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.

The scrap yard of love

 

That’s how I gathered her,--

a sad pile of

shards, fragments, broken pieces,

But that’s love,

Broken pieces feel like

soft rosebuds in your arms,

They bleed the skin

as you press with gentle warmth,

You become a maker or mender,

The broken pieces get together

and acquire a shape in the kiln

of your care and share,--

a lovely woman in your arms,

full of dreams and desires;

strong, confident, vigorous.

 

Love first softly brushes,

then sadistically crushes,

Now it’s your turn to be broken

and spill out of her arms,

Get shattered and scattered,

Waiting for some enchanting

treasure hunter of love

to see the potential in the broken pieces,

To gather you up, your fragments

in her lovely arms,

Love will sprout again,

Giving you a new shape

in new arms with fresh charms.

The fungus on the self

 

If you allow loneliness to push you,

it’ll gorge on your choices and confidence,

It’ll corner you like a little mouse

shivering with fear,

seeing snakes and cats

in all that which moves around.

 

Loneliness is the crazy lover,

It’ll pursue one, always,

That’s its nature.

Whom does it catch?

The one who can’t outpace it.

Who are its prey?

The ones heavily burdened,--

with guilt and anger of the past;

or foolish illusions of the future.

 

Beat it, outpace it, confidently,

Like unburdened, swift horses,

Light like wind,

Swift like arrows,

Clanking their hooves on the cobblestones,

Pacing to the tunes of the present,--

Now,

Not an alley, side street or crossing

misses their confident eye,

They make choices,

They are self-assured,

Loneliness lags far behind them,

The bulb of their presence

dispels the darkness

where the night-bugs of loneliness

sprout like poisonous fungus.

Being in the womb of nonbeing

 

A dole out from the infinite unmanifest 
to the finite manifest, 
I am just a tiny speck of cloudy phenomenon 
casting its shadow in a little valley. 
From the unbound infinity
to cosmos 
to solar system 
to Earth atmosphere 
to this little fleeting shadow, 
I am simply a ripple, 
a pulsating throbbing 
through which 
the whole feels its own being!

Strangers

 

Little instruments of intimacy

in the vast machine of love,

Enjoying the soft brush of lips,--

a solid stone fort’s support;

a steely assurance,

Melting into each other,

Skins seeping into each other,

Leaving no further distance to be covered,

Making a single entity

in thoughts, feelings and actions.

 

Then the walls crept between them,

Big stony walls,

Intimidating blocks

separating them,

Dividing them,

Cutting them apart,

The jarring fissures,

The glue-work of abandoned love

seeping and cementing the walls,

The walls crept high enough

to leave them complete strangers.

 

They carried each other’s torn skin flakes

on their changed identities,

The dead flakes of martyred love

sticking as sweet-bitter memories.

 

They walked along the stony walls,

There are no doors or windows,

Nostalgic entreaties fail,

Hope is lost,

They know that

both of them died in their own ways,

Losing a part of the self

in losing the other,

Thus they moved ahead wounded,

Then drifted away even from the wall.