O life!

Light traced
On my glass surface
Several stages of life...
My birth...not I do comprehend
Sometimes like flash
By umbilical chord bent
I get floated
In the liquid primeval...
From that float
Remember a blur
I on perambulator...
Taken out to the road...
Still not unburdened from my pre-birth loads...
A little grown up
From that
Toys toys filled my state flat
Toy-train puff puff
In claps I did erupt...
Then another day...
My dad came with a coloring book
Paintbrush and crayons I took
And on white boards
A blue blue lake and house boats
And pine trees straight like towers
Snow flakes me then showered...
A few years after those days did end
Captive in textbooks I followed trends
Of history modern and ancient
Of atomic structures....molecules
Cramming data I drooled...
Then being in a wide wild world
Smoky heavenly tempting fold
'Confessions of an opium eater'
Pressure parental bursting my barometer...
Going wayward...going to dogs...
Cycling through the densest fog
With friends to the den
Pot pourri me taken...
Female forms then came
So close so open...
Losing love...finding one
Kissing sunlight on me one rainy morn...
Real life... job hunt
Tied up...suited...viva voce blunt...
Laying foot on soil hard
Money honey a few yards apart...
Buying spree...buying the soul
Buying designer sarees from boutique and mall...
Buying glitter of her eyes...
Nights potboiler filling my domestic sky...
Aging sweet...aging old
Aging love...aging bold
Age finally in fictional prose
Age in me sainthood chose...
Finally the sweetest return
To the mirth eternal...
Leaving a world for another
Holy breeze taking me the feather...
O life!
What a diverse varied wondrous travel
You provided me without fail...
I am happy...
I am pleased...
You my life...
Me you put into such a good league!

memorabilia of an awful man...

Dear...
Have you ever thought
How civilization groomed
Here by this river...
Now filled with the dark and the gloom...
Have you ever imagined
What that day he meant
When by you set
He talked about birth and death?
Have you heard his whisper-tone
His mumblings out borne
Of his solitary journeys made
Through smokes smouldering his dreams delayed?

Think of that day
By some chance of luck or resultant dismay
One man came to this particular spot
And in his scrapbook he filled with laser-dots...
He sketched his heart out-
Forgetting life is for him too short...
He met you and fell in love unbound
He dipped his fingers into your river profound...
He did poems, paintings and so many idiotic things
With your pains he also his happiness linked...
He kissed you hard...
He touched you soft...
He made your eyelids to ecstasy drop...
He showed you the other side
How lunar attractions create a river tide...
He ran with you to the distant dawn
He took you to the ripe yellow field sown...
He became a child eager to suck
Milk from your nipples...so love stuck...
He...the man...the stars here met
Milky way he took you straight...

The white grassy flowers swaying in the breeze
He asked you to attend, pulling your skirt's crease...
The pond dark and cool, half covered by shade
Of trees in your eyes like a huge painting he made...
Then at night here...here at this place right
He waited with his flimsy dreams for a terrible flight...

When the lights from the other city
Over another bank
Fell and created mirages
On water when they sank...
He...dear...remember...wistfully ever
Wrote on a white fabric...a myth with fever
His hands shook, his skin got burnt
He seeking cool towards you then turned... 

Another day he talked only of his mom
Sitting by her in seclusion, by her cloudy tomb...
He talked and talked as if he has gone
Out of his wits...he then with you got alone...
He talked then of life being a journey
One way traffic...with road blocks funny...
He talked a whole day...dawn to dusk
Showing his all...his treasures of heart unmasked...
He kept his flow for another few months
You also joined him...in rains with his talks you danced...

Then another year of his stay
He remained joyous, buoyant and gay...
His sorrows perhaps that year vanished
He just flew like joys unleashed...
He flew like a seagull over the green sea
His mind flooding over...only with unprecedented glee...
You laughed and laughed
As if laughs were embedded
Into you, he all jokes by a transmission deeded...
You laughed at every sight
You laughed away dreadful nights
You just took life so easy
You by his lighter heart went fully dizzy...

Dear...
All these memorabilia
Of that awful man
I just before you present
Loosely woven though
For you to stop for a second
Or two...
And roll over again to the time bound works
Your chores several...your predetermined marks...

I have told you...

I have told you
I can't even die
If you don't upon me lie...
I have told you
I am not killed yet
For you haven't me met...
I have told you...
Death becomes me
When through the curtain transparent
Me you piercingly see...

searching for excuses dumb and lame...

Help me... can't you?
To get rid of your view?
I can't your beauty tolerate
You are so overwhelming
That I perennially commit mistakes...

Help me ...can't you dear?
To get rid of you loud and clear?
Why this craving? why this madness?
Why I lose it all in your curly tresses?

