measles
a former life has still to offer,
Driven by the expert dynamics of its airy skill,
It goes for the carcass’ kill,
Triumphantly it ascends,
The trophy held in its talons,
A sparrow chirps as if crying of murder,
Another bird sounds applauding,
A curious mix:
The nature in qualityless, impersonal fluid.
Unseenly a chapter is closed,
The slumberous panorama, meanwhile, dozed.
Tryst with Destiny
To be popular and great
is the biggest bait,
So many of us miss the charming date
to get a favorable alliance
between hard work and fate,
Alas but its always too late
by the time journey comes to a sudden halt,
The bubble then bursts,
Names and dates turn to ashes,
Unconcerned world goes on
as usual with pompous dashes,
As soon as you become past,
Redundant thy memories turn really fast,
Still we surrender to the bait,
May be its just our inevitable, humble fate.
Lip-kissed Lies
Your lip-kissed lies are
the diamonds of truth for me,
Forgive me my blindness;
Lost in your dream, reality I cannot see!
The Princess
Many-many full moons ago,
There was a beautiful princess
in a tiny, paradisiacal hill state,
Surrounded by nature’s blooms great
her beauty was ever-touching new scales,
Nature spread across far-flung wild trails
sang songs of her majestic beauty,
Slowly-slowly it did its duty
to spread around the tales of her charms,
For miles and miles
her fame could measure distance in arms,
Reached it the ears of a prince far,
whose kingdom had’n at war
with her father’s,
And lo! Enough bravado this prince gathers
to set out to look at that famed face,
Seemed he then a futile chaser
running after destiny in a tragic race,
Lovely wild flowers kept on giving her trace,
Untamed breeze came to brace
his young heart and brave, soldierly chest,
Moved he ahead without rest,
After months-long sufferings in the ravines,
he found himself where her star shines,
Wandered he in her kingdom in impersonation,
for so antagonistic was the air in this nation.
Her fame spread more from the mouth’s word,
Too precious was this bird
to be ogled by too many eyes,
So desperately he tries
to give solace to his aching eyes,
His pining heart gave suffering, cold sighs,
Then chance showered its bloom
and gone was his heart’s gloom,
It was a full moon night
and moon was lit at its fairest bright,
The princess went for a boat ride
in the marvelously calm lake,
His heart shook with a thunderous heart-quake
as he stealthily waited in the shoreline foliage,
Every passing moment gave a new courage,
He was just above
the princess’ safe, secret bathing ghat of marble sleek,
This white monument gleamed
exotically in the panorama bleak,
Arrived her boat then with her giggling maidens,
His heart was now achingly struggling
against his broad chest,
In filigreed finery she was dressed,
In silent majesty she put her adorable feet
on the gleaming, cool facade by the waterside,
Waves rippled through him with a coquettish chide,
Her hallowed figure glowed distinctly
among her helping ladies,
And before he could think anything,
stony become his whole being,
Her finery no longer covered
her exquisitively carved flesh curves,
That naked fairy jammed his nerves,
That statuesque glow of marble on her skin soft,–
Aha that real life sculpture of
utmost sensuality and symmetry aloft!
Moon-rays deflected off her curves
and panting, pining reached his eyes,
Every moment her moon-sculpted body
acquired new vistas and highs,
Her flowing tresses on her naked back
lustily shook to her head’s gentle gyrations,
He couldn’t see her face clearly,
but he heard word spoken with mythic softness,
He was, but, dying to see her face,
so closer and closer he came
to fulfill his young heart’s only aim,
Alas! He was noticed by her female arm-guards,
Quickly their masculined arms hissed,
Surrounded by trained females
he’d decent chances of escape through a fight,
But how could he blot this night
by testing against females his skill,
Strong ladies advanced on him
with the chances to kill,
Caught he was in this way,
When the next sun came with its curious ray,
his misadventure’s word got around,
Shook then her father’s throne’s ground.
It was the enemy’s unforgivable crime,
So sentenced he was to death at his youth’s prime,
But kingdoms have inviolable laws,
so his royal blood deserved
the fulfillment of a last wish,
Then how could he miss
the last chance to see her face,
So request he an eye-full brace
of her magical features,
God! Why thou create such bewitching creatures?
He was thus led to the courtyard
below her balcony ornate,
Her sad eyes looked at him without any hate,
The prince too was no less on handsome scale,
On his perfect features a smile loomed pale,
The princess knew that her face had’n the bait,
which could soon seal this life’s fate,
Thus fell she at her father’s feet
with an utmost, painful entreat,
‘Father it was no fault of his,
but is all due to my well-thought kiss,
Stranger this prince is not,
for your daughter secretively tied the knot,
And if you kill him
sorrows and sins would cross ocean’s brim,
A father would widow his daughter,
For ages known will be this slaughter,
And if thou still send him to gallows,
certaily another death bellows’.
How could the King let this
darling flower wither away!
So smiled on many fates a new ray,
They were ceremoniously married,
Decades-old animosity was buried,
What beautiful outcome of her wise, petalous step,–
For herself marital bliss
and for two states a friendly kiss!
