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...

we meet up there...at the Milky Way fair...

Come my darling
Let us leave
This reality check filtering us like a sieve
Every moment every passage of our words
Through the air, taking us sadness towards...

Come...
Let us just wear our spacesuit
And scanning of our stream root....
We go straightaway
To the star-studded Milky Way!

A way always filled with twinkling delight
A way towards unending dazzling light
A way to meet nebula and other celestial mates
A way leading to the Heavenly blissful state...

Come...
Let's go away stupendous
Flying by wire we would pass
Dead stars, new born ones...
Filled with abject thrust of wonder
Filled with dark as dark as Light
Filled with a Skylark's supreme flight
As someone discovered and prayed
To gain, after a revolution left him dismayed...
As someone after falling on life-thorn
Feverishly wished in his Ode with the object to be reborn...

Come..
We do a recourse...
Leaving our all pains and remorse...
We do meet up there
At the Milky Way... fair!

a white canvas and a poetic ecstasy...

Seeing the canvas white of you so spread
Front of me laced with cool afternoon shades
Of lonely village roads and shops unopened...
Methought how beautiful it would be to paint
Your all with my flamingo spirit untainted...

Methought the walk down the alleys would forever last
You by me walking smoothly just
As the days smoothly pass the baton of dreams to nights
As nights pass off to sleepy mirages awakened finally by the lights
Of several shooting suns set by passion ablaze
Months feed on the passage of countless days...

Seeing you thus spread like a white canvas
Wish my days and nights would forever pass
With dreams so savory full of love newly discovered
With a strange sense of fulfillment me thus showered...

All paints and poems become so useless
When they come across your white printed dress
O how I am gifted by wings of fire really flightless
O how am I bowled  over by your existence whitest ...

God!when you provide me with such canvas bright
Bestow also on me molecules charged with poesy right
So that I could burst into a massive nuclear explosion
Could I catch my love always in dreamy motion...
God! make a day like this come again and again
Rocketing me up and beyond all prosaic plane...

like a vine you me entwine...

Like the vine you me trap...
Closing in all my time-gaps,
You me with a myth entwine-
A myth only written on books mine-
A myth no where else to be found...
You make me Prometheus bound-
To a rock as a punish so deserved
For stealing the fire of you, my Zeus,and served
Me with an ample opportunity
To be thus living on your piety...

O you're so sacramental
You serve me without fail
Seven diktats to abide by...
With them you me tie...

How many times I wished to break away
From your clutch to another day...
Another time of freedom beyond everything...
But your vines...they forever closing in...
They hold me, they me wrap
They forever me entrap...
With flavor of honeysuckle on bloom
They leave me with little room...

Your vines...
They've become a part of mine...
If I grow...they also grow
Like a myth growing slow...

But...with the passage of time, the myth expands
Spreading slow across the time of sands...
Like a rumor it spreads true...
A story of me and only you...
A story having mouth-to-mouth
Circulation from North to South...

So me a Prometheus and you a vine
We live together, we live entwined...

by your talks...

By your talks you caught me adrift
Your words towards you did me shift...
Your talks...
Starting with your tender days
Your state of being amazed
By the splendour of the butterfly wings
By the cloudless sky under which the baul sings...
Your talks of reaching your puberty
Of you being lured by the boys of the city...
Of you being pulled out of your innocence
By some physiological external change
Which also touched upon your mind
You being touched by blood blind...

From those talks you also move ahead
To that day of you which you led...
To me perhaps on one unknown strange morn
How you got curious by a voice torn
Singing a song you must've heard
In your bygone days from your the then youngish dad...
A ballad song of a sailor-man who did narrate
His memory of his little daughter whom he had left...
On a faraway distant land of dreams...

You were then not known to me
I was then left in a salty sea...
You thought in your silent talks
In your mumblings of midnight monologues...
'Why this man always sings the same song?
Is there really anything wrong?'
Thinking so you one day
Came to sit by me to say...
Your words of your heart coming spontaneous
Carrying the water of the river Beas...


By your talks you introduced me
To another world of seeming futility...
To another world where poetry could only evoke
Thunderous typhoons creating a havoc...

You by your talks inched forward
To me and knocked hard on my door that barred
Out all passionate rise and fall...
But you put in your might, your all...
The door by the constant push
Once gave in, broke off loose...
And you then entered with all your force
You just threw away the lock-jammed doors...
To the wind of the time of spring overwhelming...

Once gaining entry your talks again pour
Talks of love and passion more and more...
I just a straw float and sink
Forever by your talks you fill my pot of ink...
You fill me to the brim only to make me empty
You fill me to the extent of my maxed out satiety...

you missed it all...didn't you?

Carried by the cuckoo's intermittent cry
I by your earlobe fly...
You do not notice...do you?

Perhaps you had missed
The touch of mine when the afternoon breeze kissed
Your lips, your cheek...
Your neck sweaty sleek...
Perhaps you had overlooked
How the breeze of the evening away took
Your summer night's pinkish dress...
O how the breeze then on you pressed
Its vigour too powerful for you to disobey
Its strong musky smell then on you it did lay...
As a sheet of curtain unseen...
As passion writing it all on your skin...

