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.

The bridge

 

A bit happy for what has’n spared,

Carrying lots of pain

about what has’n taken away,

Trudging the bridge between

happiness and sadness,

there I walk from this end to that,

unable to ensure

which side to cross over finally.

 

The swinging suspension bridge

seems an end in itself,

rather than the means for a cross over,

The bridge made of:

gratitude, guilt, anger, pain,

relief, safety, insecurity.

 

The swinging bridge

swaying over the vast chasm

that life seems from it,

On it most of us walk

interminably from this side to that,

taking it to be the only journey possible,

Foolishly ignorant of the fact

that it was a mere means for crossing,--

a humble convenience or utility.

The solitary walker

 

There are people who shout

and grab the most in a stampede,

There are some more who just whisper

and get onto the sidelines

to pick up what lies uncontested,

Out of these sideliners,

there are still fewer

who come out of the main-street throng

to take an abandoned empty little side alley,

With some occasional whisper

they pick up only what seems unworthy

to anyone on the main street,

Out of these latter,

a rare soul comes out of all congestion

to walk on a solitary trail

where the soul sings in freedom.

Holy whispers

 

I’ll whisper

loving words

in your dreams

when you feel lonely.

The dreamer of love

 

I bear no concrete illusion

of being separated from the surroundings,

Yes, it exists,

but just like a passing cloud,--

a wispy shadow

scattering feeble fencing now and then,

which temporarily

shuts me off in my ego chamber,

But soon the clouds of ego pass,

The sun of unity shines

casting away all separating shadows,

That’s when I feel like

I can fly without wings

and share my ‘being’ with the birds,

That’s when I can flow

with the fluid essence of streams;

can kiss the sky with lofty mountain peaks;

can rest like a turquoise calm lake;

can spread myself to infinity with stars,

And when I’m such,

I can easily meet you in dreams

and whisper solace and succor in your ears

on lonely nights

when you fall asleep with a sad heart,

My words will get a smile on your lips,

And I’ll watch it as my own smile.  

Salted wounds

 

Drift ice floating in coastal waters,

The wounds getting salted,

And iciness (hope)

clinging like a leech,

sucking the frozen blood of effort

to remain ice,

Everything is caught in the

intersecting zone of

being and nonbeing.