The storm-chaser

 

Love crushes you,

Consumes you,

It feasts upon you,

Dances on your head in wild revelry,

You become a stage

for its foot-tapping partying,

Its heels stomp on your chest,

Thump, Thump, Thump,

Your heart beats to its tunes,

Your soul sings to its composition,

Your eyes see its colors,

Your nose smells its fragrance,

Your fingers touch its curves,

Your tongue tastes its nectar.

 

It’s almost like a possessing entity,

Something that descends upon you,

Shaping you at its whims and fancies,

It’s not you,

It’s above and beyond you,

You realize it when it drops its spell,

leaving you like a garden

lynched on a storm’s path.

 

It’s a tasty addiction,

You are deshaped and deflated

once it abandons you,

You then hanker after the same shape,

You become a storm-chaser,

You run after another storm

to be jostled, pushed, pulled, ruffled,

Hoping you will get a fresh shape,

you allow yourself

to be hammered on the anvil.

Backward flying arrow

 

The arrow of nostalgia

piercing through lost years,

Moving swiftly through cloudy past,

To hit home with precision,

To land at a moment,

A little dot in space-time fabric

containing a tiny slice of life

when we talked, held hands,

When just being together

was to feel full, rested, contended.   

The gardener

 

You left and I stayed

in the lovely orchard we’d built,

The garden, flowers, fruits, leaves,

where the soul now grieves,

Memories scattered around like

an autumnal drizzle of leaves,

And me like a gardener

hoeing, pruning, spading,

Working to bloom spring flowers in autumn,

Trying to undo the fall,--

the autumn that permanently

descended and sat upon the orchard,

Coloring it with yellow-brown colors of fall,--

Forever,

Toils where the gardener of springs

in an autumn-possessed orchard.

The green leaf

 

Why be ashamed and apologetic

about what you are?

Why try to be a fraction of your full self

to fit in the mold of others?

To gather fake sense of security,

it needs lots of explanation and effort,

By being a fraction of yourself,

you are like a fragile leaf on the ground,

lying there to be broken under others’ boots,

But by being your full self,

you become a green leaf on a high branch,

soaking sunrays,

kissing the dew,

and swaying to the free breeze.

Evolution at my cost

 

I’d come closer by an inch

and you’d step back by a mile,

An inch of reclaim

paid with a mile of declaim,

More inches breeding more miles,

You vanishing towards the horizon,

Then gone,

Then your memories would recede

in the same proportion and manner,

That’s how time and space grow,

That’s how this cosmos expands,--

at my cost.

The knight of life: love

 

A mysterious longing

smolders through the day

and burns at night,

An exciting anticipation,

An unsparing desire,

The pores of your skin

humming with excitement.

 

A feeling of remarkable audacity,

which makes you unbothered about the

usual jostle and hustle of life,

Something looks straight into your eyes,

And you flinch, get tamed and surrender

to a gleaming, flashy star.

 

Your identity gets focused

in the chaos and hubbub of life,

You stand apart,

It even makes you feel proud,

even haughty,

to own this exclusive excitement,

You slyly smile,

A warmth spreads through you,

Melts the clods of uneasiness,

Overpowers your molecules of ego.

 

You flow,

You enter a spring,

A celebration begins,

Almost a rebirth and renewal,

You kiss the new sprouts,

You appreciate the flowers,

You feel the breeze on your skin,

Your eyes see the beauty around,

Your soul feels the all-pervading love

when your heart gets a sweet shove

at the mere look of your dearest dove.

Crowded loneliness

 

We are basically

a very lonely species,

Loneliness pervades our being,

Maybe we love being lonely,

And to keep its bitter-sweet charm,

we allow interruption to our loneliness

through love, affection, friendship, relationships,

But we know we have to

get back to be lonely again,

We are ready to pay the costs for it,

We squander away love and friendships

to buy our next installment of loneliness.