Sunday, August 29, 2010

The prisoner

I’m ragged old,
I was once the youth icon
of the fauna around me,
Delhi was far and nonthreatening then,
We just enjoyed its lights from a safe distance,
The city didn’t seem at war with us,
But then it just spilled over,
Its bridges, roads, cemented pavements
ate into our innards,
I witnessed massacre of my near and dear ones,
I’m now caged in a high rise residential complex,
I’m just a poor, tiny banyan tree now,
Standing as an archaic symbol
in my cramped corner of this little park.
I go out of my way to give shade and cool air,
But I’m horrified and scared.
Even a kid picking a tiny pebble
to playfully hit my canopy
sounds like a terrorist hurling a deadly grenade.
So, against my nature
I’m always on guard,
crying for peace and mercy,
But it is too noisy around,
My mercy petitions fall on the deaf ears
of the stony facades standing haughty and proud,
I’m afraid any day the judgment
will arrive against me! 

Holy Harlots

Yamuna!
A black, toxic, putrefied nullah.
Cow!
A sewage-eating big pig
surviving on garbage dumps.
Two holy mothers turned harlots
in this age of Kaliyuga!
Delhi, meanwhile, pumps
more pride in its polluted lungs.
On stinking sewage-layered banks,
The skinny cow grazes on
noxious weeds and poisoned shrubbery,
Its beneficent, teary eyes
ogle at the human-industrial waste
mocking and mirthing over Yamuna’s sighs.
Who needs a holy bath now and cow’s blessings?
Two pillars of faith
now crumble down to pieces, 
Any listeners to their dismantling shrieks?

Iron Lady

It is noisy chaos,
Delhi at its best,
Impatient horns, smoky guffaws,
tired engines, shouts, dust,…
The lotus, but, shines in the mud.
Pulling the carrier rickshaw she is unfazed,
Two kids, a goat, a bundle of poor provisions
safely in tow,
Like a valiant captain at the best row.
Clad in a dirty saree
she shines like a queen,
I don’t think femininity had ever been
so illustrious in its sheen.
Meanwhile, madly mechanized world hisses,
But its lolloping tongue meekly kisses
the dirt on her hardened feet,
She pulls the rickshaw with pride
in full maternal heat,
Cramped for space she turns the tide,
The goat and the kids though panicked,
but the mother carries on the fight
in the traffic jam,
Fights for space with utmost grace,
and clears like a swiftest deer’s brace.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Old Bull and the Dead Wood

Old Bull and the Dead Wood

 I’m an old bull,
My rock-hard bones heave and pull
the rickety cart,
I’m skinny but perfect in my belief
that I’ve to justify my morsels before I depart.
I carry a dead body that once was
a robust attire for some sylvan soul,
It was an honest being;
this long, hard body,
It fulfilled all its duties without exception.
But then this is the age of vandals,
They can just vandalize only,
They axed it, chopped it.
I now carry the carcass
as the trophy of their triumphant glory,
I but silently mull over this murder story.
Delhi around me boasts of its mechanized colors;
cars, megamalls,  skyscrapers,
westernized guys and galls,
and thousands of glamorous pitfalls.
Haa..wonder they can’t do without me!
With salivated gusto
my labored breathing eggs me on,
while my victimized skeleton creaks and bemoan.
The flyover is the challenge,
My owner beats my back like an enemy,
It is a treacherous task,
But it is my duty to carry the body
for its final rites,
otherwise someone will miss
many a drawing room delights.
With softly pining majesty, silence sings a song,
Shadows grow long,
Her soft fingers brace my face
and go along a tears trace.
Delicate tip of her finger bears the jewel,
The tear the would have been lost as salt on my face.
Sandeep Dahiya

Love Bites


Love Bites

 The poisonous black coils hiss
and entangled in fanged loops go for a kiss.
Two glossy-black slithery bodies
lost in the fearsome quagmire of poisoned passion
eat each other’s identity in some unheard fashion.
The venomous fangs,
Lay bare their monstrosity,
making the moments vicious, stealthy, dangerous.
The tongues of death
nastily sway to a mysterious song,
It is like brutal soldiers of death
marching on a bloody path endlessly long.
It is like death dancing:
Its poisoned lips heaving, pushing its mighty pout
against the innocent, pure face of mortality.
Pitted against the cataclysmic forces of death,
the lovely pink sheen on the pristine face prevails.
Its softest brace breaks the hardest stones.
The fierce aura suddenly bids time to stay still,
to extinguish its fire at the acme:
the pleasure-topped hill.
The love prevails,
The horrible storm loses its restless travails
in the hazily lit mellowness of ecstatic surrender:
Defanged, depoisoned.
They are now just two beautiful creatures.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Some lines for some time in future

When thy eyes begin to glow dimly
And walk form not a rhyme with body;
Flowers when gone for a single lily
And world's eyes see not once fair lady;
When even cup loaths thy shaky pout
And time engrave its loath on thy rosy cheeks;
Eyelids drop when for vision out
And life only but leaks;
When thy grey hair die day by day
And all crests shrink to troughs;
See thou not when a single ray
And violently shake thee those coughs.

Then dear, pick my book up,–
Where thy youth shines immortally,
Untampered by the time's hand rough