But you perhaps missed it all
For you didn't notice how even passion fall
Onto you, as the afternoon breeze pass by
And red liquid dreams of dusk also fall from the evening sky...

fusion of hearts ...after a decade...

I have never thought
Ten years apart
I would see you again...
After a decade drained...
A decade dear...

One hundred and twenty months spent
Bearing an irreparable dent...
Right there undisclosed within
Now far away from all the din
And bustle of my youth...
As I come to discover the truth...
I see you there...sitting cross-legged
On a stone simple and cold
On the top of a hillock old...


The silent mountain range...
With gold of the morn as dazzling paint-
All over them just added to the scene...
Silence crept how gradually in...
My sense of all youthful desire how dimmed...

Slowly the fire died...
As if rain tranquil fell from sky...
I just looked at your post
Your wave-less, undisturbed, modest coast...
I just looked at how the glow from the hill...
Spread like a numbness of some picture still...

I,don't know why, though,
Sat on the hard rock low...
And imitated your posture true...
Cross-legged sat I front of you...
And closed my eyes like you did
And started my silent plead
To make you open your eyes for once
To make me meet your eyes perchance...
But...a voice to me never known
Told me in  a whisper tone
That if my love is really perfect
I should let it flow unchecked-
Not by seeking a physical course...
But by seeking it along that wave-less shore-
Of you so truly with the silence aligned
In that complete sublimation only could I find
Your soul taking the shape of a ball
Going up and up without the fall...

With closed eyes and legs in fold
My energy which I so far did hold
Followed how smoothly your rising soul
Following you I became another ball...

Two balls of energy went up
Defying gravity that made everything drop...
In my closed vision I saw
How glowing twin balls raw...
Went up and up beyond mortal frame
With all the possibilities of a fusion same
As that takes place usual in molecular phase
As fused molecules bond in energized stage...

O then I truly discover
Love could carry such a divine power
Love mine met and fused
With your love so unamused...

O then tears from me fell
As if they ran out of my glands to you tell...
A decade false had gone away
A decade of wait had seen the light of the day...

would love to you compare...

Would love to you compare
Not with a single tree but with a whole forest dear!
A whole forest of trees of different dress...
Light, dark, deep...greens of different shades...

You're light green
When you're spring...
Then in summer...
You're on the side of being dimmer...
In the rains...
You bring to my sense
All of your cries and sobs and tears...
Erasing my spring night's cheers...

Your multitudinous display of existence
O how in various ways your pretense
Come to me overriding my earlier belief
How the greenness drops off in autumn from your leaves;

I also rise and drop,
By your colors hard and soft...
I be a bird...and a bee
And wander about your forest to see...
How honey gathers in your flowers...
How you get freshened by unexpected showers...
How from your fertile ground-
Trees erupting to life...often found
And Life from the Dead...
How I see there often reincarnate...

You're a big forest dear
In which I lose myself every other day...
Your big long trees...
Your embracing vines...
Your mossy pines...
Your flowery shine...
Your cacti state...
Your dry dry chest...
Your dark deep profound maze...
Your moonlight drenched blurry haze...
All help me to lose in you, my way...
Every season...Every other day

At the office...and out of it perhaps

'It seems you can't even me recognize!'
You uttered distinct rolling the dice
To me when I just entered the office...
A hectic day...several paperwork to suffice
For...so really I didn't notice you...
But your mouth freshener that always you chew...
Got that smell quite early...
Even before that I noticed your hair curly...
On your creamy shoulder disarrayed
By the wind of the day on you having played...

Your black and olive green combination
Your attaining a vantage position
Right there at the entry of my cubicle of heart...
Right there where the boss hung the flowchart...
Of the next assignment in horrific alphabets
Written in bold blue on a white board plate...

Noticed how you moved effortless
From one cube to another without stress...
As if you're the butterfly of the workstation
O how you bring poetry in your motion...

With papers in hand and the gold bangle
You move smoothly, only me you tangle...
Your formal smile, your casual look
Your opening of the ledger book...
Your positive frame, your discreet hints
Your sunglasses on your head with brownish tint...

Hey! I noted it all down...
Your last summer's frown...
Your laughs like tremors...
Your Chivas Regal night so infamous!
I noted it all in my disc...
Your ways of putting yourself in a risk...
One day over a cup of coffee
Standing by the empty window....
Your mumbles, your apostrophe-
Thrown purposefully to me...

I recognized every single bit
You moves, your Saturday treats...
You Monday blues...
Your Tuesday shoes...
Your Wednesday ashen...
Your Thursday fashion...
Your Friday dry...
Your Sunday sky...

Hey! I noted it all down...
Though sometimes I choose not to own...

Had I been an archeologoist...

Had I been an archeologist
I could have unearthed with professional care
And meticulously made a long list
Of things left by you under my soul unfair...


