The death of a pack mule

 

We never forget,

Maybe we never forgive,

or get forgiven,

Be it hate or hate(s),

or love or love(s),

We carry their bittersweet,

poignant, tart, soothing, disturbing,

happy, sad, hopeful, depressive

imprint on our skin;

their stamp on our soul.

 

Some sudden dusty autumnal gust of wind

lays bare the moth-eaten, moldy

crumbling lid of the trunk of memories,

We open the lid

with gingerly fingers,

We want and don’t want,

but still we do,

And from the damp, stale air inside,

with closed eyes we have our rosy smell,--

that touch, that walk together,

that kiss for that someone,

or pangs of jealousy, hate, anger

for those who stabbed us in animosity.

 

We carry the past buried in us,

in our cremation ground,--

private and personal,

And we silently visit it

to exhume golden sunshine sometime

or swamps of darkness the other time,

And then on some fine or not so fine day,

we drop like a ripe leaf

and get buried in the same graveyard.

Blunting the edges

 

One cannot undo

the prongs of pain and agony

by putting pleasure and luxury

on the sharp points,

You can’t cover a trishula’s sharp edges,

We keep them sharp if we do so,

But there is a technique

that can dismantle these

piercing prongs of pain,

It’s the rust of indifference,

Apathy to pleasure and luxury

would naturally rust and blunt

the edges of pain.

The bridge

 

A bit happy for what has’n spared,

Carrying lots of pain

about what has’n taken away,

Trudging the bridge between

happiness and sadness,

there I walk from this end to that,

unable to ensure

which side to cross over finally.

 

The swinging suspension bridge

seems an end in itself,

rather than the means for a cross over,

The bridge made of:

gratitude, guilt, anger, pain,

relief, safety, insecurity.

 

The swinging bridge

swaying over the vast chasm

that life seems from it,

On it most of us walk

interminably from this side to that,

taking it to be the only journey possible,

Foolishly ignorant of the fact

that it was a mere means for crossing,--

a humble convenience or utility.

The solitary walker

 

There are people who shout

and grab the most in a stampede,

There are some more who just whisper

and get onto the sidelines

to pick up what lies uncontested,

Out of these sideliners,

there are still fewer

who come out of the main-street throng

to take an abandoned empty little side alley,

With some occasional whisper

they pick up only what seems unworthy

to anyone on the main street,

Out of these latter,

a rare soul comes out of all congestion

to walk on a solitary trail

where the soul sings in freedom.

Holy whispers

 

I’ll whisper

loving words

in your dreams

when you feel lonely.

The dreamer of love

 

I bear no concrete illusion

of being separated from the surroundings,

Yes, it exists,

but just like a passing cloud,--

a wispy shadow

scattering feeble fencing now and then,

which temporarily

shuts me off in my ego chamber,

But soon the clouds of ego pass,

The sun of unity shines

casting away all separating shadows,

That’s when I feel like

I can fly without wings

and share my ‘being’ with the birds,

That’s when I can flow

with the fluid essence of streams;

can kiss the sky with lofty mountain peaks;

can rest like a turquoise calm lake;

can spread myself to infinity with stars,

And when I’m such,

I can easily meet you in dreams

and whisper solace and succor in your ears

on lonely nights

when you fall asleep with a sad heart,

My words will get a smile on your lips,

And I’ll watch it as my own smile.  

Salted wounds

 

Drift ice floating in coastal waters,

The wounds getting salted,

And iciness (hope)

clinging like a leech,

sucking the frozen blood of effort

to remain ice,

Everything is caught in the

intersecting zone of

being and nonbeing.

The stillborn

 

What follows a revolution

is even worse than before,

Because it stands on too much

blood, gore and violence

within a short time,

It’s a nasty kick on a pregnant belly,

Forcing a bloodied miscarriage,

It’s an immature strike

leading to a premature stillborn child,

If not for the violent kick,

there would have’n a healthy baby,--

a mature delivery

at an appropriate time.

Tyranny with life

 

We have limited

the idea of happiness and success

to a very few narrow paths,

Walking on these thin trajectories

some people become so inactive with life,

So much musty

in the staid, stale monotones

of what they do on a routine

without feeling any joy,

So much demure with life

that even dying seems an activity,

This is like death’s

petty household tyranny with life.

The haunted, haunted species

 

Walking on powdery sand

hiding many corpses

under its crumbling crust,

Saving the feet from coils of barbed wire,

Afraid of rifles

peeking from behind the sandbags,

Surrounded by countless bullet scars

on the walls,

Stared at by the corpses

of once lively houses and shops,

we walk in the bloodied maze of life.

 

We are a very scared, insecure species,

So to feel our fears with more depth,

the war zones we have to create,--

this vast scary game of violence and anger.

 

We carry immeasurable inherited sorrow,

The entire species dabbed with

the clammy colors of sorrow,

Plastic smiles we carry at the most,

And even this vanishes

just with the clicking latch on a

creaky door with complaining hinges,--

a trigger, a fuse for blasting the fears in us,

Ribbed and ridiculed

by the captivating madness,

we carry our cranky self

on the thin paths leading to

wars, strife, violence, blood and gore.