सतत इच्छा

 अप्रकट चाहे में प्रकट होंऊं 

और बन गई मिट्टी,

मिट्टी चाहे में ख़िलु 

और बन गई घास,

घास चाहे में बढ़ूँ 

और बन गई नरकट,

नरकट चाहे में छू लूं आकाश 

और लग गए उसको पंख 

बन गया नीलकंठ।

ब्रह्मांड में है 

बस एक सतत इच्छा होने की,

अप्रकट की प्रकट होने की।

A sad stream and a sullen heart

 

A bubbling creek

rippling with a miasma of pain,

A twinkling ribbon of solace

to a sad heart

as it ponders on its bank.

 

Does it—the brook—have the ability

to smell sadness in others?

And offer its own song of pain

as the musical chimes of joy to the visitor.

 

A flowing sadness and a frozen one,

Both of them turning paly

to withstand the shower

of the frozen pellets of pain.

 

The unseen foundations of success

 

The stories of a few winners

stand on the foundations of

the stories of millions of losers,

The stories of the winners

are meaningless and incomplete

without the stories of the losers,

Because what will the chief protagonists do

without scores of minor characters,

They are the unknown, busy ants

pulling the long lines of food for the queen,

The side players;

the little threads

that hold the plot together,

What worth a winner holds

without scores of losers?

What value light possesses

without the pools of darkness around?

 

Locked and sealed

 

The heart that once was

an open meadow

adorned with wild flowers

is now a forlorn, fenced yard,

Its bosom sealed with pavement slabs,

Through cracks in these,

a few grass sprouts raise their head

in memory of better times:

free pastures, wild flowers, holding hands,

an embrace, a gentle kiss and a promise,

All that is now sealed under the slabs

and squeezed tight by the fence,

The few tufts of grass

sullen and somber like a grave’s cover,

entombing a life that once was.

 

That love and its beauty is buried now,

The few strands of grass

peeping through the pavement cracks

hark like ghosts from distant past,

while the present’s heels go crushing over them.

The frozen waterfall

 

A frozen waterfall,

Its flow coagulated and coalesced,

A bluish white suspended corpse,

Bearing its beady threads of eerie stillness,

Both scary and beautiful.

 

A frozen flow,

Mummified tiny streams,

Caught and imprisoned

in the deep chambers of icy winters.

 

A hanging frozen life,

A dangling grave,

Icy ripples, folds, noodles,

paranormal braids,

crooked translucent curls,--

cold, lifeless, glassy.

 

A tangled hibernating mass,

Waiting for the spring sun

to dissolve and melt

and get liberated from the entrapment;

to gush out from the frozen womb of silence;

to chime with rippling songs of life;

to cascade with pride and vanity;

to get back to the business of life;

to flow with the song of spring;

to unleash its frozen soul

with flowing, falling, rippling warmth.

The hunter of sunrays

 

The hungry hole

in the soul,

Gobbling the light

to feed its darkness,

And when the sun

is at its noontime peak,

I peep into its depth

and watch the feeble slivers of light

rippling like some paranormal fish,--

Predatory darkness

eating the slivers of light

like an eternally hungry dark shark

clawing at the sunrays.

The ghost hunter

 

A strand of

the scent of jasmine

on dark night’s breath,

It enters the crack

in a concrete heart,

It bores a tunnel

through the stony mass of pain,

To reach the core where

the ache has perpetually lain;

to be as near to it as possible;

to melt into its heart;

to become pain itself;

to transform its soul,--

its fundamental suffering self.

 

The strand of fragrance

with determination on the tip of its wings,

Chasing the ghosts of pain

meandering like a serpent,

To possess them;

hunt and haunt them;

get them embodied with love;

convert them into the religion of hope.  

Shared bestiality

 

The roaring chaos

churning the individual identities,

Meshing them

to make a peculiar fluid.

Then the deshaped mass

finding a strange rhythm;

coalescing into a weird shape.

