Broken words, fragmented dreams, liquid emotions,
-- forget them, forgive them.
What use are a few scrap book memories
Of the ‘age of innocence’?
Believe me,
I am tired of facades
I want to shy away from judgement,
I want to dump stale sentiment..
And yet…..
Breaking the barricade of the dense sunrise,
Moist darkness establishes the fact, that
Light is not impervious.
When crystals turn to splinters on encroaching silence crowds in.
Visionaries – have they become somnambulists?
In a spiritless city, from the silver minarets,
A virus like, ancient, urban value, floats up –
Clinging onto some inconsequential ether bubble.
Thoughts, barraging on against the deluge
Of technological civilization, try and try again.
Yet, when the century halts,
Trembling fingers still talk of revolution.
Ashes turn to dust,
Sunlight, into silver oxide films,
Dreams into alarm clocks.
Resolutions to change the world
Are futile.
I guess, I’ve got to adapt myself –
But,
Why should I?
It has been a long time, since.
I’ve wiped the wrinkles off my face,
Removed the lines from my forehead,
Finished the last chapter by the campfire,
Passed a smirk at references of love.
But I still feel the ruffle, the lump,
The parchedness, the ache and
The tremor in my nerve.
It has been a long time that
My blood hasn’t boiled,
My jaws haven’t tightened,
My lower lip hasn’t curled.
I guess it has been a long time, that I’ve forgiven you, Judas….
Tell me, if there are cobwebs in the sky –
Tell me, if the night sky is blck,
Tell me, if you can hear someone weep,
Tell me, if you cab see the lines of the crack.
Smell the ar and you may find the sparkle of life,
Smell the earth and you may anticipate the rain,
Smell the water till you see the tears in them,
Smell the laughter in the eyes, till you can see the pain.
Taste the red in her mouth, let time stop,
Taste the bitter in defeat and walk along,
Swallow the feel of void in a rocking chair
And taste the unknown in the well known song.
Show me the road, that has a dead end,
Show me the back of a running man,
And I’ll show you the dreams of a teenage girl,
I’ll mke you say – “yes , even I can.”
Don’t tell me that your eyes are blurred,
Don’t tell me it’s noisy when you’re near,
Don’t give me that shrug and smile…
Now tell me – is it very far from here?
“Good morning” and she draws the blinds
To herald the arrival of the morn
The child is dead, and I wait
To hold bck the news – a man is born.
With eyes steadfast and hands behind my head,
I hear – the ceiling fan’s monstrous groan,
Confusion, guilt and I don’t know what
Has choked the marrow of my bone.
The hand that painted the flower garden,
The hand tht helped to lift the spade,
Is it the hand that trembles now –
As I raise the razor blade?
The gall and wormwood up my throat,
The touch of steel, on the stubbled skin,
Memories, of a disturbed night –
‘Adoloscence – thy first sin.’
The voice has lost its cheer and sound,
The eyes have lost the glitter
The furtive glances at the forbidden,
There is no escape from the mirror.
No pain, as blood spurts out –
Perhaps the trickle will wash away
The stains of the first adolescent night,
Tomorrow won’t be just another day.
I want to be the fire
That will warm you on cold evenings
That will burn to give you light,
That will glow in your heart,
Give me your hand.
I want to be the song
That will echo in your memoirs,
That will hum in your heart,
That will wait on your lips,
Give me your voice.
I want to be the rain,
That will tingle on your palm,
That will tickle your nerves,
That will moisten your eyelids,
Give me your eyes.
I want to be the wind,
That will pass by your garden,
That will run through your hair,
That will casually whisper,
Give me your ears.
I want to be the shadow
That will stay by your side,
That will walk by your side,
That will be , by your side,
Take me.
Behind the eyes that see, lies the mind that lurks –
And I can already, see the symptoms of a smirk.
While the one fabricates on a new design –
Your eyeball has already moved to the next line.
Impatience, at trying to get to the theme –
‘Dilemma’? or maybe ‘a poet’s dream’?