The Sage
Many-many years ago,
A sage was meditating
on a Himalayan peak,
Majestic dales and solitary vales
around all aglow with divine streak,
Though the bird chirped songs
and rain poured down in throngs;
In winters, icy cold storms blew
and snow around and over him glew;
In autumn wind-fallen leaves
sailed down with slumberous tumble,
and fruits ripe fell proudly,
adventurously for a juicy pleasant crumble;
In spring, wild flowers fully unfurled
their fragrance and smile,
and honey-bees engaged in
down-to-dusk toil;
Summer’s warm days sprayed
Desultory, eerie uneasiness around,
And cool nights proudly embraced
this son with soul heaven-bound,
But he never changed
from his meditative path.
Then on an autumn full-moon night,
A fairy was flying amid milky delight,
Her maidenly circles in air
found the seer in sight,
But even her laughter
and the rustle of her
unbelievably soft dress failed to
break the spell of engrossed sage,
His exquisitely masculine physique and personage,
Created tempted sparks on her magic stick,
She tried all juicily leering feminal trick,
But her desire-lorn curves in air
Brought only pearly tears in those eyes fair,
Helplessly she came down,
and sat in front of him
with those rose-red lips pursed in a
heart-breaking frown,
Her nymphatic eyes were lost
in the handsome sculptural face,
On it there was not a single worldly trace,
Mesmerized!
She lost the sense of night’s flight!
Next day!
The sun rose with full earthly delight,
Her eyes ogled at it terrified,
The hope to return to her realm died,
She’d broken the law of her place,
by not returning the same night
after that brief terrestrial, nocturnal brace,
The realization crashed at her
like a thunderbolt!
Her utmostly sensuous bare shoulders
heaved under the tremors of this fault,
A heart-rending shriek escaped her throat,
And serenely flowing meditative phase
met this sinful, fullstopping dot,
His communion with the divinity broken,
and his aeonically closed eyes opened,
Even flora-fauna realized
something terrible had happened,
His fiercely burning eyes
stared at the petalous flower in sobs and sighs,
Her large flooded eyes pleaded for mercy,
But fire in his eyes was unforgivingly cursey,
His fabric of serenity was torn,
He thundered,
‘Become an ugly bush of thorn!’
Mowed down by the spell off his cursing energy,
an ugly bush stood in place of those
beautiful limbs that kissed the air,
All shaken and ravaged he left the place,
A thorn branch, meanwhile, got entangled
in his loin cloth
as if for some meek, pleading brace.
The Parrot and the Old Sparrow
After a long, hard, heavy, wearisome journey
at sun down,
its will a bit cast down
and temper with a little frown,
The parrot with wings tired,
its beautiful colours all mired
in hard journey’s perspiration
landed on a branch.
Winter was at its peak,
And anxious, drooping, panting was the beak,
With every minute saffron slanting rays
were melting into misty bays,
Cold was slowly creeping up
and its pinch was becoming bold
to take everything in its hold,
With sad eyes it ogled at the setting sun,
Too long and taxing had’n the run
and long forgotten was the flight’s fun,
(Where was that fleeting, winged pun?)
With each mile the journey had become a drag
and vigour and energy that uplifted him with a brag
were now dumped in some pit,
Last ounce of strength was then hit,
But still he had far to go,
while his height became continuously low,
Before the eventuality did he bow
and anchored his feathery weight
upon a branch’s restful bait,
‘Merciless, frost-fanged will be the night,’
he thought to his misery’s delight,
As the warmth vapoured off his body,
Shudder came over him with incremental ease,
Anxiously he ruffled his feathers
as if to loosen cold night’s siege,
Where to spend the night
he thought from depression’s highest heights,
Suddenness of sunset made him realize
the possible utility of the remaining time,
And he looked around like the
feeble truth emanating from a sad rhyme,
For miles long everything appeared
surrendered to the twilight’s imminent pal,
And all wood appeared solid and creviceless;
without that niche which is a bird’s hall,
Before his despair and agony touched another peak,
he heard a muffled, breaking-free, old, juvenile shriek,
An old sparrow,
its grayish patches long under time’s harrow,
was seen bathing in a puddle,
Seeing him his senses went into a chilly huddle,
‘Hey, such a cold night in waiting!
Take care it does not become death’s baiting!
Fellow, you must take care
and must not extend your dare
to the extent of your doom!’
The sparrow squeaked and shrieked with zoom,
‘My old coat has enough room
for the water to turn vapours
and shun and beat death’s creepers!’
With his saggy, drenched feathering
the sparrow flew to him for a hearing,
And the visitor’s problem was told,
Said the sparrow becoming gracious and bold,
‘Dear, I have no family
and live in a banyan crevice,
Come with me, I’m at your service!’
It was a horribly chilly night,
No light for miles to sight,
Chilly rainstorm beat against the tree
to uproot the shackles and set it free,
But the tree was strong,
It withstood the deathly throng.
‘I live here all alone,
Though reminiscences sometimes come to moan
over my beautiful, active past,
Darted when I fast
and voowed damsel sparrows with finesse,
Raised families as the cost for my instinct’s ecstasies,
Then age caught with me,
Now eyes no longer see
the beauties of this world around,
but sense the death’s bloodthirsty hound.
