To Talk Small; To Talk to Earth

 

Hiccups come whooshing like arrows,

Bowed backs, tension-stringed souls,

The tension stored from the time immemorial,

And the sobs go squelching.

 

Ye squeak only, bad marksmen!

Your shots just firecrackers

around the towers of the exploiters,

The towers hanging sprucely, with talons.

 

Tag-rags! Thou from yore,

From womb to the grave,

Cry just one by one;

Individually and separately,

Pouring saline anguish on wasted cheeks.

 

Ever eager to attack

the heavenly vaults for the evils all;

Hands ready to break His head,

Never but the real cause lying nearest.

 

You murder prophets easily,

Never but support the champion of liberty,

So you remain as ever,

Ugh, historically the same beaten class!

 

Yoke fellows! Please let Him rest,

If eager to weep yet,

Then cry ghoulishly in a chorus,

Like Shiva’s drumbeats.

 

Or waste not anguish in tears,

And noises that fall on ears deaf,

Shout Tally Ho! For history’s sake,

Let it progress by a different type of change.

Jailed by Destiny

 

With every sinew losing out,

There lies the nest of my hopes,

Scattered like dying, gasping fishes,

Destiny chuckles over the vaporizing,

fading signs of its opposition.

 

Why not? Sinners are those

who toil against the lines of fate

drawn on our palms;

The web of destiny

that limits and chains ventures all,

And the puppets merely dancing to its tune.

Every pulse, dying or born,

Here in this world, or the other;

From the first cry to the last in an abyss,

We are just tools in the great reaper’s hands,

The cruel General leads an army

comprising we the puny foot-soldiers,

Fighting against each other;

Instruments and weapons in millions of hands,

The leader uses one to cut, thrash and mow the other.

 

Each hope and cause great

turn the sins bigger for the mighty ringleader,

And I am the biggest sinner,

With my misplaced ideals and misfitted compassion;

Now I stand amidst my garbage,

Unworthy, hopeless and thoroughly beaten.

Escapades from the Pyre

 

Hot ash of the cremated,

There lies the voice of the Himalayas,

Stood which rock firm,

Now turned into grains few

by the holy flames,

Fire ate the fire—

an elaborate oasis

combusted to a desert small.

 

Hot air rising upwards

with liberating soul

and mourners’ tears,

To make rain of it,

which will shower upon a flower

manured by the cemetery’s ashes;

‘Will’ dies never,

The passion of a life whole

now forms the flower of a single day!

Death in a Forest

 

Night was falling in the jungle,

With stars smiling from a cold sky,

Early mist making a drink

to inebriate the trees through the night,

And the leaves preparing for a dewy bath.

 

A dark man matching the night’s colours,

Stumbled across the decaying windfalls,

His skin clad in more darkness,

White teeth flashed to life,

Like water in the abyss of a well,

A sigh of agony poured out

warmth in the imposing cold.

 

All vestiges fading out of sight,

Yet, two gentle eyes like an elephant’s said,

‘Live and let live’;

His burning self gave

some warm solace to the dewy, cold leaves,

His bright foot-soles drummed

on the decaying leaves,

Sowed seeds of life among death and decay.

 

The music approaching the forest’s centre,

With stars applauding

and the trees swaying to the tune,

Nature styled his hair:

Curls, locks, dust matched the jungle’s disarray,

He stumbles now more

and finally sits under a tree,

Sleeps then to eternity,

The last trace of life mixed

with the darkness around;

The morning came to enliven everything,

but not the last trace of night.

Drawing, Sketching Webs of History

 

People come and go,

with genealogies spinning history,

Everything changes to survive,

Similarly, man becomes his opposite more.

 

Fast riding jockey he is,

Sticks to the saddle of time,

His horse trampling the turf,

And the cheers eating the dust around;

The ‘eagle’s eye’ spotting the winner

among the beasts riding the same,

Gallops match the applauds around

to cut the finishing line first.

 

Whoever may be the lucky one,

It’s nothing but simply

a line drawn over the last one,

And many parallels following.

 

What did the winner get?

Nothing but the smallest

glimpse of others doing the same;

Irony drips from the dusted moments,

Look, the victor ponders back the maximum,

Trickles which to zero

for the last one cutting across.

 

A trophy, a V-sign, a horse’s smile,

That is what they give him,

And some rest on the podium;

That is what life is,

Dropping every skill of ours

on the back of a beast

to carry us as a victor,

Half-man, half-beast,

we leave nothing but litter around;

Exhausted and throbbing hearts.

 

So much of the course is

trampled to death,

only for the thinnest line

connected by similar tangential lines;

With milestones of eulogy,

And battlefields in between,

This is what we call

history, progress and more.

Jewelled Vagary by Nature and Man

 

White-pearled necklace smiles,

Of cobweb, with dew beading it,

Silvery, on a bonsai-like acacia,

In murky morning, fog and cold.

 

Prickly branches sprout, frozen,

Empty-headed, standing still and mute,

Like a bribed beauty silent;

Jewelled throats disclose nothing.

 

The fog-vaulted sky above,

Vapours riding nuclei unseen,

Making things around appear as sprites,

And the necklace among the bones and thorns.

 

Gallowed! Thus serene forever,

Like the ever-impressed eyes portrayed,

Follow which the observer always,

Greedy to be jewelled more.

 

Nature’s goldsmithy and the man’s:

The necklace in the thorns,

The other making the skin prized more,

Beauty thus defined, thrives on donated bounties.

The Voice Inside

 

Forget about the hoot and holler

emanating from the world outside,

And give an ear to the soft and murmurous

cooings emanating from the soul,

It has a soft and sympathetic

message for you only,--

your most personal message,

meant only for you,

Listen to these delicate chimes,

It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos,

In getting a foothold in the stampede,

In feeling rest, repose and respite

amidst constant buffeting by the world around,

It’ll help you in breaking

the hardest of superficial layers,

which suffocate and limit your identity,

And put you face to face with

your true self, your real worth,

Listen to it, close your eyes,

And pay attention with all your heart,

Just for a change,

don’t look far, look closest at yourself,

It’ll be as uneventful as looking

at a dust particle around your feet,

But it changes the universe for you,

You will have the biggest message

in the softest of whispering phrases!

And it’ll help you in finding yourself.