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.