Still I live happily as the tail-end
of that great life lived,
Enjoyed I the choices that fate sieved,
Now, I have to pickup and play
among those things and chaff discarded
which remain unwanted above
as fine particles trickle below,
Steadily this discarded heap grew
While I enjoyed the sieve’s fine brew,
Now I roll like a kid in that rubble of past
which was once waylaid by youth’s blast,
It now becomes the precious wealth
of my old age,
Shiny becomes the rage in this haze,
There are no takers for it now,
So I enjoy it all alone
without that competition’s drone,
Happily I’m all alone with my age old,
And try even to become bold
against this winter’s hold,
During youth I flew majestically high
To beat cold by my blood warmths,
But now wisdom swarmths,
And I still find ways
to brightly lit my days with these feeble rays,
In this cosy wood-hole of mine
Drunk I’m with my age’s vintage wine,
I know that I may not go out of this hole
to ride softly on time’s back at some dawn,
When mortality may pick up the pawn,
Leaving this old feathering engraved
in this very woody niche,
But that does not make me sick,
Because that sleep does not seem
different from the one that I now enjoy,
The pitcher of desire no longer exists,
Neither is it empty
so that I must have desires to have it full,
Nor it is full, so that I should browbeat
being afraid of losing it,
The sinews holding life to my body
have become impassive, senseless and bloodless,
They will not feel the pain of cleavage:
It will be just like an autumn leaf
being painlessly windblown into oblivion,
In this tepid existence of mine,
devoid of both heat and cold,
warmth and coolness prevail in some
pleasant, vague proportion,
Pleasure and pain seem to have lost their specificities:
Neither both exist, nor are they dead.
You are young and colourful!
How come you look so submissive and sad?
Have the conditions been so bad
to steal and rob all the real charm
and leave the colour on the feathers and soul
so dull and poor?’
The parrot spoke:
‘Though I am young
but the spirit seems to have sung
the last song of life,
Too much has been the pain and strife,
My spirit seems to have run dry now,
Though the colour on my feathers holds somehow,
When just a hatching, father was gone,
Grew I hearing mother’s moan,
The paternal sun thus never shone,
Still the biggest consolation was mother’s
caressing, preening, feeding beak,
Ate I fruits at love’s supreme-most peak,
As the sole nestling
I was fattened on her labours daylong,
And then went to sleep hearing her lullaby song,
Aha! Sweetest dreams came with a throng!
My whole existence was tethered
to that maternal pole,
The brightest, attractive-most star sole!
Under her great grooming,
colours on my feathering came bright,
Lavishly they flashed as I fluttered
them for my first flights,
Unbelievable was the pride and compassion
as her soaring soul’s maternal shades touched brightest heights,
In her eyes I saw a new light,
How marvelous was that sight!
Alas her incorruptible love of yore
was arrowed by fatality’s shot,
Again cupid’s love arrow came hot,
I became a past with negligence and rot,
She was now in another spring of love,–
Incipient love for the future in her womb,
I thus became an orphan
even though my parents lived,
After many cries and anguished aimless flights bereaved,
Life’s burden with my soft feathers I heaved,
Young and beautiful, flew I with
time’s oblivion and balm,
Intoxicating is such youth’s charm.
Inevitably I fell in love,
Heartfully I cooed my beautiful lady,
Those love-lorn days when heart
was ever ready to sing an ecstatic ditty,
Such a wealth was in my kitty,
So sweet, silent, mirthful, unencumbering
were those acceptances of nuptial responsibilities,
Those watchful, eager searches for niches
in trunks for our nest,
Tirelessly we wandered around for the best,
Guided by love’s brace
we found our place,
In this tiny hole
nothing else but we had all the role,
Our identities melted into each other,
How proud was I when I became father,
I’ll not become like my parents, I thought,
I will not be ensnared like they were caught,
So I clung to my possessions with pride,
But the inevitability came with a chide,
In full bloom of youth and colours
all of my brood flew away,
My lady-bird came to be infatuated
under someone’s cooing sway,
It was another fine day
when she bade adieu and flew away,
I embodied all forlornness,
All my loss was glaring in my face
monstrously unremedied,
I decided to leave that place,
And my sulking wings did brace
to take up the longest possible flight
from the place where such unfaithfulness abound,
So flew I as if pursued by
fearsome-most flying hound,
For many days I have been flying
with my soul aching and wings crying,
Why should we enter into something
and love somebody so completely,
if it is bound to gutters,
Isn’t all such temporary dives
into life all banal,
Aren’t we cogs in the hands of those
inevitable, unstoppable processes?
The old sparrow, full of wisdom,
Undisputed king of his life’s kingdom,
Spoke with the solace and simplification of age,
When youth’s dilemmas no longer
haunt with their pinch and rage,
The sparrow said:
‘Its just like a flower ruing
and weeping over other blooms,
because its beauty will not last forever
and will go to glooms,
Dear, it’s not we who are the ends,
Rather the beautiful phenomena like
love, marriage, procreation that decide the trends,
We are just means to these
beautiful ends and destinations,
So, become a tool uncomplaining
tilling earth without any expectations,
It is not that love exists
because we do love someone,
Love is the primordial sea without any
limits of space, time and individualities,
It is we who sweeten a few
moments of life with it,
till the chaotic, destructible existences get hit,
Do we procreate to cling to procreation life long?
No! We are made to procreate
to become unselfish means for the propagation,
for handing over the batons,
to perpetuate these beautiful phenomena of
love and relationships,
We do not leave behind an offspring,
but a possible instrument
which might come in handy for
the sustenance and survival of
those very precious moments
that got us the taste of love, happiness
and contentment at their best,
And if we recognize that
then our spirit gets a solacing rest,
If not,
then caught in the web of selfish net,
we acrimoniously bet
that I completely loved her
and became the cause of young lives,
It was I who caused that buzzing in those hives,
But such limitations would have been
meaningful had our survival unlimited,
or say our immortality was uninhibited,
But our journeys are to be ended,
So just cherish those moments which you tended,
If you cling to these phenomena
like they are your inheritance forever,
They become a drag around your neck,
making you a prisoner behind bars,
which you create around yourself,
Liberate fella! Liberate yourself!
