Strangers

 

Little instruments of intimacy

in the vast machine of love,

Enjoying the soft brush of lips,--

a solid stone fort’s support;

a steely assurance,

Melting into each other,

Skins seeping into each other,

Leaving no further distance to be covered,

Making a single entity

in thoughts, feelings and actions.

 

Then the walls crept between them,

Big stony walls,

Intimidating blocks

separating them,

Dividing them,

Cutting them apart,

The jarring fissures,

The glue-work of abandoned love

seeping and cementing the walls,

The walls crept high enough

to leave them complete strangers.

 

They carried each other’s torn skin flakes

on their changed identities,

The dead flakes of martyred love

sticking as sweet-bitter memories.

 

They walked along the stony walls,

There are no doors or windows,

Nostalgic entreaties fail,

Hope is lost,

They know that

both of them died in their own ways,

Losing a part of the self

in losing the other,

Thus they moved ahead wounded,

Then drifted away even from the wall.

A good human being

 

A collector of broken things,

An assembler of discarded pieces,

Making it a better world

without setting it as a goal;

just by being selflessly kind;

just a safe, secure bubble of existence;

being loving where

the outside strife won’t break in;

sometimes even giving shelter

to the people who shun love

purely due to the

fear of losing a loved one.

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.