Beloved, Thou art Life’s Sestet

 

Your love became soul’s food,

O my lyrical lyre special;

Intoxicated was every pore and cell,

Mind lost its relevance,

Only heart ruled over the show.

 

Body vibrated with thy name,

Love-blinded, the eyes saw only your dreams,

Thy voice drummed on the plane of my being,

Millions of nerves sensed only you.

 

Time and this world sped off for me,

I got time-frozen for the eyes deep and brown;

Red, curvy lips eager for a smile,

That moony face bewitched me.

 

Path’s prickles smiled like you,

I stepped over, where was the pain!

The mind didn’t reason with heart anymore,

Even in sadness I glowed with visions thine.

 

Now, away you are; ever to be seen?

The soul cries, lynches each second passing by,

But, thou are my last lines,

And will remain so, till I die.

Fenced Jaunties

 

Billions jangle, survive, obey

the instructions of a single urge;

Of infinity,

finites which itself

by kraaling simpletons in a common craze,

It lounges to exist forever,

And the night-walkers sleep-walking,

Moving in the shadows

and believing it to be a bright sunny day.

 

The ever prudent God, the shrewd muleteer!

Measures His fathomless depths

with puppets playing on strings of ecstasy and tragedy;

The luminary lights a bit of the stage,

Death and darkness but circle around,

where the light of reason and faith

escapes with the escaping soul.

 

The five senses slipping over the oily scalp;

Tongues turned steely by quoting borrowed words,

Nostrils get clogged with the smell of decay,

Eyes take the last shot of the puzzles around,

Ears drum for the last to the eternity’s beat,

The touch of mystery leaves more clueless,

And all it turns out is a

journey from nowhere to nowhere.

 

Sheep peeping across the fences barbed,

Hoy! Bleating jargon longing to voice the truth last;

The final mystery meanwhile

buried underwater like the lotus roots,

Above, a water lily blooms under the owl light,

Excitedly flickering to pamper

the Himalayan vanities scattered around.

To Talk Small; To Talk to Earth

 

Hiccups come whooshing like arrows,

Bowed backs, tension-stringed souls,

The tension stored from the time immemorial,

And the sobs go squelching.

 

Ye squeak only, bad marksmen!

Your shots just firecrackers

around the towers of the exploiters,

The towers hanging sprucely, with talons.

 

Tag-rags! Thou from yore,

From womb to the grave,

Cry just one by one;

Individually and separately,

Pouring saline anguish on wasted cheeks.

 

Ever eager to attack

the heavenly vaults for the evils all;

Hands ready to break His head,

Never but the real cause lying nearest.

 

You murder prophets easily,

Never but support the champion of liberty,

So you remain as ever,

Ugh, historically the same beaten class!

 

Yoke fellows! Please let Him rest,

If eager to weep yet,

Then cry ghoulishly in a chorus,

Like Shiva’s drumbeats.

 

Or waste not anguish in tears,

And noises that fall on ears deaf,

Shout Tally Ho! For history’s sake,

Let it progress by a different type of change.

Jailed by Destiny

 

With every sinew losing out,

There lies the nest of my hopes,

Scattered like dying, gasping fishes,

Destiny chuckles over the vaporizing,

fading signs of its opposition.

 

Why not? Sinners are those

who toil against the lines of fate

drawn on our palms;

The web of destiny

that limits and chains ventures all,

And the puppets merely dancing to its tune.

Every pulse, dying or born,

Here in this world, or the other;

From the first cry to the last in an abyss,

We are just tools in the great reaper’s hands,

The cruel General leads an army

comprising we the puny foot-soldiers,

Fighting against each other;

Instruments and weapons in millions of hands,

The leader uses one to cut, thrash and mow the other.

 

Each hope and cause great

turn the sins bigger for the mighty ringleader,

And I am the biggest sinner,

With my misplaced ideals and misfitted compassion;

Now I stand amidst my garbage,

Unworthy, hopeless and thoroughly beaten.

Escapades from the Pyre

 

Hot ash of the cremated,

There lies the voice of the Himalayas,

Stood which rock firm,

Now turned into grains few

by the holy flames,

Fire ate the fire—

an elaborate oasis

combusted to a desert small.

 

Hot air rising upwards

with liberating soul

and mourners’ tears,

To make rain of it,

which will shower upon a flower

manured by the cemetery’s ashes;

‘Will’ dies never,

The passion of a life whole

now forms the flower of a single day!

Death in a Forest

 

Night was falling in the jungle,

With stars smiling from a cold sky,

Early mist making a drink

to inebriate the trees through the night,

And the leaves preparing for a dewy bath.

 

A dark man matching the night’s colours,

Stumbled across the decaying windfalls,

His skin clad in more darkness,

White teeth flashed to life,

Like water in the abyss of a well,

A sigh of agony poured out

warmth in the imposing cold.

 

All vestiges fading out of sight,

Yet, two gentle eyes like an elephant’s said,

‘Live and let live’;

His burning self gave

some warm solace to the dewy, cold leaves,

His bright foot-soles drummed

on the decaying leaves,

Sowed seeds of life among death and decay.

 

The music approaching the forest’s centre,

With stars applauding

and the trees swaying to the tune,

Nature styled his hair:

Curls, locks, dust matched the jungle’s disarray,

He stumbles now more

and finally sits under a tree,

Sleeps then to eternity,

The last trace of life mixed

with the darkness around;

The morning came to enliven everything,

but not the last trace of night.

Drawing, Sketching Webs of History

 

People come and go,

with genealogies spinning history,

Everything changes to survive,

Similarly, man becomes his opposite more.

 

Fast riding jockey he is,

Sticks to the saddle of time,

His horse trampling the turf,

And the cheers eating the dust around;

The ‘eagle’s eye’ spotting the winner

among the beasts riding the same,

Gallops match the applauds around

to cut the finishing line first.

 

Whoever may be the lucky one,

It’s nothing but simply

a line drawn over the last one,

And many parallels following.

 

What did the winner get?

Nothing but the smallest

glimpse of others doing the same;

Irony drips from the dusted moments,

Look, the victor ponders back the maximum,

Trickles which to zero

for the last one cutting across.

 

A trophy, a V-sign, a horse’s smile,

That is what they give him,

And some rest on the podium;

That is what life is,

Dropping every skill of ours

on the back of a beast

to carry us as a victor,

Half-man, half-beast,

we leave nothing but litter around;

Exhausted and throbbing hearts.

 

So much of the course is

trampled to death,

only for the thinnest line

connected by similar tangential lines;

With milestones of eulogy,

And battlefields in between,

This is what we call

history, progress and more.