Can't you me sober up a bit?
Can't you show me the door to the street?
Why you allow me such
To get flooded in the driest March?

Perhaps in me you also get drenched
Perhaps me also broke your fence...
Perhaps you're also facing predicament same
Searching for excuses so dumb and lame...

O what a pitiable me walk...on roads outlined by your red chalk...

Haven't seen you personally close
But you're like my daily dose
Of  poems written and unwritten prose...

Haven't been there to your ground
But everywhere you I so far found
You come to me dressed in red
You come to me sans clothes naked...

You me keep in a flow
You my Heaven's door every morn show...
You at night also come
With your feminine forbidden charm...

You dry me me like a withered twig
You show me also the waves tumultuous big...

With so much of you within me
I can't beyond you anything see
You have made me a man so blindfold
That by you my all dreams get mold...

O what a pitiable me walk
On roads outlined by your red chalk...

 

the return of the vagrant...

His entry was announced
By gunshot-sounds
Midday tavern rattled and bullets bounced...
On silver belt buckles...

She at the counter then
Was trying to few words pen
To her ailing father...in town
But the dusty outside maze
Stopped her writeup and she gazed
At the weakly bolted door
And anticipatory dread in her soared...

After a few minutes...
The gun shots ceased
As if the battle finished...
And with a thud loud
A man in gray beard and eyes with doubts
In tattered jeans and unshaven face
Bootlegged an entry made...

He walked in as if hurt
She could see drops of blood
Reddening slow his shirt pocket left
As if redness he there bred...

He poured a swig straight through his throat
From his pocket red towards his body did float...

The dying man then brought out
From somewhere of the dusty coat
A girdle unharmed...made of rubber stout
And handing her the thing
Weakly for the last time he to her beamed...

She opened the girdle with her nervous fingers
Into it she found how golden coins lingered
Like a parting gift from a friend
'For your father's treatment'...
The man said and fainted...

She then looked closely at the man
With closed eyes didn't he resemble
A long lost horrible man
Who left her in the lonely tavern?
Who went from her away
Seeking fortunes in a vagrant way?

when you came as white pure...

When with Your white poster color
I woke this morn
And opening the glasses dark of sleepy window found
How You with freshly lit joy born...
I was with joy filled...
Your morn...white...wet...my earth
tilled...
And before I could embark
Choppy waters full of hungry sharks...
How You came to me fresh
You my whitest Goddess...

And I ran to You fast
You blooming open vast
Scenes from paintings of the century last...
I looked at You enthralled
Watching how dreams in shapes of watery drops You stalled
Upon Your leaves like in amber fixed
You me with Your drops of joy mixed...

Now on if I You seek
Every morn as soon as the sun peeps
Tell me...
Will You be there forever by my window?
Will You there be with Your whitest dream pure?

A quaint theme

On such a cloudy day
Filled with scent of rain
And red yellow violet blossoms on display
Feel like flying far away...

To a quaint secluded theme
Leafy balmy olive green...
To a country road with Denver blues
Mud n dust filling socks and shoes....
To a place of guitar with soft hum
As my fingers would hold her silent plectrum...
To a place where joys from rainbow would sing
Where my mystic maid would for me a ballad bring...

a paradigm of a mind

At the sight of the pond with green top
I there by its bank stopped
Reminded of my school truant days
How leaves and red blossoms stray
Fell slow carried by the wind
On me how the beauteous sight gleamed...

Now the tree nowhere found
Leaves and red blossoms no longer me bound...
But looking at the water still
Sudden vision of the tree there sealed
With its red red blossoms afloat
On the water like strange little varied boats...

Methought then reflections how remain
Of images...ideas...and how they fleetingly train
Every moment of my fluid life
How the reflector mind me drive...
Thus the virtual infringes upon
Real it changes to thoughts often...

Leaving forever but with a prize...

Before getting into the train
She cast a last look at the lane
From behind the ticket counter which went
After three specified turns finally bent
And stopped short in front of a gate
A single story house now perhaps with a sign 'to let'...
That house had been her home
Three years and accumulated months some...
That house had been a happy home
Where she spent her lovely life so wholesome...
Now leaving all for another life
She closeted into her all tears and strife...
She took a deep breathe in...a long heave...
She cast a last look of the town before she would leave...
The tree lined avenue had landmarks...
Of spending a span of a whole monsoon dark...
On the terrace...being forever wet
Of being stung painless by poison of love as fate...
She stood at the gate of the compartment
Her mind diffused in time that drained...
All her resource...her being...her self...
The train moved but she only into the deep of nostalgia delved...
The shrill whistle her mind shook
She nodded in disbelief about the journey that she unknowingly took...
The face of her man came poignant
She broke into a flood of tears and losing breath how did she pant...
The train took up speed as if it wanted to move with her fast away...
The train must have felt how she by memories swayed...
Collapsing on the seat she her strained eyes shut
Still couldn't accept how her man for someone else from her did part...
Just then she felt a sudden kick silly
Within... her slightly bulgy belly...
She woke wide open awake
And with her palm she did a survey take...
Wasn't she shocked and fully surprised?
Hadn't she from her man got a fabulous prize?
Tears again rolled down her cheeks...
The small rivulet this time with a sense of fulfillment her pricked...

