A slice of solitude

A slice of solitude,
Sometimes I own it myself, 
sometimes I share it with someone. 
Both means are important 
in their own ways.

A moment of life in a dead lifetime

 

Fried, pickled and roasted by life,

And proud of the pearly beads

of hard labor earned on the skin,

We set out to seek freedom,

but end up getting more trapped,

Desperation dripping from every pore of skin,

we die many times in a single lifetime.

 

But even if we have lived fully,

in totality even once,

there shouldn’t be any grudges,

Because this one moment of totality

is worth lifetime of fractured being;

a moment of liberation

among the living chain of

restlessness and incompleteness.

A curator of freedom

 

Honey-dipped,

Dripping with grace and glee,

Almost a rain of sweetness,

Full of sadness and beauty,

This tiny grove dripping with

mystical indulgence and pleasure,

Shaping its own self

for a better world for others.

 

Here my frozen identity,

—curated with fear-born care—

starts twirling with a buzzing audacity

to dismantle the tiffin tiers

of honorific geometry,—

a tiny stack of food for the

little caged beast inside,

And throw it away

with a ballooning distaste

from the edge of the dark pit,

Meanwhile, cheers erupting

from the unchained soul.

 

Here just the smile of a flower

has the power to turn one hopeful,

Here one need not hide oneself

in a corner

so that guilt won’t reach,

Luminous streaks of some warmth

touch the chords of deepest sadness,

mellowing all arrogance and pretention,

pushing me out from the darkness within

where I’d disappeared

and couldn’t find a way out.

 

What a great artist it is!

Stripping all falsehoods of their varnish,

Leaving them naked to the core.

 

Beyond the debate of

accidental or created change,

here the giddying fresh air

fills my lungs with freedom.

 

Songbird hunters

 

Autumn mist on a solitary trail,

A path leading into the woods,

Leaves dancing on your head,

The steps tuned to the rustling

like a child playing with fallen leaves,

Mother nature planting a sapling of silence

in the soil of solitude,

Joy melting from heaven

and falling on earth with each leaf-drop.

 

Here I walk,

Running away from the chained,

suffocating loneliness of a crowded bazaar,

Rushing and rustling into the

wild and free loneliness of this forest,

Crossing the intersection of bliss and torture

to enter the free domains of the former,

Exiting the shimmering and turbulent

zone of the latter.

 

But there are shadows here as well,

Here, where language is love and beauty,

Even here, the beautiful colors

and the songs of the songbirds

are chased by the curly tentacles

of the songbird hunter,--

the merchants of memories

who trap love and beauty

for worldly gain:

security, fear and convenience,

They lay the mist-net

to catch the present

in the invisible threads of the past.    

Netted butterflies

 

Melting with delight,

Tickled by the blush of youth,

The air sweet with wildflower scent,

Adolescence rushing to the peak

to quench the thirst of all curiosities,

And awaits there

the trapper of butterflies—love,

With its beautifully designed, silky net,

To catch lovely colors on the wings,

To see them flapping

for the agony and ecstasy of

loving and being loved.

 

What else are we when in love,

if not netted butterflies?

We love getting netted

in the silk threads

of that sweet bondage,

We just pine to be caught

with emotions all fiery and hot,

Aah, the cupid’s high scoring, slaying shot!

Self-charity

 

Be a stony support to someone

and that person naturally becomes

a velvety cushion support to you,

Because when you give support,

you receive the same as well,

A kindly giving

is a subtle taking in a nobler form,

Giving a hand to the fallen

is a loving means to

avoid falling yourself,

Words of sympathy for someone

are a prayer for your own benefit,

To be there for someone in need

is to invest in your own safety

against similar challenges in your journey,

Good or bad,

what we do to others

is primarily looping back to us

in the same form without camouflage.

 

In the same vein,

being friendly to a lovely soul

is to befriend one’s best version.

Welcoming the self into a cage

 

The immensity of the free skies,

its vastness,

its endless vistas of freedom

get us scared,

We soak in the freedom initially,

Then we fear we’ll be lost,

We feel lonely in the free vastness,

The adventure dies,

Pursued by our own fears,

we rush into a cage,

Its known confines

guarding us against the unknown,

We drop the anchor,

We get chained

to a smile, a kiss, an embrace,--

a sweet entanglement;

a pleasant bondage called ‘love’.

Bulldozer scrunching over soft buds

 

You meant it to be the past,

It’s not supposed to

collide with my present,

The crunching tyres

of the big armored vehicle

(raising sands of guilt, anger and embarrassment)

shouldn't ram into my present’s lurching cart,

But they do,

Seems like you remotely

operate this rampager

to take further revenge

and turn the past into

a grotesque wreckage.

The rusted padlock

 

The heavy, rusted padlock,

Its key missing,

Hanging on an old massive door

of a dark chamber,

Hiding an ever-shut, secretive vault,

Spooky.

