The beauty of an imperfect world

 

It’s a broken world

but still it has enough beauty

in its fragments

to help us hold onto

our dreams and imaginations.

 

It’s enough to give us:

a hope to put things together;

an invitation to move on the journey;

to see the sunshine in a dewdrop;

to absorb the nourishment of life from a smile;

to feel kindness in a tear;

to see flying rainbows

on the wings of butterflies;

to hear divine melody in a hill stream;

to hear paradisiacal songs in chirping birds;

to feel and understand that

life sprouts on the edges of broken dead pieces

like wild mushrooms on dead wood.  

Silence

 

Unspoken words

sometimes open up a chasm,

which no pearly string of words

can cover with a bridge,

And to know each other well,

we have to learn

the language of silence

emanating from someone’s

walk, frown, smile or stony look.

Drowning

 

Life is merely a flow:

molten agonies;

floating passion;

streaming desires;

evaporating dreams;

undying aspirations.

 

We try to cross it,

Taking it to be

the aim and purpose of life,

But the moment we reach the bank,

panting like a dog,

we turn our head

and look at the aims and goals

on the other bank,

We feel we have lost

something very important over there.

 

So we swim back,

And over and over again,

We get conditioned to think that

crossing the river back and forth

is the aim of life,

the proof of success,

Little do we realize that

it was supposed to be a journey,

a flow with the stream.

 

Mostly we realize it too late,

We don’t have even that much patience

as it needs to stay joyfully afloat

in a gently flowing stream,

Fatigued with incessant crossings,

we panic and drown in the stream

just near the point

of our futile back and forth fording,

We miss the flow,

We miss all that life had to offer

on its journey ahead.

Emptying the bins

 

We are too crowded inside;

too full,

We need emptying,

Not by dumping the extras;

not by outright discarding

the already crammed, clogged garbage bins,

but by spreading in nature’s open arms,

We just need to be in an open space

to allow ‘emptying’ start naturally.

The romancer of mirages

 

I see a huge wave of sadness

building up on the horizon,

I’m a tiny assemblage

drifting along a gentle stream in the sea,--

some pieces of junk and a bit of driftwood;

a chance assemblage by circumstantial winds,

Then a massive wave comes crashing

and tosses me ashore.

 

Now I’m more fragmented,--

Pieces of junk here;

bits of driftwood there,

My sense of identity further broken,

With pain and jealousy,

my shattered pieces gloat over

the peaceful happy world over there,

Little do I realize that

only a fragment sees the mirage of perfection.

The subjected ruler

 

Most of us are prisoners of thoughts,

How we wish to escape

the prison of our minds!

We are hostages taken by emotions,

How we wish to free ourselves

from the ensnaring swamps of the heart!

Helpless, we try to bribe out our release,

We are actually like a jailor

who feels imprisoned

in the jail he rules over.

God’s tiny bowl

 

There is a part in me

that is empty,--

a hole, a pit,

It’s full of invisible pain, grief

and the shadows of lost love,

Disappointments, broken dreams

and sharp shards of memories

haunt the gloomy crater,

But it’s full of something else also,--

an urge, a force, a pull,

Like a magnet,

it sucks hope, belief and faith,

These are its little sunrays

to sustain its shadows, its shades

floating like dust motes in a sunbeam.

 

All of us have our holes,

our emptiness full of shadows,

But that’s our creative emptiness,

the genesis of our urge

to be something more.

 

We are God’s tiny bowls,

which He playfully tries to fill

in varying colors, shapes, cuisines

to muse over His own manifestation.

The semi-free prisoner

 

A part of me is confined and chained,

Anchoring me, holding me

in a tiny, isolated bay,

In the little pool lies my hope,

On the little uninhabited island

lie my dreams, aspirations and fears.

 

There is a transparent wall around me,--

almost a glass wall,

And a part of me lies outside

unchained, unchecked, unconditioned,

free to roam

among the endless waves,

It comes harking,

riding the crest of waves,

yelling, surfing, enjoying

and crashes against the transparent wall.

 

The little pool of conditioned water

inside the atoll

gets ripples in response,

It rises and heaves a little,

Shoves against the wall

from inside the atoll.

 

It’s a deaf conversation,

Wordless but full of gestures,

It seems like

freedom wants to be chained,

And the prisoner wants to be free.

 

The other side of me

enjoying this side of me,

Both giving each other covetous looks,

That’s how I live,--

a part of me free;

a part of me chained.  

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.