Become a journeyman who understands that
young flowers on a plant,
young soots on a twig
do not lessen themselves or the spring,
in not ruing over their wispy autumnal dismantling,
for they inculcate phenomena,
They help perpetuate treeness
And they sustain the beautiful,
natural concepts of beauty and bloom,
They also served in a similar way,
made some new ray (though it is only light)
to decimate in some shadows, some gloom.’
The long fabric of the stormy night
was slowly lifted over their head,
Outside, stormy chilliness was fleeting
before a promising twilight,
Chances were there for a day bright,
Clouds parted from the face of sky,
The parrot’s spirits cut through the shadows
and soared high,
The old sparrow said:
‘The day today is warm and sunny,
The dawn promises sweet honey,
Youngman, I’m in hurry to come out of my hole
and play my chirpy role
in the beautiful stage set around,
My soft soufflés and feeble light in my eyes
are enough even for the down-hilly afternoon,
You but go high,
because the forenoon is there for you,
with its multihue,
Go, so that you do not rue over
the day aimlessly lost,
Do justice to the old spirit of thy host,
Take some lesson from my soft feebleness
and the way I make a day out of my night.
Thanking him the visitor flew away
into those swathes of promise,
where new life, new love, new relationships
held sway!
Platonic Love-making
These are the offsprings
of our platonic love-making,
I leave them in the
safe confines of your womb.
Nurture them!
Bear the pain of carrying
these restless, crying babies
inside your beautiful, safe self.
I am a weak father,
and you a strong mother,
You will need to
learn to be painless,
Because these burning babies of mine
are the angry fires
of their father’s pyre.
The pyre in which the soft flesh
of heart burns days in and days out.
You have been making love on the
hellish bed of my pyre
in which my living self burns forever.
In the fiery cradle
you have to hatch these cubs
of a father gone to ashes.
You have to blossom
living flowers amidst this
smouldering heap of
bones, flesh and my soul!
Torrents of Love
An old orchard!
Swathed in the peaceful shades
of meditative trance,
Wise old trees,
Ripe fruits hanging languidly,
Solitary footpath covered with
pale fallen leaves,
Moments mating with timelessness,
Then suddenly a gust of free breeze!
Pining storm!
Ruffled leaves!
Sighing branches!
And the fruits ripened from ancient times,
Fell under the spell of
those majestic shoves
unleashed by the free wind!
*********
It was a cave!
Dark, dreary and cold!
And he was the yogi,
Immersed in an unending trance
impregnating silent, still moments.
Mossy, damp, dark!
Then a softly shining
raylet sneaked in!
Unleashed a storm of light!
It kissed the darkest,
inaccessible stony crevices,
Sucked out the lifeless
core of dispirited self.
Those wispily pining lips exhaled
love, life and spirit!
It was pleasant riot!
An effusive mayhem!
An exhilarating melting!
An exciting massacre!
Of freedom over bondage!
Of light over dark!
Of…………………………
***********
Summits stood proud,
Flaunting their rocky citadels,
We are the unconquerable
mountains they proclaimed,
A wild river came
with its riveting fury.
Its sharp, serpentine curves
let out throbbing, pulsating fury,
which cut through
the iron-hard rigidity.
Rocks gave in!
Summits after summits fell,
Their proud mass melting
in those sensuous swirls!
The river flew majestically
carrying boulders and sand
of those fallen soldiers who
challenged its majestic mirth.
************
Across the darkish cloud of my being,
You shine like a moon.
Milky……soft!
Beloved! You put this shining
signature on my being!
*********
Wild river!
Feel the sand that you carry
in your majestic swirls!
That’s me the proud mountain!
But that self was rocky and rigid,
Now I’m soft and cradled
in your gushing torrents!
*********
Majestic river,
Now I feel like a
particle of sand
in the sensuous swathes
of your gushing waters!
*********
In the pining silence of
frozen, dark hours,
a star spreads its mystic light
over a vacant heart.
Feminine raylets mate with
cold stones and impregnate
the boundless womb with
countless little stars.
The heart now becomes a galaxy,
Its self enlarged with a cosmic quotient
and profound peace spread
across its bosom!
*********
I am the moth
and I love my flame!
My fire!
But I feel the burning core of
the glow around which
I helplessly circle around!
I know that I cannot stop
the fire from burning,
So I throw myself in a fiery pit
to forget my dear flame’s burning plight!
I throw myself in a bigger fire
so that I forget myself
and my flame’s cries!
***********
I feel the shapeless mass of your love,
It creeps like a venomous reptile
through the garden of my heart,
It furiously hisses,
returning my softest kisses,
I bear the toxic marks
left on my skin by your fangs.
Still I carry your poisonous bulk
in the soft cradle of my heart.
Why?
Because I have no choice to hate you,
I can just love you!
**********
Love, I’d a cemented identity,
It was narrow, confined,
and constricted by the iron mask
put on my true face
by the society and circumstances.
The you walked in my life
with your pining majesty!
Your soft lips kissed the
the lifeless iron of my mask.
It melted in the softly smoldering
furnace of your pout!
The melting mask!
