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.