That would surely be a drastic note Coming out from my choked up throat...

Haven't written any letter
To you...but kept
Several alphabets
Here and there...
On the sofa, divan, chair...
Kept them scattered
As if they didn't matter...

Haven't composed a singular song
For you...but tunes did throng
At my disc player's lens
On my barbed wire fence...
Kept them there nonchalant
As if no meaning they to me nowadays send...

But when you would come with your meandering gait
My alphabets scattered would with the stray tunes mate
Then they would together be a song
Stretching the rubbery time infinite long...

Then perhaps all meanings would descend
Like silver flakes from the moon crescent
Then would once the hoofs of horse me plough
My insurmountable highs would meet with sharp troughs...

That would surely be a drastic note
Coming out from my choked up throat...

under the apprenticeship of the night sky....when once I did lie...

Under the apprenticeship of the black night sky...
On the soft unseen grass once I did philosophically lie...
And looked up to see
How unraveling mystery
Brought by the breezy state
Me to a poem with heroic couplet...

The vehicles which by chance plied
On the field's other...too civilized side...
Sometimes sent shooting beams
Upon my chastised dreams...

Just then got the smell
Of your hair-oil, breezily mailed
To my half dreamy half awake trance
Your fingers on my chest danced...

The grassy bed became luxurious
The night sky lent a soft focus
On me... then surely in a strange reverie
Robbing away all my philosophy...

The vast expanse of the open field
Turned then into a bed room sealed...
And you and I copulate
Giving birth to a rhyme...
Another heroic couplet...

Thus with you I had a flight
From one birth to another-
Of poems, dreams, and fancy all tied...
Under the apprenticeship of the night sky
On the soft grassy bed when I by chance lied...

Black and white drops...

Last evening black and white
Photographically bright
Saw one street urchin
Running in the rain
Like a joyous sprite unfolding
On the wet hanging film...

Last evening my city took
The splendid black and white look
Water...lights...moving cars
All became soluble parts
Of the celluloid motion flashed
On my eyes as the rain lashed...

Last evening brought the old
Pictorial stories me behold...
Last evening was all copper
Images liquid filled my dropper...
Images in the name of God...
Images of standing architecture...

Images of slippery lane
Images of 'bar is open'...
And of shadows on fall
Of buildings ancient toll...

Black and white all in all
Came to me like a sudden call...

Silent retreat...

Saw you putting things together
Into your bag of brown leather...
Old books of the poet...
Cassettes...cds...full of blood and sweat...
Saw you taking a few notes
Snippets of days with fitting anecdotes...
Saw you taking last sip
From the glass a potion red and deep...

With things tidied up
You closed the zipper's gap...
And then got ready
For the road you got steady...

Only saw by the back of your palm
You for once blocked your tears that did come...
You blocked nothing else
Only once your words failed
To break the silence vociferous
Words silent left layers
Of more silence...like a retreat
Down the empty depeopled street...
Perhaps an old song then played
Related to an alien star that met
Another star...a vagrant kind
Days which to you me did bind...

Inescapable...

Wish to let you go
How far...that I don't know...
How far can you escape
From the recordings on memory tape?
How many travels can you really take
To erase all graphical art...to me unmake?
How can live I disjoined
From those names for me you coined?
Or those writings secretly saved
On notepad of your mind being once brave?
Or those walks down the wet street
One evening when the moon you lit...
How far can I go from those clips
Of pictures that from heart to my mind slip...
Can you me let go then?
Like a few dotted lines...
An ever returning refrain?
Can you your poems throw away
Like a pinkish start of another day?
Can you really abort
Cutting endless talks severed short?
Can you wrap all tinsel thoughts
And put them locked into a tiny iron box?
And then let it lost
Forever sunk into the dark most...
Of the silvery stream...
From where it all started...
From which dreams erupted...

A handkerchief white...

'Happy journey friend!'
He said before he left the train...
At a station blank...
Only on the wooden plank
Within the train where she slept
He a handkerchief left...
A hanky simple and white
With a fragrance light...
Several stations after the event
When her eyes she opened
She found the hanky male
By her lying like a tale...
Then she realized
Whatever her teased
In her dream with ease
Was damn good real and true!
But by then
The stupid foolish train
Had jumped quite a few stations
In its monstrous motion...
Only the dream stayed late
With her lonely fate
And she carried the hanky white
Close to her bosom...a pain...slight...

