Belittling bestiality

 

What is the purpose of attaining freedom,

if you stay locked up inside yourself?

What purpose your wings serve,

if you decide to stay in the

cage of dogmas, curtailing conventions

and belittling beliefs forged by others?

What purpose your mind serves,

if it’s fogged with the clouds of

others’ hate, greed and ambitions?

What purpose your legs serve,

if they merely follow the mass

sleepwalking after a hypnotizing manipulator?

What purpose your hands serve,

if they are mere instruments

to fulfill someone’s evil designs?

What purpose your eyes serve,

if you see just the craftily managed

scenes to pamper the little man in you?

What purpose your ears serve,

If they just drum to the beats of

jingoism, rhetoric and false narratives?

 

If you are such a person as above,

you die as a baby even in old age

because you left your senses unspent;

almost untouched and virginal,

Born as a baby and dead as a baby,

Where was life during those long decades?

Warring with the self

 

I was sufficient already,

But then I began to see myself

through others’ eyes,

And my sufficiency crashed,

Something missing in this,

Something in that,

Sadly brooding I sat,

Pampered by fate

as its pessimistic, sulking pet.

 

Long before others,

we judge our own self,

Our own critical eye

cuts, bruises, lacerates, downplays,

devaluates and thumbs us down,

Showing us in poor light,

Long before the outsider’ shears

prune our self-specific, luxuriant sprawl,

we commit self-inflicted wounds,

And around these home-made wounds,

we keep building defensive ramparts,

Whereupon we stand like a hound

and throw catapults

at the imagined enemies around.    

The stamp of love

 

We will recover from hate

but never from love

if it has gone wrong,

Brightest smiles have the potential

to sire bitterest tears,

Lovely sweetness can easily

change to ugly sourness,

Petals hide thorns.

In love we are

on the edge of a precipice,

That’s why it’s exciting

and not boring like

the plateau of other common emotions,

We are at a titillating height

and feel floating over the lower terrain,

But we are on the edge,

On an edgy adventure of

body, mind and soul,

Mostly we fall below into the pit,

Dump or get dumped

into the heap of pain,

Then we see some lovely new face

peering over the edge,

And again we crawl up,

holding the rope of hope.

One may climb as many times

as one can manage

but the bruises of at least one fall

remain there forever on our flesh,

However hard one tries to heal it

with the ointment of fresh loves,

the scar but remains

with its peculiar purple leering smile.   

The master juggler

 

Memories are trapped in soul

because time is circular,

It spins, circles

and creates a web;

a cage around our being,

It has a fine thread

to weave its web,--

past, present and future,

Like a master performer,

it juggles these three balls,

Keeps them in the play

in its two hands:

the known and the unknown;

fear and safety;

life and death.

 

Past, present and future

keep searing through us

at their own free will,

No wonder, we live life

in mere fragments,--

hope-despair, love-hate,

dreams-reality, tears-smiles.

 

We are fragments,

And we flow for

completion, contentment and rest,

Like water running

from the hills to the sea,

We are imperfections

seeking perfection,

Pushing, colliding, mixing,

adding, subtracting,--

the mathematics of life

to solve the puzzle of our existence;

to give it a purpose, a solution.

 

Time meanwhile nullifies all equations,

The biggest equation summing to zero,

The kings vanish,

The dictators mingle to dust,

The castles turn to leveled ground,

All fractions (big and small)

fly and then hit the bottom

and get mixed in the same soil,

Only time remains,

It chuckles in its totality

from among the cosmic web.  

Sweet melancholy of love

 

I’m watching your waves

flooding, crashing, smashing

in my being,

Watching the storm

in the desolate desert,

The sand flying,

Burying one truth,

Shape it into something different

with new ribs,

Only to bury it again,--

the creative whirlpool

in the womb of your soul,

The fierce incubation.

 

The traveler moving to

reach a subtle treasure,

unbothered of worldly losses,

Witnessing her journey

of rising above and beyond

all that passed through her,

She is equipped with a knife of

contradictory saw-teeth,

Enabling her to cut

the weeds of duality,--

the breeders of pain,

Thus cleansing her path to be a

witness to all that there is,--

to be aware of the knowledge:

that all that is known

is unknown also at the same time.

 

And as you walk in your desert,

you flame through my being,

like some eternal presence,

to reach the oasis in my heart

for celestial lovemaking,

Drenched with the perspiration of love,

you walk even deeper into my heart,

making me a Sufi,

You are forever

walking nearer in(to) my heart,

while far away on earth you walk.  

A little girl’s love

 

O thou wonderful woman,

I’m honored

when you share

the innocent purity of a little girl’s

wonderment about emotions

that you felt

in your near-puberty self for me,--

a grown up man at that time,

I’m honored to be the prism

through which you saw the

larger aspects of your womanhood.

It’s like a tiny bud

sharing its story with

the sun, the moon, the dew,

the bees, the flowers and the spring air,--

all that which helped it in blooming.

Sainted wedlock

 

I’m a free spirit in my own way,

bearing my outer chains all intact,

Then you arrived

as the manifestation of

my free spirit

that knew the possibility

of free love and real freedom.

 

Your free spirit trapped in its freedom,

But freedom lay still and intact,

trapped within you,

And you proudly proclaim,

‘So many freedoms are

enchained within me!

Aah, how much I’m trapped

in my set of freedoms!’

 

I see all this by holding you

as a mirror in my life,

This ecstatic insanity

makes me laugh and cry

without any walls between them,

And floating in that tranquility

I need not have your body

to feel you in me.