Like that image of the mango tree on one monsoon
When you and me picked up unripe fruits which fell us upon...
As if the God Himself thought it wise
To throw mangoes on us from His cloudy sky...
And how we ran to a shade
And I skinned the green mangoes with a blade...
(Which, many years later I used again
To serve me with some ample pain!
But that's another story...grayed...
Wish to leave it there unsaid...)

Then one morning bright
After exams we took a ride...
To an aborted power transformer house
Remember?our games there of cat and mouse?

Then you one evening came to our house
With a shy face, wearing a white skirt and a red blouse...
Requesting my mother(who was then alive) to let me stay
For a while at your place for your Birthday...
O how we played the whole evening then
Cris crossing our township's all too familiar lanes...
Remember how we played hide and seek
How you played on me a foolish trick...
You took someone's shawl and hid under it...
On a lonely bench like a ghost you did sit...
And made eerie noises like those when ghosts sneeze
I staggered and fell off by you, the ghost, completely seized...
O how you broke into laughter then
Seeing me on the ground grimacing in pain...
But remember you pulled me up from the ground
In you then a fairy I found!

Had I been an archeologist perfect
I could have my museum decked
With artifacts and scrolls and relics ancient
Of our long lost days, and preserved them...

run away you should....flee you must!

When you could so easily wake me up
By your soft soothing touch
On me a sleeping child
By your whispers mild...
Why then you didn't think of the consequence?
Why then you didn't foresee all the fences
That could come in between you and me?
Why now you contemplate
To run away with dread?

If you can't really stay
If the daily schedule in such a way
Create constraints irreversible...
You now, as I am somewhat weak and feeble,
Put me again back to sleep
To my purple dreams that still through the mist peep...
And run away...run away...

Run just away from me
As cruelly you can be...
Go away as fast you can
Putting a totalitarian ban
On me, my verse, my blood
On the doomsday ushering flood...

Run away maid...
For I know you dread...
Greater mishaps...catastrophe
Losing your cherished Champion's Trophy...
For nothing...for no cause just
Run away you should...flee you must!

how you ,my mare, help me scoff at time...

Watching you on run
Against the backdrop of the setting orange sun...
Your golden locks on swing...
Your jogs by the beach every evening brings
A spasmodic disorder mine...
And I just sit under the shade of liquid time...
And watch how oceanic ripples and waves lash
On me...on the beach how watery flow against boulders splash...
And send shooting miniscule spray
Smudging the thin red lines between my unforgettable days...

I just sit there entombed
By the passage of you- my mare... like a foam
Of bubbly wonder and beauty so amazing
Of white white surf me always teasing...
To wake up from my slumber untimely
To wake wide open and to be inundated by your glee...
As you run on the beach of golden sands
As you broaden the scope of my horizontal trance...

So I finally stand upright
Throw an ignorant smile to the tides
Of Time still lashing up on my shore,
For your run on the beach had poured
In me that sequence of a mystified puzzle resolved...
 You, my mare, when me thus by your run called
How can I sit back leaving everything to Time?
How can I ignore what really I pine?

Watching you on the run
Against the curious backdrop of the setting sun...
I for a day shake my slumber off
Passage of liquid time I just scoff...

when the morning of March, does a remake...

Why this mist? why this fog?
Haven't found them in any earlier memory log...
The month of March is at its end
But still the streets of me why thus send
So much of mist and chill?
Why in the air the wintry nip I feel?

O my winter is still there
Painting me with frosty-color...
Still there is a curtain cover
Of translucent energy dropping like tear-
From up there the fantastical Heaven
Making oblique...the crossing of seven
Streets without hurly burly
The city is yet to wake up early...
A few thirsty walkers like me crowd
In front of the tea-shop, covered by misty shroud...
A few newspaper boys are cycling fast
They are to send across the news of the century last...
To those houses sleepy and not woken
News of wars not yet broken...

The city street like a lame tired dog
Lies upfront, as I get bogged
Down by the misty foggy dawn
Ether drops spread on my city's greenish lawn...
One by one the flowers would soon wake
When Morning of March does a remake...
Of the last three months of the year gone by
Of the seasonal memories... which never die...

she shut me down...

'So that's your original sin
Your dreamy lines...I mean...
Do you know how many times you did break
My self-imprisonment to the far-off hills you did shake?'
She told me once when
The afternoon street hot met the cool evening lane...

I was made incapable
By her eyes kept on me stable...
I looked at her long eyelash...
Felt like me being smashed...
I looked at her hands how kept together clasped
And her eyes how my eyes geometrically mapped...
I looked at the small mole on her upper lip
I looked at her sweaty nose-tip...
She seemed too anxious and eager...
She seemed coming to me to push a dagger...
I fumbled like an idiot for a single word...
I was afraid of being put to a sword...

Then she laughed out loud sudden bright
And gestured as if it was all right-
Not to keep on answering her every query...
Not to be burdened by extravagant worry...
'I love you best when you fumble
Cause that makes you before me too humble...
I love you cause you know me well
I love you for you my pains do swell...
And  you also help me to make out...
You're there for me always, no doubt!'

