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. 

1412^TH Toy

So they are clapping for their achievement!

They are celebrating the 1412^th 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.