Its glowing fluid shining on my true face,
Beloved, you salvage my
real self from that imprisonment!
This real self may be good or bad
for the society,
For they judge by my identity old,
I but care not
because at least I see my true face!
**********
There was an ice block,
As old as anyone can recall!
It had its frigid polar existence.
In the deep recesses of
its cold, snowy being,
endless nights pined,
Icy cage around its soul!
Then a warmth suddenly sneaked in!
Mossy rigidities melted under
the spell of those nimble cuts
and the stony ice melted,
Unleashing countless rivulets
gushing over his melting landscape.
The cage was broken,
The spirit merged in the
melodious embrace of
those royal-hued rays.
He lost his old self
to merge in a larger identity.
It was rebirth!
It was liberation!
*************
The Stone and Dead Wood
Only a flower that has been allowed to blossom
knows the pleasures of caresses and kisses,
A stone but misses the breeze’s deft touches,
Into its hardened pores no raylet reaches,
Only a beautifully blossomed bough
adorned with new soots, saplings, leaves and
flowers
dances to the air’s singing tune,
A dry twig is all but immune to the storm’s
fury
and soft breeze’s flirtatious games.
I too now become a stone,
Put me in desert’s parched sand
and you will listen no moan,
Put me in the cosy confines of a luxurious
room,
And you will hear no heart’s boom,
Because all the juices vanished
during those nights of gloom.
A stone is a stone, is a stone, is a stone,
It has got its solid, concrete, lifeless
status alone,
Inside it the light never shone
and its ironed particles clumped inseparably
and forlorn.
Now, I too become a stone,
So let the storm blow,
It but cannot beat me further low,
Or let there be spring around,
Let the blossoms all panorama surround,
It but cannot change my face,
On my stony, statued lips no smile’s trace,
A stone statue now I become,
Expressionless and eternally mum,
But the stone statue is not dead,
Even though no calamity’s fear
roaming inside its ahead ,
and no pleasant expectation imprinted
anywhere in those cold stormy eyes,
But life somewhere deep down in its
solid chambers impassively sighs!
The Old Moon and the Imperiled Panorama
Pallid rays of this pale moon
had grown old so soon
during that half hour before the morning twilight,
It was a chilly, clear-skied, frosty, fogless January night,
The moon just a night away from fullness
had been exceptionally bright.
Nightlong, almost near the acme of its beauty
it had fulfilled its luminous duty,
Its milky beams had over-lighted
or overshadowed many a star,
It seemed eager to blot out
every stain and tainting tar,
Its beams falling like snows
upon sleeping horizon to the far,
The beautiful plains of this countryside
were lying in sleepy abundance
under the milky, chilly blanket with slumberous pride,
Everything was open to this celestial torch
with nothing to hide,
Cold-basking fields were huddled under their croppy sheets;
above was gloating the marvelous moon-shine,
Wheatlings stood bow-headed in reverence
with dewy crown fine,
Those marigold flowers were shining
unabashed under the milky showers,
The flowers happy about
losing their colors to the lover’s
mysterious smiles and its powers,
White pea flowers boasted their augmented whiteness,
Aha, such dolefully beneficent had been the brightness,
Even trees didn’t seem dark, indistinct specters
lurking shadowily over the horizon,
They appeared boats of foliage
floating in a misty sea,
In the background of such a brightly lit stage
even the sky seemed earth-lorn,
Through the milky transparency
its bluish-black veil lurked and through it
only the brightest stars smiled,
Scattered in the docile swathes of this
moon-baked countryside
villages seemed like mammoth ships silently
floating in the white wavy sea of light.
The moon was now well past its prime,
as if in shining too bright it had committed a crime,
Its setting quarter was in the north-west,
where the moony panorama had shone best,
And now it was moving towards rest,
Its strength and vigor had
dangerously plummeted down,
It now seemed ogling with a
meek, angry, anguished, helpless frown,
Its brightness was fastly fading out
And its yellowish pale rays
appeared eager for a wailing shout,
Glumly it was fading over those sandy undulation
carrying fields, furrows, crops on its gently unfolding dome,
Shiny fruits born of sweat-laden efforts in its sandy loam,
Accusingly the moon threw pale, protesting
shadows in south-east,
where urbanism, consumption and crass commercialist
blatantly had its seat commanding, metropolitan, capitalist feast,
The area had been earmarked
for some merciless development project,
It now being defined by a tiny space
bound in a map issued under
the state government’s gazetted notification,
What a mischief by the developmental hand!
Ever eager to bulldoze over nature
and turn it into uncomplaining, lifeless sand,
where lustrous stones will be built over nature’s burial,
Oofs! How heartless, wanton and depraved!
This pale, mournful moon
which was to set soon
into the misty gloom of twilight,
when a bright sun of consumerism and commerce
was ascending to its dawning height,
Those stalks of reeds
which sway in the cold breeze without greeds
seemed gently bidding the moon a good-bye,
Plummeted which further down
with a swollen face and a sigh,
Its pallid face grimacing with a painful nostalgia,
Its fading, setting rays tainted with deadly paleness;
Its oblong, teary face
now looked at this landscape,
Sleepy fields, warmthful wastes and fellow lands,
What mighty lessons have been taught here!