Saying this, she put forward her lips
To plant probably on me her out-of-the-world kiss...
I don't remember what happened next
For I lost my all perceptive jest...
I just know I was feeling like being drowned
And she like a blocker, me fully shut down...

the night when rain mixed with music insane....came onto her...

It was raining mild that night...
And she returned home alone all right...
But the inner struggles broke her beyond console
'How that bloke could easily trample my soul?'
She thought and felt losing hope
She felt she needed some kind of a dope...
For she couldn't come to proper terms...
Losing her heart to someone with outward charms...
She locked the door from behind
She was about to lose her mind...
A desperate glassware somewhere within fell down
Fell and smashed to umpteen pieces like useless rubble be found...

Then feeling clumsy and agonizingly tensed
She went to open her white curtained casement...
To let the air of the night moist into her full
To make her boiling temperature receive some cool...

And then across the window shaft
She saw the piano man with attention rapt
Playing on his piano mindless of the night...
Playing to create a music mindless of all fights...
She stood there...drenched by the drizzle that came
To fall on her dry heart...wetting her the same...
The way it wet the street below and the flower pots...
The way it ended the expanse of the horrible drought...
And the music as emanating from piano-man's flat
Came to her like a love filled chat...
Came to wrap her all wounds still fresh...
Came to touch her wet, and leave a moist trace-
Of love blooming everywhere still unnoticed by her
Of love taking shapes of unusual stars-
That fall every night and day from the sky...
That fall specifically when we heave long heavy sigh...

The music and the rain colluded to make
Her get around from fallacious take...
She just stood there and watched the rain
Splashing onto her, on the street, mixed with music insane...

being in the country...is like living twice for a city-pent me...

This cowshed...the smouldering smoke...
This forest green...small huts...a city-dweller me broke
And ripped me apart, perhaps, with the object
To recast my inner self...so far maligned and faked
By glossy vignettes that hung around me...and the city...

This vast openness meeting up to kiss the sky red
This panoramic view of tombs of the dead...
Punctuating like small pauses on the field...
Really broke my glistening over-protective shield...

And...
And like a colt just set free to run
I plunged into the mustard field with joys reborn
And believe me...dear...I took no back 'U' turn...
I just sped across....
The layers of my accumulated urban moss...
And ran and ran...
As if I was in a marathon...
Miles of greenness I swept true
Being so canopied by the sky real blue...
Miles of memories I just jigged and jagged
Threw away my branded exorbitant rags...
And like the Adam without clothes...
I just followed His superior toes...
Just followed Him blind...
Buoyed by joys of meeting the omniscient...

From a city pent man to the unengaged soul
He how lit fire on my wet heaps of coal...
O how the brief sojourn
To the country, me torn...
And brought me only to Him...His lost son...

How He with Nature worked as a team...
To fill up my dark with dazzling light-beams...
To rekindle all of my undiluted past...
To make me live twice fully recast!

 

wanted very little from you dear...

Wanted very little from you dear...
-Only a few beads of your sweat
On your shoulder that once made me a poet...
Only your sprawling arms spread...
That took to me to the recesses of heart so red...
Only your one liner pure
Which sent aftershocks, for me to endure...
Only your placing of your hand
On my slippery, vested land...
Only your smell of eau de toilette
To a sweet trance of charms which me take...
Only your sitting ahead of me on that bus seat
Your hair flowing towards me to greet...
Only your slowly emerging smile...
Your unmindful walk across my stone-mile...
Only your suppressed hint
Of naughty chewing gums full of mint...
Only a glass of water cool
From your cleanest loveliest pool...
Only a few minutes of silent talk
With you when the night takes the day's stock...

Few things and moments thus
From you to me you just pass...
Very insignificant lesser elements
Providing glimpses of life sans chains...

Wanted very little dear...
A few trivial dreams...
A few sparkling tears...
A few rosy wings...

By what name will all these be called?

By what name will I call it?
When the season comes like an unexpected treat?
When the summer is on her way and
I on the motorway somehow land
With the same old chassis but a mind new...
And asphalt road begins to melt
And the spring and summer both can be felt?

By what name can I call you?
A mere friend who with me once rode
A few kilometers down the springy summer road?
A mere lover with whom I transcend
A few city streets and alleys that to urban bliss bend?
Or a presence like some kind of a vapor unmistakable
Coming to me sometimes like a strong image...sometimes feeble...

I on the vehicle to and fro the roads still run
Being kissed on my neck by you, I turn
Left to the red red mosaic plates...
On walls, on pavements, on rusty iron gates...
I turn right again after some time
Finding a tree so green and sublime...
Full of political hopes and social uplift
O with you on my back, I just perpetually drift...

By what name will you call me?
A man engaged into kind of blasphemy?
Or a man vagrant and young
Always tempted by your summer evening-song?
Or just an old chassis and a mind in flux
Running after beauteous folds, dawn to dusk?

a love-pinched day...

When love did I discover
For the first time ever...
In her eyes like unseen water...
Felt like had been gripped by an awesome fever!

