Snake

I came across a brown-eyed human snake. A kashmiri pandit. More venomous than any kobra in the world! He just knowns how to bite...instinctively like all the slithery reptiles of his species. Its just impossible to come across a more spiteful person. It is simply your folly to expect a friendly kiss from a snake...the helpless creature is bound to bite only. Well, if a community can give birth to evn a single such human snake than its better that Kashmiri pandits left Kashmir valley because it is too heavenly for such human reptiles. Kashmir valley is better without pandits!

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. 

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! 

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?

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.

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 galls,

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.

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 the would have been lost as salt on my face.
Sandeep Dahiya

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.

Some lines for some time in future

When thy eyes begin to glow dimly

And walk form not a rhyme with body;

Flowers when gone for a single lily

And world's eyes see not once fair lady;

When even cup loaths thy shaky pout

And time engrave its loath on thy rosy cheeks;

Eyelids drop when for vision out

And life only but leaks;

When thy grey hair die day by day

And all crests shrink to troughs;

See thou not when a single ray

And violently shake thee those coughs.

Then dear, pick my book up,–

Where thy youth shines immortally,

Untampered by the time's hand rough

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.

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

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.

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,

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.  

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. 

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.

                                                    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 toughed 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.------Sandeep Dahiya

Donky

I think it always (without exception) helps not to lose your temper. When you lose your temper, you not only deprive somebody’s chances for more happiness; you in fact deprive yourself of the same. So why fall in the trap of such a bad bargain. If nobody gains anything out of it (except perhaps that hypothetical and flimsy enemy of ours, called “ego”) why invest in such a loser scheme?  —Sandeep Dahiya

                                       *******

May be there is a fixed quota of suffering in the cosmic account book of karma to be doled out to the humanity. If that be the case then feel proud for bearing the heavier load from the destiny’s side, while so many others trudge ahead with unjustifiably lighter weights on their shoulders. Feel proud that God considers you as a tough guy capable of handling the issues on the wrong side of the fence. While you sweat it out with the larger issues, possibly your each and every step paves the road for some easy stroll by a frail fellow human being. Just carry on mighty guys! No use in browbeating now! You have been chosen for breaking the tough nut so that many a weak teeth can munch survival crumbs.    —Sandeep Dahiya

New Year

This foggy, cold midnight says,


The next sun will have rays

that will warmly gloat over wrong shades

bitingly, filthily draped around that beggared mass of flesh,

Tomorrow it just won't be mere trash!
**********

V salute the rising sun and upcoming fates,

And dump the rest as mere names and dates.

But this year on death bed (or in labour pain?) sighs,

'Dear, forgrt u those promises amidst these hasty byes!'
******