Aha! The farmer going to the fields with his gear,
Those long, painful, sometimes fruitless days
subsided when the sun’s eager rays
looking at the sweat’s trove
and the shirt’s hoe,
Where the long painful dark nights
arrived like the deeds accomplished,
Where the failures galore
but the hardwork never bored,
These failures defined success
as the losses stood just as a testimony to the profits,
Where hopes, aspirations and desires
varied with the changing hues of weather,
Farmer pawning everything
for the feathers in destiny’s crown,
Gold forms immaterially—
or minimally at the rate of a dust speck for a gram—
in the toiled soil brown,
All will be gone,
The moon was also dying with a moan,
This beautiful charming mystery of the landscape—
why hardest labor fetches minimal returns;
and why a bit less harder toil results in
a soul-satisfying speckful of return that seems wealthiest—
All this beautiful, aesthetic, curvy, circuiting strings;
Mysteries of landscape, of destiny,
of the see-saw battle between pleasure and pain,
between penury and sustainable as well as gluttonous gain,
between life and death:
All this will be lost for a direct, straight,
materially penetrating needle of surety,–
The commercial, unflinching and fixed
use of the landscape
in the form of concrete approach
where profits will boomerang
in proportion to the short-cuts;
Where compromised morality, ideology and conscience
will not face any ifs and buts;
Where there will not be any sweet scent
of labor that will be replaced by
the mechanical, greasy, muddy panting
of merciless competition and grab;
Where concrete blocks, flats will replace
these wonderous solitudes basking in and around;
Where sheaves, stalks, straw and reeds
will not sway to the breeze,
but blank, rigid, ironed tower
will stand mutely, inflexibly to the nature’s cooing calls.
Now the sorrowfully yellowing
death rattle of the setting time
was arriving with a chime.
There on the opposite horizon the day opened a window
to sneak a peek at the imperiled room of night,
Wispily, there was the twilight
with its mixed day-night delight,
In its mysterious lap,
the old moon met a slightly premature death,
Slumped as it feebly, freely
into the silvery sea of mist
standing still over the treeline.
Into this sea of death, the moon plunged,
And the twilight mischievously winked
with it unfaithful, teasing look asking favors
both from the night and the day,
The old moon was gone with its last ray,
And soon-to-be-doomed panorama,
unmindful of the fatality waiting,
came out of its dewy slumber,
A crane’s clarion call
cree….ked over its yawning breast,
The sun prepared to cast its first ray
and the fields got up for another hard farming day.
PS—Time of the poem: Half hour before the morning twilight of January 13, 2006 (Lohri); a day before the full moon day (Makar Sakranti, January 14).
Conversation with a Stranger
One day he asked someone hiding inside
the bodily façade like a fugitive,
‘Who are thou?
And why despite all the architectural negativities
people define thou positively?’
From it unreachable deep cellar
that someone raised it germ-free, disinfected voice,
‘I am the exiled one without choice,
While the bones and the flesh around me
in worldly spotlight rejoice,
I just take the ordained backseat
and watch the game of
birth, survival, struggle and death
played inside the castle on the shaking stage.
‘Don’t you feel perplexed by the passing days?’
Again the query was voiced,
‘Don’t you feel bad or ever you rejoiced?’.
It answered in a heavy, impassive tone,
‘Thy gimmick cannot shake my throne,
In the timeless shades I spend my time here
and when the castle will be broken
the death squad will find the door open,
Away I’ll fly with the figures of
deeds and misdeeds to the final court,
and if it is found short,
again I’ll be exiled.
It has been like this for thousands of years,
but I never rejoice at new birth
nor weep at death and shed tears,
My book lies in mighty primordial hands
and the player to settle cores changes with worldly trends,
I am the same forlorn, exiled child
of the majestic, mighty father,
It’s a never-ending game perhaps,
A tiny cog on the chessboard of creation,
Let’s see how high and mighty you make the castle,
Void will then gobble the tone and stars!’
Life
It is good that
we must cultivate dreams,
But most often
man’s uncertainty and destiny’s certainty screams
to shatter them to pieces.
We, though must hope
to evade the deadly anchor’s drop,
It is our futile, and not so futile, duty to
carry the life’s ship through heaving waves,
Wonderful! So many winds one braves!
Like smoldering coal in the hull
the passion ever craves,
The tiny flicker braves
against the mightiest swathes of stormy dark,
Storms, meanwhile, play against the timber strong,
In the wooden frame, but, many dreams throng,
And enjoy the journey, though, unfinishable and long!
Time’s worms eat the timber,
And stealthily doth eventuality limber,
to sneak through the destiny’s holes,
Longly piled up agony of the storm furiously rolls,
Carried thou so far and wide;
tattered are those soles.
We carry a mountainous bulk of hopes
encased in some ash and tear drops,
How meticulously time thrashes its harvest,–
From buxom ripe fruits
it reaps only peelings and stones,
From life’s crop
death reaps only the lifeless drop,
The majestic reaper
wants but few grains of soil
from all the juicy, lifeful, thriving tissues.
Still, we have to live
and we need to hope
till that final mop,
We know that the slate will be
cleaned up after all,
But we have to play our part in life’s ball,
For crammed will be the hall
tomorrow as well,
When in other bodies life will dwell.
Whom Should I Blame?
What we do and what we don’t,–
May be it is our choice,
Or maybe the hands of providence
guide or misguide?
Don’t know
whether it is our action’s rejoice,
or partisan fate’s prejudice?
Stealthily we try to ensure
the credit for the good falls in our own bag,
And if things go wrong
our stage-manages throng
to put all blame on the old hag.