But you still, read on, and ‘marvel’ at the rhyme –
(in the month before exams? This guy surely has time!)
Blame it all, on the impulses of my virile pen,
That my heart propels, to the virgin paper, again.
And while your eyebrows, get entangled at the metaphor and wonder – ‘why’?
I’ll give you a hint, and then, you can try.
A sonnet gets written on Absolutely Nothing.
I am a painter. I paint lives.
Hey! Did I see you raising your eyebrows that eloquent fraction of an inch? Is it your veiled incredulity that peeps out of your ever so faint a smile?
Come on now. It’s not as crazy as it seems. Life is an odd canvas, with unearthly surrealistic colours etching out myriad designs on it. Colours!
Cool, enervating colours that dip into life like melting icicles – tingling your nerves and untangling the mad jumble of knots in your mind. Colours that say – ‘ we’re alive!’
I played with lives.
I painted lives and wiped them off. I gave them depth, then with a single stroke swept off the foundations and left them weak…tottering….broken.
Broken lives.
Why is it that these are strewn in my path like tiny shards of broken glass? Who laid them there, to trap me? Who could have known that I was the one who had broken them? How was it that, while playing with their lives, I didn’t realize, I was slowly, inexorably, playing with my own?
The western horzon was awash with the deep, orange hue of the sinking sun, as I stepped down and felt the dry, dreary sand lacing my feet.
Dusk was descending like a shroud over the infinite expanse of bare rock and barren soils – and endless desert, where the eye, refusing to limit itself to the horizon, swept on and lost its direction in the swirling maelstrom of colours where day and night embraced at the twilight hour. Then, suddenly, the world lunged headlong into a brooding darkness. The sun had set on the horizon.
For me, the sun had set forever. For me, there would be no dawn, the next day, no welcome light to dissipate the gloom.
I have created darkness…
Darkness – just darkness and oblivion, all around a whirlpool, in which I was struggling, frantically to keep my head up, to stay afloat. Darkness – which at each of my desperate efforst to free myself, winds itself more tightly around me like an anaconda, engulfing me in its dark depths, leaving me gasping for breath.
My parched eyes search desperately for some vestige of colour around me, some light, some…brightness! A trillion souls cry – ‘Colour!’ Their voices, merging into a single mighty wave of sound echoing through the colourless plain, moving the ground beneath my feet – rising. Rising to a screaming, agonizing crescendo, and then…suddenly breaking off to give way to the silence of a grave.
I have deleted the indelible.
I have extinguished light.
I have imprisoned life in darkness.
I have wiped out colour.
I am god of course. Bad, bad god.
On the jarring radio, a familiar tune,
A single ice-cube in the month of June,
A glimpse of the stars on tired nights
The refreshing window, the fatigue of the fights.
The desperate wait, to hear a voice on the line,
Trying out, once again, harmonics for ‘summer wine’
Impatient fingers on a dusty remote,
Guessing what went wrong with the last email I wrote.
Canned laughter, in the Polish joke book,
Kasparov’s manoevre with the white rook,
The mind has had enough, I turn off the light –
The newsreader smiles, and wishes – ‘ good night’.
Swear words flow naturally as the alarm clock screams
And Pamela Lee leaves my wet dream
The disheveled pillow, the hard and heavy head,
The drag to the basin, the feel of the blade.
Cornflakes and milk and the Sunday Telegraph –
Lockhorns and Beaupeep and the routine hollow laugh.
Children play cricket in the narrow by-lane
The diaries and albums are dusted again.
The rocking armchairs and the enervating saxophone,
Speakers are set low, the eye is on the phone,
The ring comes like a wail – from a long and dreary slumber.
And I answer – “hullo! No …sorry….wrong number.”
CROW
Afternoon and hazy heat,
Alert on his high seat
He waits for the empty street
When no one will be around to stare.
With the gang, the descent is quick,
The cloak of black, descends – thick
But, hush! The sound of a walking stick!
And within seconds they aren’t there!
