Safe zones

 

A fish’s drowning is on the land

where you stand

safe on the lovely sand,

And you drown

like a miserly pathetic clown

where she swims,

We are kings in our zone safe

but paupers in other’s territory.

The song of life

 

A sweltering tropical night,

The electric saw of her heartlessness,

cutting my dead heart’s woods,

I salvage a fragment of myself

from the slaughter house,

I carry the cutting like a treasure,

The melody is still alive

in its wooden fibers,

That’s where my tapasya lies,

I’ve to work like a passionate artist

and shape the flute

to bring it closer to life,

Then like a flautist

touch my lips to the flute

to come still closer to life,--

to love, to hope, to smile.

Cosmic crash

 

Among the clatter and chatter,

Shifting specks and pulsating ripples,

Wavy swirls and mournful elegy of emotions

in the vast recesses of heart,

the generous dimensions of her presence

give me a differently abled self,

Wherein I measure my time differently,--

the heart pierced by the arrows of linear time dies

and its spirit flies in loops of cyclical time:

past pushing into the present;

the present barging into the future;

the future stabbing the past from behind,

It’s a grand collision,

A marvelous crash.

The endless stream of pain

 

Serrated with the pain of survival,

a man cuts a tree,

Resin and sap oozing from the

cut on the tree’s bark,--

coagulated tears,

It’s a tiny stream of pain

that started in a human heart

and changed to the tree’s tears,

The stream of pain proceeds further,

It now becomes

the sad words of a poet

on the paper made of tree’s flesh,

The sad verse then chimes

with the inaudible whisper of pain

in some reader’s heart.

The key

 

Enclosed in the fencing

of my ignorance, darkness and misery,

Standing like a poor, meek lamb,

I saw two worlds,--

a joyless me in the circle;

and the other one outside the circle,

full of lush green,

rippling streams of freedom.

 

The chasm between the two worlds

seemed insurmountable,

The happy they and the sad me.

 

I moved along the fence

trying to find a way out,

There I came across a locked gate,

The lock rusted and the key missing,

And whatever resources were left

I used in searching for the missing key.

 

A folly it was,

Just like seeking a cap

that one already wears on the head,

Because the key was always there,

Like it’s with all of us,

It was there

in the safe chest of my heart,

The golden key,

The key of small love—self-love,

The key to open the box

and retrieve another key,

the key to bigger love.

Blindness

 

Everyone is

beautiful, pretty, handsome,

gorgeous, attractive, exquisite,

magnificent, brilliant, bewitching, dazzling,

enticing, alluring, graceful,

divine, delightful, elegant,

captivating, fascinating, sublime,

charming, glamorous, aesthetic

in his/her own way.

 

The spots of dislike

that we see on them

aren’t actually

the dark markings on them,

These are the spots

on the retina of our own being,

preventing, obstructing full vision,

Making us partially blind

to the beauty around.

 

Clean the eyes of your existence,

Then all you see is just

beauty, love and grace.

The return of the native

 

Yanked off the hinges,

Torn away and blown to pieces,

Buried under the rubble,

Cut off from the rays of hope,

Dark clouds of locusts

devouring the crop of my effort.

 

Shame-stabbed,

Pacing the room like a caged animal,

Destiny’s chainsaws

cutting, clawing and gnawing

through the fibers of my existence.

 

Carrying autumnal colors in spring,

The serrated edges of memories

cutting the structure of my world,

The ghosts of sadness outside

always ready to barge into me.

 

That was how I set out

to kill the demons outside,

Went far and wide,

forgetting those that I carried

in the safe secrecy of my own self.

 

It was like a dust collector

carrying  a huge burlap sack,

Needlessly carting dust

oblivious to gems hidden in heart.

 

I went too far away

from my own self,

Got lost, cried, felt orphaned,

That’s when I felt Her touch,

Mother nature’s touch,

The furrows on my forehead

smoothened with Her touch,

It was then a slow crawl to recovery,

I felt the chirring, buzzing mystery

of emptiness around a rainbow.

 

There I stood in a wooded corner,

The time brewed a heady spirit

mixing tears and laughter,--

the potion to mend broken hearts,

The trees smiled among

the twisting vines of triumphs and travails,

Juicy, plentiful harmony pervading the air,

The birds with effervescent chorus of hope,

Each moment extending its realm of

harmony, ease, joy, lightness.

 

I felt in communion with vastness,

Vast stretches invaded with peace,

I was no longer a lonely lighthouse

struggling against the dark,

I felt like sun during the day

and like moon during the night.

 

It’s very easy to fall prey to sadness

and become a rock,

But it’s still easier to turn a happy soul

who chats with trees

and sings to flowers.

 

Far away in the solitude of a forest

I felt closer to humanity

than I ever felt even in a crowded bazaar

rubbing shoulders with human bodies,

There I was lonely, distanced,

Here I was alone

but so-so near to humanity in my heart.

 

Sharing the unsaid mixed in the silence,

I saw, felt, touched, tasted, heard holy scriptures

in forests, flowers, streams, blue skies, birds,

My religion became life itself,

God and godliness pervading humanly

and non-humanly on this vast canvas.

 

Reinvigorated, refurbished, renovated,

I then return to the busy streets,

The streets carrying the same old clatter,

But all has changed,

The shield of silence enveloped around

keeps me wired

to that far-flung harmony.

 

The return of the native

who is in tune with

the undertone of silence

even in a clattering bazaar.

 

Now I don’t close my eyes

to meditate,

I open them

to see this endless magic,

this infinite beauty.