Whatever we may think of ourselves,
We’re, but, the good- or bad-chanced kids
of the parental—earthly and other worldly—topsy-turvies,
If not so,
What person is there to wish
directly his doom;
Which life’s light voluntarily seeks
to be extinguished to gloom?
Still—less directly and more indirectly—many
against their will are brought to the wrong end,
Where the expected destination
does not exist not even its name;
Where the undoing swiper chuckles in all its fame,
And the half-willed animal
gets tethered to a peg for a chained tame,
Then follows the great game,
Many try to put each other to blame.
It is but a futile mockery,
Mere verbosity cannot bust
the secret of that trickery.
Ever-lorn to justify ourselves,
Many-a-time we put the blame
squarely on destiny’s elves,
saving just digestible morsels for ourselves,
And feed mammoth dose of
unwanted garbage to the uncomplaining lady.
What does it matter
if the blame lies with us
or it is borne by the
speeding wheel’s crush,
The loss, after all, is a loss,
Whoever is the causing boss.
To me, either both of us go scot free,
Or both are put under the accuser’s glee!
Victory
O thou poor lady of rich virtues
and big but spent eyes,
Thy rosy, soft, tempting lips
bear the blood-drawn scar of a
timeless, incessant, ever-greedy, lusty kiss;
On your fair cheek, tireless pursuer’s mouth;
Muck with saliva and pitiless, sadistic hiss;
Your majestic head,
heavily diamonded with uncountable,
innumerable, romping homes and wins;
Smartly, smirkly are tied under this crown,
thy mercilessly, heedlessly, heartlessly tresses
tampered by the fingers committing sins;
Thy firm, upright breasts have been
bobbed to excitement so many times
that stonily they no longer feel the lover’s lick,
They now feel the pathetic kid’s sickly blood-suckling.
I wonder after so many love-romps, intercourses,
love-makings, rapes, smotherings and sex games
—the victories—
what thou feel in the area of focus of such tireless passions!
Is it still the titillating sexual ecstasy,
or every endeavor is as repulsive
as the stealthy, predatory approach of a cowardly hyena?
Thou were once the Goddess of the realm of
commitment, excellence and diligent striving-forths,
But for thousands of years,
wars were lustily ravaged against thy beautiful body
and thy blissful skin was bombarded with
human passions and pestilence.
If the lofty destination all but becomes
Final steps of the mucking path,
Mud will definitely clung at its own apron,
As the stained devotee falls at its feet
after all those gutted baths,
And in its insurmountable helplessness
the Goddess of yore has been turned into a prostitute,
Though they still worship it in its old physical avatar,
But that soul banished and left destitute,
The herculean endeavors and efforts
of these throbbing masses
go on squeezing from all sides,
Thou in a tight corner,
Dressless and pitted against the wall;
Only that small, soft hand hides thy honor,
Thy Godly spirit now driven back to the
edge of a fearsome precipice,
Thou are no longer the Queen,
for thy own fate seems
worth decidable by the throw of a dice.
The poor lady now stands all exhausted;
Tattered, battered, bruised at the lowest tide,
The most coveted, prized virgin
now sulks like a dejuiced, unsuitable fruit
ready and waiting to give its stone and hide,
What can I get from thou O poor lady?
Thy treasure trove is all but famished now,
You are left with just
monstrously compromised Satan’s diamonds,
Even my beautifully courting pursuit
will seem a poor robbery and loot,
So here I step aside
from the blood- and treachery-rutted path,
and think of some long-drawn, circuitous path
that can take me
—after a life-long hard-worked journey—
to an isolated place
that may provide me thy pure, unstained sight!
Dark Shelter
Too far and deep I have gone into the pit of gloom,
And lost in the cavernous folds of the impending
doom,
Even the brightest big suns now appear too far,
Faint stars these now and just flash their
inspiring rays,
Feeble raylets reaching me cannot take out the
ship caught in treacherous bays,
I know the futility of the beckoning light,
Even in its brightest folds outside, hope was
always out of sight,
Now i go deep into my night,
With nobody as a witness to my plight,
All cherished dreams out of sight,
A wingless bird that tried to fly but then crashed from
its struggled height,
Now I just silently walk into the dark hold of my
night,
Alone
and forlorn,
Musicity of my soft moan,
Carrying me into hitherto unreachable zone!
Dark Shades under Light
It has been months since
I last lit my faith’s lamp,
So many days have passed since
prayers chimed in my dark den’s air damp,
My meditating self,
Now gives atheistic yelp.
Lost my faith!
Lost my prayer!
Lost my rituals!
Lost my meditative trance!
Hope Melting out of Frigidities!!
There is light beyond the deepest dark depth,
There is a bright day after the ghostly haunts
of nightmarish night,
After a barren famished fight there is a
blossomed springed delight,
After pining pangs of seperation there is a
worthy end to the desperation,
After crashing in the gutters there is a surge
and rise to bathe in holy waters,
After crying convulsions on the lips, a smile
takes honeyed sips,
After the last deafeat, still there is an
undying urge to accomplish the feat,
Even when blind with despair, there is hope
hiding and cajoling somewhere,
Even in hate love still lurks somewhere!!!!
Self-defined World
The Spring’s traces last,
Hot summers approaching fast,
Languid notes in the air,
A solitary bird’s forlorn chirping for musical share,
Drowned in stillness
this late morning bright and fair,
Sky’s dull blue,
Overhanging the earth in paling hue,
But a smaller world is there,
The overall lethargy cannot reach where,–
In its self-defined world
in a corner tiny,
The luscious wild flower
still stands brave and shiny!