A fever that shook me within
A fever causing rapid breathing...
A feverish stirring up that made me bold
An untasted music me that moment told
That I could probably do any damn thing for her
I could topple unclaimed heights so far...
Felt like I could even fly like a bird
Felt like I could even the God dare...

O what a strong and confident man I had been then
By her eyes my soul being trained...
Remember how on that fateful day I traveled
Aimlessly from shop to shop....searching a gift marvel!
Went into a bus...descended at an non-designated stop...
Then caught a tram which me dropped
At a junction crowded and by noisy people packed
But all the sights and sounds made upon me no impact...
I just floated like a light feather...
From one part of my city to another...

Every thing I saw and heard that day
Took me took to her curiously straightaway-
School children from school coming out jostling
Thoughts of our children to me did then bring...
After seeing sarees on display at the window
My love-pinched mind her saree-clad image did show...

When love I did discover large
Fanciful mirage did only in my eyes emerge...
And I just floated and floated like a feather
Floated aimless, vagrant...hither n thither...

waiting for a letter refurbishing Paradise Lost...

Last time around when you had sent
Your letter to my door
Only your sad satiety you did pour...

The season was that of rains...
Thunder and lightning flashing on my window panes...
The trees bent and swayed violent
By the agony you me through your letter sent...

That season stayed for two months wide
The river between us got swelling tides...
The fishermen then didn't dare to out venture
Tornadoes were spotted on radar sensors...

That season had gone
Taking away all the wrongs...
Now that the cuckoo herald
Spring refurbishing all that dulled
With hopes of regeneration green
With dreams of happiness like events foreseen...
Wish to get from you another letter
Filled not with stormy matter...
But with pictures of blue sky dotted
By birds on flight in peculiar formation spotted...
'V' shaped flock of avian wonder
You coming smiling on my view finder...

Wish as soon as this scribble mine
Reach you by this morning fine...
You would surely take up your ink pot
And dip yourself to create colorful dots...
On you, and on your letter newest
And send that to me at the earliest!

Waiting with bated breath
Letter from you that would me take...
A letter to negate the earlier post
A letter refurbishing Paradise Lost !

Poetry can leave me but i can never leave her...

Poetry can leave me and go away far
But how can I possibly forget poems left by her?
How can forget so easily her words
Drowning me and taking me forever towards
Those days of poetic trance coming relentless-
With poems aging and old, poems so restless-
Poems so much full of youngish blood
Poems resembling the disastrous flush flood...

Now that she's packing her bags in a haste
Leaving me a bunch of papers, a terrible waste...
I just try to find poems in her sky...
But find only farewell speeches how there scattered lie...
In gray black shapes of floating heavy forms
In dark, sombre, embittered prosaic norms...

But then if poetry can leave me and go away far
How can I say boldly I never miss her?
Hasn't she for me brought morning dewy drenched flowers?
Hasn't she brought from heaven the ethereal showers?
Hasn't she made her empty on my tiny heart?
How can I lie when she and me part?

Poetry can always leave me alone
But I can't leave her, never ever torn...
I would still cling to her, begging her to stay...
I would still ask her to gift me another day...
A day without tussle, without gunshots-
A day filling my gray 'vacant lots',
A day coming again to make me wild
A day bringing to my ears music mild,
A day even more dazzling than a diamond
A day starting with a fragrant dawn...

no triumph decorates any bloodbath...

There is no victory in wrath...
No triumph decorates any bloodbath...
But still how we bring out daggers to kill
Still how our hands we with poisons fill...
And be a dictatorial brute
Order a class of people to shoot...
Another class of men the same
With blood still red...
Our same boat brethren...

O how we just shorten
Lives of men and women...
Thinking perhaps by doing that
We would live for centuries flat...
At the discount of blood in our hands
We hope to wear and march with garlands-
Of heads we tore out of lives
Of our bloody swords and sharp steely knives...

But history has its own course...
It surely brings in terrible remorse...
It delivers within a very short time span
A lesson of retribution properly by Him planned...

let us "a Josh Groban" bring....

We all have to go...
Someday...
I may go early and you late
As written on black thick fonts by our fate!

But even before we go
Why be teary eyed so?
Why be so broken down?
Why in haste leave the town?

Who knows God might be a little benign...
And extend our stay by His magical sign?
Who knows He could still make our stay
With happy happy cheeks glowing like a pinkish day?

So...
Dear...before we actually part
Let's go out and be with colors of the rainbow dressed
Let's make it real large, make it a day unstressed...
Let's on our piano tap and sing
A Josh Groban...into our brief room, we bring!

On this cloudy day...i be a book...on your breast...

On this cloudy day...
As on your lazy sleepy bed you lay,
With a novella bookmarked,
By your flat hair clip violet dark,
On your bosom upturned...
I wish to be into that plot by magic churned...
And separated from my physical constraints...
And to come straight under your discerning bluish lens...

Wish to be a character of the novella on your breast...
A strong, romantic, young, caring man who got the taste
Of your sweet kisses and dreamy soothing touch
Of your soft pining by your ideals of life so curiously matched...