An indefinable mass.

An uncontrolled animal

thundering with a collective roar.

The mob.

The crowd.

The rampage.

The winner

 

All gaudy and grandiose,

Tightly hemmed with haughtiness,

Stepping up the curved staircase

leading to lustrous halls,

Thick-skinned crocodile

equally tempered in

harangues and soirees of life,--

the same demon walloping in mud for mating

or among the flesh of caught prey.

 

Even before he feels it,

guilt morphs into shame,

which is quickly covered with anger,

And anger has’n the driving force of his success,

The success as we know it and applaud it.

 

He has lost just little to gain much,

Just a tiny loss:

He’s lost the touch of life in his eyes,

His glassy eyes are no longer

capable of expressing love,

That’s the only little loss,

A loss at all,

if you think it to be.

 

Make hay while the sun shines

 

Hot and dizzy with love,

Flooded with joy,

Running into the flames of passion

to dance in the fire of love,

Go fella go!

Grab your hard-won moments of love

fleeting before the storm of hate,

Enjoy it to the core

while you are at love’s peak.  

The solitary trail

Deeply inhaling

the giddying fresh air of life,

The shower of peace

diluting all guilt and sorrow,

Slurping on the luscious slice of solitude,

Feeling the ease of life’s movement,

Safe and secluded

from the snooping spies of life,

Away from squeaking chaos and gawkish glory,

I walk on this solitary trail

in almost absolute freedom,

It’s such a beautiful sketch, this place,

Drawn with a child’s coloring pencil,

As of Now, I own this little world

with composure and comfort. 

The sweet slayer

 

Her presence in my life

dissolved and crumpled

like a sand castle on a beach,

I think love

—with some dodgy warmth about Her—

is always seeking a human way

to first maim and then kill you,

She seeks a suitable way

to slaughter you with a sweet smile,

while you feel your entire self

has become love,

To dump you into the pits

while you ride the cusp of Her wave.

The demonic holy-book

 

Silence louder than noise,

Her absence denser than her presence,

A flood of joyful pain

at her memories’ touch.

 

My horde of memories

stored in a ceramic money-pot,

Storing her essence

drop by drop in the form of lovely coins,--

the colors of spring in her deep, big eyes;

the eyes the gateway to her soul;

the silken, straight tresses;

lips full with a pout of feminine mischief.

 

The ceramic pot of memories,

I hold it safe against a chance fall,

It’s full, can’t have more coins,

But I try to push one more coin,

Some new coin, glinting with

the polish of the present times,

But you can’t recycle the rusted

coins of the past to mint new ones,

I want to keep it forever,

Because breaking it will scatter the coins,

And that would mean

losing even the illusion of still having her,

So the dilemma to keep it or break it

works like a see-saw cutting the heart’s meat.

 

A book,--

my scripture,

Having a love note

and a rose

slipped between the pages,

I don’t open the page

where the love note stays safe

because opening it might

tear it at the folding edges,

I don’t open the page

where the dry rose lies in its grave

because it will fall apart if touched,

Is it a holy scripture

or a demonic book?

For I love it so much

as to get scared to touch it.

 

The pilgrim

 

Forlorn and friendless,

Heart fractured and ruptured,

Looking like someone

entirely made of grief and sorrow,

The dreams crumbling to dust,

Viewing this world

as an extension of my pain,

There I walk in the miserable rain

after having lain

in a dark corner almost slain.

 

Each step so heavy

as the dream of a shadow to acquire a form,

Memories come with a roaring incision,

The wounded petals try to

furl the sail in the spring night air,

A step I must take,

Walk I must,

Because walking a single step

away from the garbage

is like a miles long pilgrimage.

The marks of sin

 

A grain turns to your morsel,

And maybe it was a bird, rabbit

or some other animal

that’s on your feet

or head or on your legs

or torso,

Be watchful,

For your carry the sad marks of

transformation on your skin.  