Being with the Self!
I know life has rejected me,
And death when will accept me
that time is yet to be!
Till then, O Sufi, is there any light to see?
Yes fella!
It’s in being with those who have been discarded by fate,
Who have laboriously scrawled and scribbled lifelong
but still have a clean slate;
It’s in smiling with innocent dawns;
It’s in basking in the sunny charms of forlorn lawns;
It’s in the faded twinkle of distant stars;
It’s in saying goodbye to the intrigues of my own
internal wars;
It’s in being with me,
And the way it is, let it be!
Love Bites
The poisonous black coils hiss
and entangled in fanged loops go for a kiss.
Two glossy-black slithery bodies
lost in the fearsome quagmire of poisoned passion
eat each other’s identity in some unheard fashion.
The venomous fangs,
Lay bare their monstrosity,
making the moments vicious, stealthy, dangerous.
The tongues of death
nastily sway to a mysterious song,
It is like brutal soldiers of death
marching on a bloody path endlessly long.
It is like death dancing:
Its poisoned lips heaving, pushing its mighty pout
against the innocent, pure face of mortality.
Pitted against the cataclysmic forces of death,
the lovely pink sheen on the pristine face prevails.
Its softest brace breaks the hardest stones.
The fierce aura suddenly bids time to stay still,
to extinguish its fire at the acme:
the pleasure-topped hill.
The love prevails,
The horrible storm loses its restless travails
in the hazily lit mellowness of ecstatic surrender:
Defanged, depoisoned.
They are now just two beautiful creatures.
The Old Bull and the Dead Wood
I’m an old bull,
My rock-hard bones heave and pull
the rickety cart,
I’m skinny but perfect in my belief
that I’ve to justify my morsels before I depart.
I carry a dead body that once was
a robust attire for some sylvan soul,
It was an honest being;
this long, hard body,
It fulfilled all its duties without exception.
But then this is the age of vandals,
They can just vandalize only,
They axed it, chopped it.
I now carry the carcass
as the trophy of their triumphant glory,
I but silently mull over this murder story.
Delhi around me boasts of its mechanized colors;
cars, megamalls, skyscrapers,
westernized guys and gals,
and thousands of glamorous pitfalls.
Haa..wonder they can’t do without me!
With salivated gusto
my labored breathing eggs me on,
while my victimized skeleton creaks and bemoan.
The flyover is the challenge,
My owner beats my back like an enemy,
It is a treacherous task,
But it is my duty to carry the body
for its final rites,
otherwise someone will miss
many a drawing room delights.
Iron Lady
It is noisy chaos,
Delhi at its best,
Impatient horns, smoky guffaws,
tired engines, shouts, dust,…
The lotus, but, shines in the mud.
Pulling the carrier rickshaw she is unfazed,
Two kids, a goat, a bundle of poor provisions
safely in tow,
Like a valiant captain at the best row.
Clad in a dirty saree
she shines like a queen,
I don’t think femininity had ever been
so illustrious in its sheen.
Meanwhile, madly mechanized world hisses,
But its lolloping tongue meekly kisses
the dirt on her hardened feet,
She pulls the rickshaw with pride
in full maternal heat,
Cramped for space she turns the tide,
The goat and the kids though panicked,
but the mother carries on the fight
in the traffic jam,
Fights for space with utmost grace,
and clears like a swiftest deer’s brace.
The prisoner
I’m ragged old,
I was once the youth icon
of the fauna around me,
Delhi was far and nonthreatening then,
We just enjoyed its lights from a safe distance,
The city didn’t seem at war with us,
But then it just spilled over,
Its bridges, roads, cemented pavements
ate into our innards,
I witnessed massacre of my near and dear ones,
I’m now caged in a high rise residential complex,
I’m just a poor, tiny banyan tree now,
Standing as an archaic symbol
in my cramped corner of this little park.
I go out of my way to give shade and cool air,
But I’m horrified and scared.
Even a kid picking a tiny pebble
to playfully hit my canopy
sounds like a terrorist hurling a deadly grenade.
So, against my nature
I’m always on guard,
crying for peace and mercy,
But it is too noisy around,
My mercy petitions fall on the deaf ears
of the stony facades standing haughty and proud,
I’m afraid any day the judgment
will arrive against me!
Encroachers
This thunderous beat of waves on the beach
tries to reach
the hardest core of rocks standing
mute and sullen on the coast.
The sea and its maddening waves;
uproarious, stormy, and boastful most.
For years, its stormy passion kissed the rocky face,
The fury of its infatuation caught the unsoliciting
lover in a grasping embrace,
The rocks mellowed and crumbled as beach sand,
Once where there was land
now becomes the soft love bed
for the waves to shed
their gnashing fury on its soft grains,
where love sighs in gay abandon
and soft showers turn into torrential drains.
In this land—sea love pit
a new passion gets lit,
Surrendered to excited storms
we forget all norms
and let loose waves
that break false rigidities and forced facades
build inside us for decades.
Waves to waves!
Rocks to rocks!
The sea just watches meekly
this sensuous storm on its bed:
The encroachers with all shame shed,
Its warning shouts ebbing away in distance,
as if afraid of this rival stormy surge
on the beach,
It recedes to save itself from this
huffing, puffing , grunting, tempestuous game.