A silvery revelation

It was for the probing breeze
Like a sudden revelation your silver streaks...
Came to me uncorked...
And I was left with shocks...
For your countenance...
Had a youthful lustre dense...
For your attitude...
Had all the remnants of a gayful mood...

But those white streaks...
Your experience leaked...
Those thin silver lines...
Carried a contrary sign...
A sign never thought would be...
In you for me to see...

Loved really that sweet contrast
Of wisdom getting a vivacious touch...
It lent you a rarity...
Of naivete...kissing urbanity...

now please sit...

Now please sit...
Walked for long as you
On the lonely dusty street...
Now please sit ...
For a while...
Under this tree...
With leaves rustling merry
And the soft rippling sounds of evening as the boatman ferry...
Now please sit...

(see another rendition of the same in bengali at http://www.theboatsong.blogspot.in/p/mother-tongue.html)

why love me such...so late?

If you thought you would come
To me like such a wondrous balm...
If you thought you would spoil
Me in every possible sense, being a counterfoil...
If you really thought you would thus me touch
Sending deep shivers through pores of my skin such...
If you're so predestined to me unwrap
With your fingers if you would my softness tap...

Why? why you came so late?
Don't you know 
Its the time to hang heavy padlocks
On my rusty gate?
Can't you feel I'm all spent?
Can't you make out I got nothing to you lend?
Can't you see I'm so tired?
Can't you see my fate is mired
With all sorts of struggles and ox like pains?
Can't you see those heavy chains?
How they bind me to my slavery tight...
How every day I get eroded right...

Why then you come to me now?
When from life I am taking a bow...
When I am slowly but surely on the wane
Why love me such...ain't it all vain?

thought so much of you...

Thought so much of you
That in my thoughts I lost real you...
Got a vision instead...
A strong vision unreal...
A dream funereally real...

Thought so much of you
That gradually...
You lost for me the real shape...
Only now in my imagination see your face...

finding her after a search amidst rain and thunder...

It started to rain sudden
Thunder and lightning all darkened
The space around him where he stood waiting
For her he waited all afternoon sweating...

With the advent of delirious storm
And the wind taking furious form
He got terribly for her worried
And from the safe shade of an old kiosk he carried
His mortal frame shaken and anxious to the blurry street
Hoping somewhere at the corner to her meet...

But the hazy whitish rain
Water pouring in volume every moment gained...
Made it too difficult for him to wade...
Through knee deep water he searched for his maid...

All the doors of houses were locked
The thunder of the clouds dark his pursuit mocked...
He felt tensed and shivered he in fright
Thought in the street he lost his sight...
Of the woman he so desperately wanted to see
Safe from the overwhelming natural fury...
So he walked tensed...
Till he reached somehow a lane vacant
A lane that should've possibly she taken
He walked unsteady, stirred and shaken...

Within him there was a cry
'Where are you? where could you find I?'
Watery flow moved like a stream
The lane was flooded to its brim...
He saw twigs and urban waste how got washed
By him how uncertain things trivially passed...

The lane after a few yards of walk went up
To go straight to a small hill with a flat top...
He thought he should follow the lane
Walk till he would reach its legitimate end...

Just then a curious shadow
With an umbrella held uncommonly low
Came briskly walking up to him
And an arm shot up to hold his chin..
He just then looked up to see
Under the umbrella danced a pair of eyes with glee...
A pair of eyes which he searched all over
The loveliest face of his drenched and wet lover...

'Where you have been?'
Both of them then screamed...
In unison...with tears in their eyes agleam...

several years passed since that night of my run...still to that night I return...

I ran through the street known

Carried by a layer of foam...

Soft, gay, smooth as wine

For you tugged at my invisible line

Connected to you by an unseen chord

I ran across night sky broad

Lit up by the fireworks

Shooting stars sending sparks...

While on run by the lake
By which the short cut to you I did take
I saw how water lilies bloomed
On the water over which the halved moon loomed
I gathered more speed
Knowing the alley only to you me would lead
I perhaps took a deep breath in
Gathering your scent of the night clean
Into my throbbing heart, lungs smoked
Then also felt the nightly breeze how stroke
My skin gently as if your fingers on me played
I ran faster, speedier, hoping the clock running a bit delayed...

There when through your garden gate
I ran through like an arrow sharp and straight
Saw you blocking the door arms akimbo pose
On your bosom you perhaps held a bunch of red red rose...

O how I stopped braking myself to a halt
Sweat on me tears by my cheeks...all moist with liquid salt...
O how you flung your arms around me sudden
I fell with you on the grass of your soft garden...

My panting heart breathlessly me told
I had trespassed all my imagination bold
You perhaps quicker than me came
To the real situation and blushed pink with shame...