Wish then I would be properly defined
Chosen perfect by your analytical, judicious yet emotional mind...
Wish then I would by fancy you take
Wish then I would leave you with a proper desired effect...
An effect attained by that mythical hero
An effect that hits your ground zero
And demolish all your suspended disbelief
And all your fears and worries that you keep
There within you for me unwarranted
There within you that your past experience bred...

On this cloudy day...
Wish to be a fiction dear...
A true fictional seer...
Who could easily trespass
Into you without issued gate-pass...

the sombre bells gonged...

The sombre bells gonged...
And as I was greeted by the familiar song
Under the high ceiling, of white clad people young...
My eyes itched...
Felt a road I ditched...
By which could've I also like them reached-
A state aspired by few alive...
And attained by fewer still
A road meaning only searching inside...
Inner...inward...within...
Like dropping a coin into a deep dry well...
And waiting for the sound of it reaching me to tell...
That a journey inward is still pending...
That a journey within has no ending...

She thanked me...

She thanked me...
And before she started descending the metro stairs
She mumbled like a prayer...
'Thank you....
I feel like being complete...
And got a feeling that now can I slid
Into the sands of time...
With the memories mine...
Now I know...
You never left me so...
You gave me all I wished...
You lifted me unvanquished...
I've nothing more to ask for
Towards the sky now my wings soar...
Thank you...for releasing me...
From the molten sanguine sea...'

Saying these words jumbling up
With the sunset yellow being wrapped up
She thanked me...
And descended into the tube-rail
Leaving me- the boat, without sail...

some storms are like thus...

Some storms silently scream
You never know when they come creeping...
But when they go away after the rampage...
You realize how much they left as damage...

Last night a storm thus
Came through devastating large
Sweeping away all protection
All my shields, in its raging motion...

Found how recklessly it robbed
Every part of me just sobbed...
By the wrecking apocalyptic salt
Rubbing on me, my gashing faults...

Felt how I was made to go back
Following steps of my primordial track...
The track that led to my birth's route
That track so uncivil, unpretentious, crude...

The track that had only innocent tapestry
The track leading to the original mystery...
Of life choosing to sprout only on this planet
Of human beings so genetically by chromosomes set...

Some storms are like thus...
They linger centuries after they pass...
They continue to keep us philosophically inclined
They lead to the unmaking of histories of mankind...

Some storms are so passionately profound
They leave us in pure debris, in shapeless mounds...
We lose it all we have kept with all our might...
We lose against ourselves...losing the mirror fight...

 

an outcast's dream...and rage...

Had I been a desperado
I could've run against the custom
And with you in the tow
Could've eloped to a faraway town...
From the mortal percepts of right and wrong!

That would've created a great furor...
Your father would've in vain roared!
But by then we would be erecting our own hut
By then we would be stitching together a storyline...
People would've abused you calling you a whore or a slut
And I would be called in similar terms...a libertine...

But think of the possibilities ....
We would the whole society tease...
We would live in misadventures wrong...
We would be clutching each other strong!
We would live like being out of frame...
We would together then attain dubious name!

Hey moral pundits! don't you overtly worry...
It is just a synopsis of a long but unpublished story...
I don't really want to be called a blasphemous man!
I do respect social normative standards, as far I can!

But society is a very strange model
It puts us always on the saddle...
But don't teach us really how to tame...
The wild wild horse within...the fiery, stupid flame!

Society so easily causes a stir
Without knowing how it demurs
Society can be negligent and oppressive
It could shoot strange missives...
Controlling this, over ruling that
Building narrow walls, breaking us apart...

So we meek and mild
Like God's truest child
Accept wrong doings of much more import
Graver sins we forever do court...
Knowingly sometimes, sometimes being ignorant
We love to, like parrots, falsity chant...
As if we are so trained to do
As if we never really knew...
Our brains and hearts are thus sometimes caged
Into very tiny coops, we keep ourselves amazed!







 

among all the trees in my garden...

Among all the trees in my garden...
I like that slender one certain...
With leaves stretching out to beat
My balcony from the scorching summer heat...

Among all the trees so good
I like that one that stood
Always sending me ripples of laugh
Always inspiring me to take on the patches rough...
Of life...of heat and dry wind...
That usually cause freckled skin...
I like her the most
Even when covered by dust
She still lingers on my mind
Tempting me with mirages kind...
Tempting me to always be gay
Reminding me that life's barren states do not stay...


So I like her the most naturally evoked
Keeping me forever with optimism soaked...
Optimism borne out of her new leaves
Hopes of regeneration in her never cease...
She swings and sings songs of birth
She charges me with unchallenged mirth...
The mirth of being alive above and beyond
The joy of finding love deep and profound...
In her I find the Supreme manifested
In every impossible dream gaily dressed...
In her my soul finds the proper religion
In her I often find my truest companion...

Among all the trees that bloom purple dreams
I love her the most for she always seems
To take care of my spirit downy and dark
With positron charges she always me mark...

with love we would mend all cracks pretty sure!