The wait is long, but never mind,
Another time and place, beaks will find
The careless woman hs left open the blind,
The feast will be great and layer the share.
But one never knows when a trap’s been laid,
‘Beware of man’ the leader had said
But for want of a few crumbs of bread,
The lives are staked and the birds still dare.
CHICKEN
‘tis morning, hence business time
The men, patient, in a line,
Witness the daily legal crime
And inside the gladiators wait.
The pleas of mercy heard no more,
They know what the future has in store,
And God’s world is the land of gore
Where the price of life, is ruppes forty eight.
The small prison, seems even smaller,
And tyrant man, seems even taller
The index finger speaks – ‘that one – call her
Guests are due, I’m getting late.’
The gladiators inside shriek aloud,
Death throws down the bloody shroud,
The price is paid, the man leaves the crowd,
Later, guests remark – ‘the marination was great’.
PIGEONS
The tired sun begins to sink
The longer days begin to shrink,
To return home – the mother cannot think,
The search goes on till the end of the day.
At long last, on marshy ground
Hungry eyes hear a faint sound
And they say, it isn’t worthwhile to pray.
But danger, lurks behind bushes, there,
Gunpowder, it seems is in the air,
The skylark warns – ‘friends, beware!
The would-be-Corbetts have come out to play.’
The gunshot has just missed the head,
The children, waiting, hungry in bed,
Hoping that mama, will bring home the bread,
And that daddy, will come back from far away.
There are times when I need to share all my thoughts
My memories and dreams and all I have got
So I went out in this world in search of a friend
Who will care to listen and never pretend –
To offer pity or, false consolation
But sincere advice and necessary correction.
To seek out this gem I did everything part
For I wanted to know in the core of my heart
That there will be someone I can always call
To share in my glory, or cushion my fall.
So I searched the world over, till my zeal was quite spent
But try as I might, I could find no true friend
With a sore heart, I proceeded to write off ‘the end’,
My search has been futile, my innocence maimed.
As I dragged myself back – behold what a sight
There stood in the twilight, a face creased in delight.
With arms outstretched and tears in her voice
She calls out to her truant, now back home by choice.
I ran upto the embrace, happy in the end
For the arms that held me, were the arms of a friend.
Two shadows on grass, elongated growing
Walking together on meadows of green
My shoulders much broader, your figure much slimmer
Two shadows together, with sunlight between
How far the horizon violet with shadows
As the sun drops behind us in welters of gold
My arms on your shoulder, pulling you closer
Making one shadow when twilight takes hold
And the moon is high now, the night is young
The silence, elongates this moment we share
The nightingale stops to stand and behold
A moonlit shadow a lovely pair
And while day breaks out of the anaesthesia of night
And the music of dawn says its time to go
My arms on your shoulder, pulling you closer
With no sunlight between, just a simple shadow.
Sometimes the weals of pain remain
Though they show not on the skin
And the tears that wish to burst forth too
Are forced to dry within.
Strange indeed, are the wounds,
The pen and the careless spoken word can dole
Strange the way they hurt not a hair
Yet, cut deep into the soul.
Care not of the pain, my friends, they say,
And leave it all to time and sleep
But friends life is far too short
And the wounds alas are far too deep.
From Childhood’s hour I hav not been
As others were, I have not seen
As others saw, I could not bring
As others could, my passions from a common spring.
From childhood’s hour, I did desire
When you danced around, I needed the fire
And when all was over and you were gone
I loved, yes, I loved alone.
From childhood’s hour, I have not slept
For want of friends, I have not wept
For want of warmth, I waited for the sun
I touched the rays, there was none.
From childhood’s hour, in an empty room
I have laughed often, when I was in gloom
And when I was away from the barriers of stone
I cried, yes, I cried. Alone.
From childhood’s hour, I’ve looked above
To see the southern flight of the dove
To see the nimbus drifting by
To hear the voice from the sky
From childhood’s hour, I’ve tried to hear
And when all was quiet, and my senses clear
I heard from far, a busy drone
And I knew, I was not alone.