That night a few minutes later in your lone house
You set me on fire and also my fire how you doused
O what a night it was... of poetry written impromptu
O how that night we to extreme poles of earth flew...

Then came slowly the dawn tired yet so gay
You recited 'Good Morrow' for me to usher in the newest day...
The invisible chord then perhaps became visible
A connection strong, as a thick iron cable
Fastened to you me then perhaps felt too tight
Fastened to you, then felt real, whole of my tiny morbid life...

Several years passed since that night of my run
Still God knows why in my trance to that run I return...

sardar patel street...

The street had always been narrow
A few houses...a canal and sights of wheel barrows...
And those trees of my age
Standing there weaving tales of long lost days...
And the silent vacuum...empty space
Filled sparsely by the trains' race...
Running through the tracks on shine
Bringing hopes of meeting you...a life divine!

Sardar Patel Street...
Thousand memories mine here with you meet...
Every day if I there stray... 

The street had largely remained the same
Still it has that lonely frame
Of being a street with a definite end
Train tracks cross over it to send
Images of heavy locomotives on motion
Images of you standing at the door with a potion
Of poems, paintings songs and peek-a-boo...
Your secrets slightly open for me...a throbbing view...

The street had remained intact
Only you there set wild it lacked...
The canal still flows down with the flowers
Torn from trees by last monsoon showers...

Sardar Patel Street
Thousand versions of you here I meet
Every day...
If I there by fortune stray...
Away...

when two candles meet...

How that could have been?
If you to me the light of cool candle bring?
If you would drip drop by drop
On me a speck of luminance soft?

 How that could have been?
If you like a light stream
Fall on me straight on my heart
Your spotlight just where my dreams fall apart?

How that could have been?
If you on me like a passageway lean
And show me the ways to the inner light
Where another candle glows by day and night?

How that could have been?
If you throw away your earthly screen?
And come to me all bare...sans dress
To collapse my all in your sweetest embrace?

Perhaps then we both would melt
Perhaps wax on the floor could then be felt
Like a big pool of semi solid spread
Like an unison by temperature bred...

a fanciful season fills me and my city...when you wait for me...

The sky overcast
By clouds with scent of rain
Tells me plain
You're there for me
Waiting at the bus-stop...
You would be surely in white...
Your hair wet and eyes bright
Surely wait for me to descend
Near you where my road always bends...

Can easily perceive
How the rain-soaked breeze
Play about you as you there stand
A relentless picture of  love-in-wait by the news-stand...

The trams must have moved by you
Minibuses must have honked...
From the billboards with a filmy view
The rising starlets must have cast a look blank...

The leaves must be running round
Circling you in a frantic move around...
The tea stall owner by the stop
Must have put on stove a silver pot...

This sky overcast...
This spring breathing her poetry last...
This clumsy chaos of weather dark...
This wait of you for me embarked,
On my city scape, by a snapshot earmarked-
Must be happening for a reason...
Of filling my city with a fanciful season...

come! my joy! let's walk through...

Look at last I have come to stand
On your native land...
Walking a long winding road
Growing blisters by breaking clods
Of hardened earth....full of hurts
Moved through all the darts
Thrown at me with precise choice...
Look how have traversed distance to hear your voice!

Now don't be so tight-lipped
Don't look at me like a vacant street...
Don't please down your eyes...
Though I know blocks of ice
Are there within you stagnant like tears frozen cold
I know your pains coagulated to blackish blemish untold...

Look... me too also bled
Gone through as well like you the hellish dread...
Look...I also got scratched and bruised
Venomous clouds also fell broken on me from sky loose...

Now that me traveled wide and far
And you also stayed for me like that dazzling fixed Pole Star...
Come'n! let's just take a conjoined leap
Let's join hands before we embrace the Sleep...

Now that the night sky is bereft of frowns and acid rains
Now that time has provided us finally to despise pains...
Come! my joy! let's walk through
The last quarter of our life together glued;

the sight of flowers spread brings an illusory state

The sight of flowers yellow and red
On the scorched summer afternoon street spread
Like loosely sewn carpet soft
Takes me back several years cropped
Of my long strip of memories of summer holidays
My leisurely bicycle rides...my post exam days...
My days of little secrets of savoring mango pickles
All alone at the terrace, so greedy and guilty struck...
My days of playing football, jostling with little buddies covered with slushy muck...
My days of coming sleepy tired home...
With moon all over me like a roundish white drone...
My summer nights under the sky, with blowing breeze
Me bitten red- painfully stung by bees...
My countless waits at the window to see
A girl returning home in white skirt and green tee...
My afternoon sweats falling on papers, plastic and stick of glue
Trying to make a foolish aeroplane that never flew...
My Cliff Richard with boyish charms singing loud
Summer holidays with a blue sky without doubts...
Me accompanying my mother in the evening
To the market with a silent hope of getting
A simple toy with two wheels that could run
Across imaginary streets and under hot bulgy sun...
My father coming home with a book of a superhero
Who could pick up speed of immeasurable dimensions spending time zero...
My days of being seriously inclined
To run a race with friends on the street with trees lined...
My days of falling prey to someone's call
My days turning to nights of being dumped by a lively next door doll...