Come'n dear!
You know darkness I fear!
So give me light...
Come to me easily
Without sending that fright...
Of doomsday once coming to us...
Of Hiroshima's dry arid land without grass...

Come'n dear...instead let's try
To make this earth with colors of love,dyed...
For when we're born as the wisest
We should not end up as being all messed...
This earth, this water, this soft rainy dawn
All these are made to make love grown...
Real big, real huge, real mammoth shape...
Come'n! dear...when He the God wants us all to be love draped-
Then why fear? why worry? why you crook your lovely eyes?
And think of carpet bombs, munitions and all military device?

Come...let's just spread only one message strong...
Love and love and love only that will make this earth young...
For the opposite is really a horrendous massacre...
Sights of blood, burnt flesh...wrecked homes...
Which perhaps we all seriously fear!

So...once again let's go
To that place where born
The Superman...so mighty and strong...
Into that cave of crystals let's move all right
By acquiring from Him the divine sight-
We could always usurp the rattle of guns...
Wipe the gloomy phantasms,
With A thousand splendid suns...
We could, if we try, dethrone the lust
And the over-riding greed, we could always bust...

So let's into us, lit up the sun
Be with light as light we burn...
Oneday would come when we would be pure
With love we would mend all cracks...pretty sure!



 

perhaps you forgot...

Perhaps you left as you forgot
A picture of yours on me soft...
A picture of you with peacocks laced
On your bluish green saree, with which you dressed...

But if you were to forget
Why you a picture on me such a way left?
Your picture so charms filled
Your picture which got me killed?

Still...this picture so silently left
On my window...me forever cleft
I go back to you
Move forward the next
With your picture I love braced...
Your picture serves as the simple memory chip
Taking me often to you there asleep!

An open air theater night...

Catching me by my two hands
You asked me for a dance...
Once under the sky with the moon and the star...
'let's dance here...an open -air theater...'
You said with that rare sparkle
For which I once fell...

'But where's the music? where's the audience?'
I asked, surprised,amused, tensed...
Not knowing where me you want to take...
Am I dreaming? Am I a case of identity-mistake?

But you seem so confident...
With your hands you pulled up your skirt
And smiling said:'Music can't you hear if you're shut...
Just open your eyes and your ears...
Then you would perceive clear
How the moon stays there
As the arc light on us...
And as the mild breeze pass
Hear how the trees create murmur
Sounds coming to us of the rumbling river far...
Sounds of nature can't you get?
Sounds of nature for us only set?'

Saying these, with your skirt managed tight
Your struck a form perfect for the night...
 Under the moon, as the breeze flew, and leaves
Murmured...and the river rumbled...on the open theater right!

That night truly opened a vista new
That night eternalized my moments few...

you the lake eternal, can't be in a jug contained...

You the lake so placid and calm
Can't be brought overnight home
Instead wish to fill my empty vessel
With your watery cool lessons...
And from that would I everyday drink
And bit by bit would I sink
Into you, be submerged
With you getting by phases, merged!

It would however be a meager effort
To get you in bits would just make me float
For a few  temporary moments though...
But never would then I come to know
How the jewels and the lovely dazzling little stars
Underwater you secretly keep in shells of  oysters... 

But then think I to those lucky few belong
Who by mere fate heard the prelude of your song...
 I consider myself a privileged one, friend...
Whom you allowed once to swim across
From one corner of your lake to another end
And to gather a few jugs of water and be at loss...
How to carry your vast deep sense sublime
How to assimilate your whole lake placid and calm...
I know it fully, be assured...that you the lake
Can't I in mere jugs or vessels to my home take...

But don't you know even the swimmer has the wish
To quench his thirst insatiable and be the easy fish
To dive and swim and move fast and slow
In your cool lake...being  my eternal refuge so?

mister destiny...

Don't know why you to me thus came
But believe me, passing the corner of my city same
Thought I saw you there with a broad smile...
Asking me 'How are you? mate?
Forgotten your house's gate?'

I looked up to see you there
And I saw you so real dear
That I stopped dumb and for a while stood
Thinking whether my wits were still working it good...

For there you stood like my destiny
And asked me into a pub tiny...
Following you I entered through
The swinging door getting a view
Of the same pub seen in a movie
With same stools at the shiny lobby...

'So...what is your trouble, say?'
You pressed my shoulders
And next,moved towards me a tray
Saw a glass tumbler on it
And you signaled me to have a sip...

I just like an idiot drank
And felt my head got heavy and my feet sank...
And sat down on the stool front of you
While you supplied me with life's unrevealed cue...

'Now that you my potion did drink
You're going to get all you about always think...
Your life will be full of love and wealth
A mansion would be the place you dwell...'

Saying all these you just disappeared
Into the thin air... just what I feared...
So I came out of the pub not bright
Walking home with a heart, filled with delight...

O god! what you said became so true
My hut got really a renovation new
But where all the members gone?
How can I live alone?

You changed and flipped the cart
You changed everything so smart
But I think I miss the earlier state
My garden, my home, my white wooden gate!

an explorer, a sherpa and the unexplored vast...