 

Once it was a golden kiss-lock,

Would snap open with spring,

Would snap down

and close upon the previous season.

 

And before that

it was all open,

No lock,

Just an open secret of love.

Eclipse on the path

 

Love holds you in grasp;

in tight fist,

Entwining your destinies

for a paired chemistry,

That intimacy, familiarity, closeness,

The shared identity;

the overlapping zone,

Two molten selves

lovingly creeping into each other,

Sweet superimposition,

Tingling eclipsing of one by the other,--

alternating eclipses,

Her covering her

and she him.

 

But very rarely we are

two bodies moving in the same direction,

Like celestial bodies,

we cross paths from different directions,

Eclipse and pass across each other,

Then we drift away,

The shared zone keeps decreasing,

Moving away like strangers,

As if there was no acquaintance,--

a build-up of eternal estrangement.

Walking in the love-lane

 

The sweeping love-spools,

almost to the extent of being crazy,

A rush of positive chemicals they say,

But what a powerful natural intoxication!

The days get colored in new light,

You feel more alive than you remember,

A convalescence from past pains,

A reimbursement for the losses,

An empowerment against all maladies,

You feel lucky

to sleep-walk in the love-lane,

It helps you dreamily float

above and beyond

the concrete puzzles of life.

Betrayal

 

Why couldn’t I love you enough

to keep the joy that you once felt

on my touch?

Why couldn’t I keep

that shine in your eyes,

which sparkled at my sight?

Why couldn’t I keep

your dream in being love going

as you walked, talked in daylight?

Why couldn’t I keep nourishing

that smile on your lips in my company?

The failure to do so

is maybe a betrayal,

It’s better to accept one’s failure,

It clears at least one dark spot

from your conscience,

And in doing so,

you let her go

with her reputation intact,

In any case, you are sad,

Adding culpability to it

would lessen bitterness, I think.

Stormy addiction

 

It’s a sea of all-consuming indulgence,

A vast, pleasure pool,

And like a little cork piece

you bob on its turbulent waves,

You get heaved, bashed, thrown in air,

You gasp for breath with excitement,

But storms can’t last forever,

They have to stop and die,

Then you float lifelessly,

You pine for that high, that kick,

You feel life has drained out,

To be kicked by the storms of love

is what you view as being alive.

The storm-chaser

 

Love crushes you,

Consumes you,

It feasts upon you,

Dances on your head in wild revelry,

You become a stage

for its foot-tapping partying,

Its heels stomp on your chest,

Thump, Thump, Thump,

Your heart beats to its tunes,

Your soul sings to its composition,

Your eyes see its colors,

Your nose smells its fragrance,

Your fingers touch its curves,

Your tongue tastes its nectar.

 

It’s almost like a possessing entity,

Something that descends upon you,

Shaping you at its whims and fancies,

It’s not you,

It’s above and beyond you,

You realize it when it drops its spell,

leaving you like a garden

lynched on a storm’s path.

 

It’s a tasty addiction,

You are deshaped and deflated

once it abandons you,

You then hanker after the same shape,

You become a storm-chaser,

You run after another storm

to be jostled, pushed, pulled, ruffled,

Hoping you will get a fresh shape,

you allow yourself

to be hammered on the anvil.

Backward flying arrow

 

The arrow of nostalgia

piercing through lost years,

Moving swiftly through cloudy past,

To hit home with precision,

To land at a moment,

A little dot in space-time fabric

containing a tiny slice of life

when we talked, held hands,

When just being together

was to feel full, rested, contended.   

The gardener

 

You left and I stayed

in the lovely orchard we’d built,

The garden, flowers, fruits, leaves,

where the soul now grieves,

Memories scattered around like

an autumnal drizzle of leaves,

And me like a gardener

hoeing, pruning, spading,

Working to bloom spring flowers in autumn,

Trying to undo the fall,--

the autumn that permanently

descended and sat upon the orchard,

Coloring it with yellow-brown colors of fall,--

Forever,

Toils where the gardener of springs

in an autumn-possessed orchard.

The green leaf

 

Why be ashamed and apologetic

about what you are?

Why try to be a fraction of your full self

to fit in the mold of others?

To gather fake sense of security,

it needs lots of explanation and effort,

By being a fraction of yourself,

you are like a fragile leaf on the ground,

lying there to be broken under others’ boots,

But by being your full self,

you become a green leaf on a high branch,

soaking sunrays,

kissing the dew,

and swaying to the free breeze.

Evolution at my cost

 

I’d come closer by an inch

and you’d step back by a mile,

An inch of reclaim

paid with a mile of declaim,

More inches breeding more miles,

You vanishing towards the horizon,

Then gone,

Then your memories would recede

in the same proportion and manner,

That’s how time and space grow,

That’s how this cosmos expands,--

at my cost.