The sight of flowers spread
Of colors yellow and red
Brings me back to an illusory state
A state of being innocent, naive, and a bit too perfect...

Subho nababarsho dear!

Wish to see you today dressed
In a red bordered white saree
And hair braided knee-length...
Sandal wood smell from you
Coming to me through
The busy day's all hurly burly
I am still engrossed with your hair curly...

I am still with your saree-end's knot
In which you've kept my lot...
Tied and hanging in the air...
With you moving fair...
Across your living... peopled so much
Coming to you to fashion another new year...

Know you're too busy today
Serving your guests with your smiles
And sweets on silver tray...
Only wish you would find a spot
Secluded somewhere to plant a plot
Of kissing me, caressing me fine...
This new year when on you like a glory shine...

Subho nababarsho dear!

(Subho nababarsho...in bengali, means Happy New Year...today, is the first day, i.e; poila baisakh of bengali new year 1419) 

leaving in me dreams of a painter...

Felt so many times to you leave a touch
But you shrunk shy my touch me not such
That I restrained...from drawing calligraphic write
On you...I didn't create pencil shades of dark and light...

I didn't embellish you grand
For felt you couldn't that withstand
I didn't pour my all engrossed self
For felt that was too deep for you to delve...

I didn't dip my paintbrush into pots
Colors stayed within me like solidified dots...
I shied away... for painting you would mean
Committing that unpardonable historic sin...

But then you are sometimes so condescending
Coming to me with rules bending
To accommodate me with such an impulse
Rubbishing my conflicts as cowardly acts false...

That I again feel to leave you with a touch
But  you shrinking again such...
That my desire remains forever unfulfilled
That slowly my coloring thrust I do kill...

This loopy loop, I think, would keep me awake
Several centuries... of being  unpoetically on check
Yet you would cause me with newer wish
You leave in me dreams of being a painter without leash...

when the wind played hard on me...

When the wind played
With your hair soft
Sitting by the window
With the setting day's glow...
I cast a look on sly
And saw how sometimes secrets fly
By the air so smooth and gay
At the end of a scorching day...
Riding by me, by you...
Riding with us like a window view...

The vehicles then surely did hoot
But then our world was on the mute
For we heard nothing else
Only images cast passing tales
Tales of passion unexpressed
Tales of poison leaving no trace...
Tales of adventure forbidden...
Tales of memories bursting sudden...
Within me...perhaps within you the same...

When the wind played so hard
Sitting several seas from you apart
I could feel the return of sense
Watercolors on my eyes dense...
Paints of days sketched with all expertise
Paints of memories come without cease...
Paints of being on a same ride
Paints taking nostalgic flight...

once when you became both...the lighthouse and the stormy sea...

Once when the sky got dark
You just took me out ...to witness the spark
How flew from one end to another like a flash
On you then saw a titanic clash...
Of two real unreal you
How me towards you drew...

You laughed clumsily
On your slim waist I did then see
How a simple silver chain of keys
Danced in the flowing breeze...

Your uncoiled hair afloat
In the wind toppled my boat
I swam and swam blind
Not knowing how the shore to find
I was just left disarrayed complete
Off the earth dangled my feet....

O how you then became a guide
Helping me to swim across the tides
Real huge sweeping across me
O how you also became the stormy sea...

You the lighthouse...
You the sea...
O how you played with me..
Constantly...
Till the evening died to sleep
Till you with exhaustion tripped...

your call came but...with silence...

Looked at the screen aglow
Your name it distinctly did show...
But couldn't get that touch of your voice
Which (I remember, by God!) earlier brought joys
Of being belonged, of being caught
By your songs so much terribly wrought...

This time only heard some heavy blows of wind
As if a stormy weather somewhere cleaned
All the debris of blocks of life tumbled down
Instead of your songs got hissing sounds
Of stray leaves blowing at super-cyclonic speed
Telling me strongly how words also silence breed...
Sometimes when words stop for nothing plausible
Sometimes when the telephonic conversations die so young but feeble...

Oh! wanted to get that tiniest tinge
Of passions overflowing your bowl's rounded fringe...
But...only heard how storms wreck trees up
Conversation died in silence trapped...
Heard a lot of car horns blare
Heard how heavy big structures, storms did tear...

