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