The knight of life: love

 

A mysterious longing

smolders through the day

and burns at night,

An exciting anticipation,

An unsparing desire,

The pores of your skin

humming with excitement.

 

A feeling of remarkable audacity,

which makes you unbothered about the

usual jostle and hustle of life,

Something looks straight into your eyes,

And you flinch, get tamed and surrender

to a gleaming, flashy star.

 

Your identity gets focused

in the chaos and hubbub of life,

You stand apart,

It even makes you feel proud,

even haughty,

to own this exclusive excitement,

You slyly smile,

A warmth spreads through you,

Melts the clods of uneasiness,

Overpowers your molecules of ego.

 

You flow,

You enter a spring,

A celebration begins,

Almost a rebirth and renewal,

You kiss the new sprouts,

You appreciate the flowers,

You feel the breeze on your skin,

Your eyes see the beauty around,

Your soul feels the all-pervading love

when your heart gets a sweet shove

at the mere look of your dearest dove.

Crowded loneliness

 

We are basically

a very lonely species,

Loneliness pervades our being,

Maybe we love being lonely,

And to keep its bitter-sweet charm,

we allow interruption to our loneliness

through love, affection, friendship, relationships,

But we know we have to

get back to be lonely again,

We are ready to pay the costs for it,

We squander away love and friendships

to buy our next installment of loneliness.

Blinding the self

 

Mostly, we are viewing ourselves

in terms of what we are not

and what we couldn’t become,

In this way,

we are simply repulsing life,

We deny our very own little reality,

our existence,

our life,

our twinkling little puddle

under the starlight,

We ignore the wild flowers

that offer consolation

if we had given them a little bit

more than a cursory look.

An exit

 

The conveyor belt of pain

carrying the weighty stones of despair,

The bond of happiness dry and dead,

Soul aching with sorrow, anger, even guilt,

Body’s cells colonized by fear,

Going alone and forlorn,

Feeling resentment against a world

where everyone seemed to have worked out

how to be successful and happy,

Everyone except himself.

 

Slowly receding from all possibilities of life,

Silently stepping into the pool of non-existence,

Taking a revenge against life

by retreating from its false promise,--

the lollipop of hope,

Presuming life had been repulsing him

by burning and charring his aspirations

not only of fame and grandeur, but even

the little things that come naturally to everyone

whether they seek these or not.

 

His eyes like tall arched windows,

Face like a weather-beaten, mossy stone façade,

Body like an ancient battered brick structure,

A shattered star being sucked by a black hole,

Utterly frightened of life,

while all along he imagined

himself to be scared of death,

Haunted by the feeling of being incomplete,

Full of regrets for not being able to

welcome life as one should,

And that in a way

was an invitation to death.

 

Regrets constantly chiming in his chest,

The chances he squandered brimming his mind,

clouding him,

turning him blind to

the options and choices that had been beckoning,

trying to draw his attention.

 

Now, to forget the fear of life,

he decides to die.

A suicide.

A shameful exit.  

Floating and flying

Life can be tricky, 

if even about the simplest issues 

you are too frisky,

Prudence is to be at ease 

with situations and time, 

Complications then wouldn't chime,

And days would pass like a free rhyme!

The traveller

We are not a mistake 

to be corrected, 

We are just humans 

on our correct path;

just needing sometimes 

kind, loving, caring words

from our fellow travelers. 

A nostalgic tree

The sad musings of a lone pine on a weather beaten ridge:

Where have the birds gone? 

Too many of them used to roam 

the sky over my head, 

And play, love and make nest

at their joyous best

among branches mine,

Now my pine's soul doth pine,

Yesterday, I saw a bird couple too sad, 

Are many of them dead?

The life song of a dead tree

My wood is all but dead and dry,

I ought not have a sad tear in my eye,

Nor a pining heart's sigh,

My roots are now the soil

that fuels the fresh leaves' toil

for new smiles and fragrance,

Much of what was once above

is alive now below!

A journey through time

 

Past and future

are parasitic in temperament,

Always seek to expand, grow and stretch

beyond reality,

beyond practical limits.

 

The poor ‘present’ is a casualty,

It’s like a pointed peak,--

small but high, lofty, uplifting

where the upslope of future

and the downslope of past meet,

intersect and forget their tension momentarily,

And that’s when we actually live.

 

In childhood, we’ve more of ‘present’

and hence we’re lively,

The youth’s a run for the future,

As we walk, we leave behind a trail

and future shrinks,

past stretches,

There comes a point

when all we’ve is the ‘past’

in our old bones, dimmed eyes,

Again we arrive

at a phase of dulled, dimmed present,

Just a grave to look forward to;

few surviving memories

in the tiny vanishing puddle of life,

mired in mud,--

a few fishes flapping sometimes,

The past meaningless

and the present

almost a curiosity about death.