Oh! how I wanted desperately
Happy visions of a full bloomed tree...
In you, through your mellifluous voice
Coming to me with a dreamy poise...
But...
Heard only panicky horns loud
Ripping apart my hopes devout...

reaching...my place...leaving mortal dress...

Steps of tea plantation green
Trees with branches professionally trimmed
Got temporarily erased by the mist and fog
By the road...at the fringe...slept under haze a lazy dog...

Saw with bundles balanced on her head a lass
Climbed the steepness with ease as I by her did pass
She waved to me dimple cheeked
The misty air dense my face did lick...

The road wound uphill as if a spiral
Catching me with feverish adventure viral...
I watched how the clouds came to fall
On my head like an old gray shawl...

After few turns round the hill
Reaching a flat top, did I feel
Air hung heavy with smell of incense sticks
A strange aroma my conscience pricked...

Small thin flag posts there stood
Like slender saints on the brood
They greeted me with lovely smiles
Welcoming me for crossing several miles...

Across the hills,rivers and vale
Across the horizontal plane without fail...
Across several tempting spots
When I was there unfailingly brought...

The misty air, the downy incense smell
Enveloped me from all sides to tell
I had finally reached my place
Leaving behind my mortal dress...

Wonder sometimes....losing the count...

Wonder sometimes losing the count
Of days, months , years, of not seeing you paramount
Coming to me, with a big round dot
On your forehead glistening like a beauteous spot...

You coming to me watery wet
As a post rain session all set
To wake me up from my slumber right
Like a white flower blooming conspicuous for the night!

I have lost the memory of your physical taunts
You dipping me breathless into your deepest pond...
With the reflection of the white circular thing
Right on you guiding me to swim...
Passing by the hyacinth afloat like bouquets
Your watery invigorating sense leaving me tokens
Of being so much into you like a dream
In your pool so cool, me on swim...

Wonder sometimes are you still the same?
Do flowers bloom on your locks and mane?
Does the moon still shine on your watery pool?
Do you still carry bouquets on your water cool?
Does someone like me, in your pool,crave for a swim?
Does on your forehead glow a big round dot not dimmed?

when rains drew patterns on your face glassy...

When the rains patterns sketched
On the glass of your morbid face...
Seated uncharacteristically calm
At the table like a dry flower losing charms...
 I tiptoed towards you pulled
Like a man in a circus ring fooled...

Thought not to break your trance
When rainy drops by the glass panel danced...
Only wanted to sit up you in front
Gathering your eyes smitten by empty vaunt
Thought not to unravel your state
Wanted only to be scissored by bewildered fate...

The Fate of being with your glassy patterns
The fate of discovering melancholia, not by mere chance...
But by a choice made the moment the pulls on me worked...
By my tiptoeing silence towards you as distinctly chalked... 
Perhaps like a preordained unchallenged mighty prophecy
Perhaps like being doomed to be sunk finally in your face glassy...

you the artist...me the clay...

Your turntable and the mound of wet clay
Move round and round in my dreams all day...

Your fingers with layers of trust
Fall on me softly just
The way you shape and mold
Wet clay by your moving fingers told
Stories of different shapes and forms
Stories carrying conical or cylindrical turns...

Your fingers thus on me move
And how they clearly prove
Your overwhelming creative sense
On me leaving imprints dense...
Imprints of tiny cobwebs of your skin
On me applied like a soothing UV 40 protect screen...

Your fingers make me a mound of clay
I find them on me always at play...
Making, unmaking, shaping me fine
Drawing on me so many kindred lines...

finding a stormy sea...in my city streets...

Two inches perhaps wide
From you then ran my unseen tide...
Ran unseen, always forbidden
From you by the shadows of scrapers hidden...

I perhaps then looked at the flowing day
How on the streets my redness laid...
I looked  perhaps at passage of love
And thought how it always unpredictably curved...

Perhaps then felt like an explorer
Instigated by the wanderlust, perhaps me dared...
To get into a stormy sea...with clouds looming large...
Me then guided only by a hitherto unforeseen upsurge...
Ran to the wooden deck...to the wheels to steer
To run my ship's course to the shore still unclear...

O how then the streets turned into a sea...
O how the ride turned turtle only me...
O how the car then became a ship...
O how within me an explorer then did I keep...

the rain has stopped but left images...

The rain has stopped a few minutes back
And on the tram tracks
Across the city and its lanes
It has left its watery stains...

Water everywhere...
Water on the leaves...
Water on hands bare...
Watery pots and pans...
On water how your reflections dance...