The hero

 

You’ve to be a bigger person

to say sorry first,

You’ve to be a strong person

to keep the imagined reality

shorter than the imagined one,

You need strength of character

to retain the worst for yourself

and pass the best to others,

You’ve to be a very brave person

to still smile even while shrouded in sorrow,

You need to be really living

to find a meaning in life

even with pain entwined in your soul.

Happiness

 

Happiness is like a meteor shower,

It hardly starts

before it ends,

But its brief sojourn

on the dark breast of the cosmos

is exciting, beautiful,--

the spark of life in a dead pool,

Like the verdant fresh look

on an old dusty face,--

the lush glimpse of hope, wisdom,

forgiveness and acceptance.

 

A small yet eternal book

without title and author name,

The lively flash of being

in the dark womb of nonbeing,

A smile on an impassive, sullen face,

A path-side wild flower

by a dusty path,

A brief shower on sands

kissing the parched grains,

A warm hug,

A friendly chat,

Some words of empathy,

A smile,

That’s what happiness is,

Brief and momentary,

but a yardstick for eternity.  

The kingdom of love

 

Falling in love

is like a magical rise,

The bored monotony of life

lies scattered on the ground,

Angels and fairies sing for you,

You’re the prince of your airy kingdom,

But we can’t float forever,

Earthbound we are,

That’s life,

Falling from love is hard,

Becoming ordinary again is painful,

Losing the kingdom hurts,

Being a commoner again pinches,

Then we fight

to retake the kingdom,

Again we fall in love

and float.

 

It’s unclear whether we're

more addicted to rise or fall.   

Miracle

 

The sun, moon, stars, dew, flowers, rivers,

It’s a miracle unfolding every moment,

The thing that we call as a miracle

is just a tiny snap-shot of the Miracle,

Just a little framed reality

viewed in abstract;

delinked from the bigger chain,

put on the frame

and termed as a miracle,

But it’s just a mere grain of salt

in the sea of the ultimate reality,

It’s just human to try to

define the undefinable;

to try to know the unknowable,

The fact is, we just take a few drops of water

in our palm and see our stars in it

and call it a miracle,

But you are the miracle,

Everything and everyone is miracle.

The lean, loyalist hounds

 

The lion fattens itself

by eating the parts in others,

The net of fear, vanity, hate, jealousy

catches the prey,

He is the ruler,

The followers are the prey,--

the loyalists,

They get addicted to

the pleasure of self-laceration,

They cut down those parts of theirs

which annoy or displease him,

They allow the flesh

of their soul to be eaten,

They turn lean hounds themselves,

Grow sharp fangs of jingoism,

Get trim starved bellies,

Then they hunt themselves

to further fatten the king.

Carbon copies

 

We are like books,

Our appearance, identity, presentation

are like a book cover,

It’s to attract

and be sold well,

The glittering cover and catchy title

to enhance valuation and price.

 

Unique covers to create curiosity

in the reader’s mind and heart,

Showcased, we are then purchased,

But when the covers flip open,

pages unfold,

our lines read,

Alas, the story

that promised something different

turns out to be the same,

The same old, stale story,

written and phrased differently,

The same plot retold

with the same characters

named differently,

The same wine

in a different bottle.

This & That

Tell me a place where 
light and dark don't coexist?
Or a heart where
good and bad don't struggle?
Tell me a land where
Gods exist without demons?
Or a sky where
heaven exists without hell?

A canvas of moss

In the mossy fluidity of a solitary pool
in a lonely vale,
I see my shadows while the mountain breeze hail,
My spread self mixed with the mossy waters,
And I marvel at the small canvas holding the image,
While the brook tries to rewrite the colours.

A stepping stone

Humans, you may have a stony heart,
But mine is definitely a soft, mellifluous, mossy green one,
And I wear it on my sleeve,
While you step over my clean white yard,
And scamper away,
I just pray,
Safe you reach,
Without any further breach.