The rain has stopped sure my love...
But it has left so many images here and there
Images of streets fresh without dust...
Images of iron rails gathering rust...
Images of crows looking helplessly cowed...
Of trees like defeated soldiers by the racecourse, bowed...
Of buses and taxis failing to start perhaps chilled
Of you sitting on the last bench of an empty class room, with poems filled...
Of empty corridors...with marks of shoes all over wet
Of the hanging sense of big real water droplets...
Of umbrellas spread somewhere to get dry
Of hails like tender joys and wonder falling from the sky...

The rain has stopped...
But left marks here and there...

 

treading the same...only the gale changed everything...

Sometimes some roads appear known
A too known thing
Which fail to bring newer hopes
Though the familiar designs
Carrying familiar signs
Help me to reach my destiny
Without worries any...
But there's nothing for me to get the touch of excite
Out of known, familiar sights...

But...
When the western sky is red...
And a storm is going to shed
All my leaves on the floor...
I stand there at the opening of the road
With all my physical, impetuous load...

I stand for some time before I tread
Towards that same known road that me led...
To known territory of exfoliation
Leaving my leaves one by one while in motion...
They fall off in ones and twos
They fall off on my Monday blues...
As if they are to be felled-
When a strong gale
From the Arabian sea
Reach me with full force to tell
That my exfoliation would happen again
And it is very much part of the life's eternal chain...
Of death and rebirth
Of decay and renewal of mirth...

So I walk on
The road all known
Only the gale changed the set
Through the storm a new life me get...
For my leaves fallen just fly
By the wings of the gale losing my ties...
For the dust and smoke burst loose
Fill the known road with new hues!

your tears kill me...invisibly...

Keep those drops of glass
Within your eyes dear...
For when you let them fall such
My blue sky get smeared-
By thickest black bleakest smoke
And my throbbing sense of that reddened pump gets choked...

Feel like I am losing all
From light undertaken a free fall
To the fiery molten burning feel
As if by your tears you me kill...

O what a terrible way is it to die
By glass balls from your eyes...
O what a strange way to be dead
Killed by the tears you shed...

Will it be really a happy sight?
Killing me with no apparent marks of fight?
Will it be a just cause
To put my heart to an eternal pause?

So...don't cry dear...
For your fall of glassy tears
Kills me invisibly...

my love's lost anthem...

Your lines written and erased
So many times on my white page
Left little scope for another write-up
You simply left me as an unused draft...

 Your cubes, your squares
Geometrically left me unawares...
Your lines vertically erect
Left indelible printing mistake
On me...so much strong
No proof reader could right that wrong!

Your unmindful little scratches
Left unmistakable dark patches...
Patches like thick ink-blots...
A smudged plan all botched...

But...
When I look at those marks
Even if they with doom lurk...
I somehow find in them
My love's lost anthem...

The more I look at them
Several  flowers of the morn unashamed
Bloom in front of my eyes blurred
O how I find poetry unmarred
Rising up from the ash
Like a Phoenix...in a lightning flash...

I then paint the patches with all my colors of heart
Dust off  with love all the grime of filth and dirt
And renovate the pages with vigor new
Fill them with flavors of  my sweetest honeydew...

a flashback narrative...

As you stand there with hair flowing black
And eyes lit up by the light from the fisherman's shack
In you find her waiting like a picture obsolete
A picture sold for a few bucks on my city's street
Across that white building with architectural moments
Of supreme delicacy, my mind you there send...

Why you so much resemble-
My first experience of female ensemble?
My first kiss, first night-long weep?
My first day dream, my first night without sleep?
My first feel of someone's covered glassware?
My first going beyond the outer layer
Of affection, respect, longing, curiosity...
Of affected pride, lost false vanity?

O my love! how you return
In many forms but to the same turn...
To the same rise and fall of  breath...
To the same sense of having faith-
On your soft fingers with which mine you hold
On your tales of twists and turns by your flickering eyes told...

O how to me you keep coming back
With your eyes so deep and hair so black...
O how I again at the river-ghat you find
Tracking the signals of my occupied mind...
Standing there, for ages, on the steps of rock
Leading to the water which Time always mock...

Saturday night squall...

This squall...this sense of rain
After the dry hot and humid chain
Of restlessness like an upsurge
Sung for me a Saturday night dirge...
A Saturday night dirge...what a contrast
When I should with my glass
While the time away till the drops of wine last...

You came like a squall
Hitting against my glassy intoxicated wall...
And reminded me of our Nor'westerly leads...
In you when once I dropped my seeds...
Of dreams ,of hopes, of generation wide
Under the rains when our naked selves lied...

This squall...now that it carries away all
Dry leaves of last autumn caught midway in the fall...
This smoky dusty impossible vision
Hindering the progress of all automation...
Blinking lights, disarrayed streets...
Tenderly chaos how with memories meet...
Memories of you and me on the open terrace
Caught by the hints of outwardly mess...
O how every bit of us come with your Saturday night squall
Memories of your cherries pressed on my glassy wall...