"This cauldron like plateau, this mountain range...
All have given me experiences strange...
Perhaps from the moment I opened my eyes
The moment God for me so devised...
That I found in this place every moments of mine
Moments of pleasure, moments of sunshine...
Then also in these caves hidden
Moments of realization coming so sudden...
Moments of losing my lovely morning recluse
Moments of being purely ethereal, bemused...
By someone sitting for me right here
Someone sitting eagerly with loose flowing hair...
 Here, if you go around perhaps still find
Caves on which I once wrote my mind
Using a simple twig, burnt by a flame
A few lines written for the prettiest dame
Remember still...how once I drew
A picture of a big forest new
On the pinkish white slab of a stone
Which by the morning light, almost like a picture shone...
And she still alive then, was so pleased by my work
That she left her home at one bluish dark
And sat here for several hours admiring the art
And that was a few days before she did part..."

Saying all these, the sherpa asked from me a bottle
Of my red vintage, as if he was trying to curtail...
His mumblings incoherent... so gray and cold
His story like the big mountains,several years old...
And  I got in the sherpa ,a friend wise
A friend who saw it all-the birth and the demise...
Of love, life, savings and passion
Of hunger being suppressed by red bitter potion...

While he took swigs after swigs...
I looked at his fingers resembling dry twigs...
His eyes had crowfeet, his clothes were ragged
But by his vision...he some treasures bagged...
The evening was setting in beyond the hill...
Coldness biting had all the chill,
Me and my friend, the sherpa old
Still sat there, like stones bold...

I looked at the sky so unfamiliar
Saw how purple did the black horizon tear...
Saw the big yaks returning home
Distant hills looked like some tall grave tombs...

Moments thus passed, almost liquid drops
Meanwhile my friend had dozed off
But could still hear his indistinct murmur
He was talking then of tracks near and far...
By his subconscious, he could still tell
Which road led to the hill, which to the crevice fell...

I sat there, as the dark night came to cover all
I sat up there, like a tired explorer with an empty bottle...
The bottle of my red vintage strong
The bottle which I brought with me filled and young...
Now, under the open dark sky, with mountains on guard
Felt like, having crossed all barriers...living life unbarred...
So by my friend, the sherpa, under the open sky
I prepared for the night, finally,to lie...
Knowing tomorrow would be just another day
Knowing tomorrow for us roads there lay...
Roads going up and down the hills and mountains
Roads far away from the city of the plains
Roads opening up to the unlimited vast
Road to the heaven there... yet to be traversed

Had I been a tree...and you the spring...

Had I been a tree
You my spring, could've given me...
A new dress of leaves so young
A new lease of life replacing the old one...

It might be too fresh
Me standing there by the road in a new dress
A dress made of young leaves transparent
A dress gifted by you so apparent!

Had I been a tree...
Naturally tuned to you my spring
Then surely you could I distinctly see
And for you would never forget to bring
My best flowers with sweetest smell
My best attire and attitude would never me fail...

Then it would have been the real good way
You by me and me by you sway...
That would have been the most beautiful event
By you spring, all my dresses sent...
And me also dressing up to you pleased
Life would then just roll on to novelty without cease...

But alas! I am not yet turned to a tree
So my beauty you never see
For the reason still being the same
I just in grey fur covered remain...
Though you bring flowers to every tree
You can't make a flowery me!

To Him...a faith...

Whenever the sky gets bathed
By orange juicy red
Even if I'm indoors locked
The shrill light just on my door will knock...

I would look at the art work
How the light inter fused with the dark...
On my walls and doors create abstract designs...
Move me to unearth from the wasted day a few lines...

Wish those lines would the homeward birds take...
Helping me to rephrase and remake...
Making me once again to come out...
Through twilight songs reaching the orange cloud...

Wish those artworks play on me such
That no day of mine would be wasted much...
Wish I would have eyes of Him be lifted
Wish He somehow His benediction me gifted!

So as I scribble again...
Feel like devoid of pain...
Feel like nothing turns a day in vain...
For He is there with all luminosity
He is there to fill my kitty...
With His insurmountable trust
He, I wish turn into gold all the dust!

virtuality...

Can't you eke out a little time
For me, a few minutes only?
In between your busy zagged timeline?

A few minutes of restful peace
A few minutes never to miss...
A few grains of your hour glass
That never fall through, never pass?

Can't you for me dispense
A few moments like a century dense?
A few lovely drops not beleaguered 
A few links not by your real world severed?

Can't you do that once a while
Closing your excel sheets filled file?
Can't you stop and have with me a coffee break
And to the fathomless deep me you take?

Can't you miss the last train home
And with a bouquet of flowers come?
To me at least once as an exception
Brushing aside deadlines and recession?

Don't know if you're capable of that
To leave aside all queries, worries smart
To traverse a short distance long
To conceive for me a devious song...

But I know for certain a few things
How your firefox still search the missing links
Once pasted and booked as your favourite mark
With your arrow shaped cursor clicking it dark...

I know that still your sweet invincible browser
Carries HTML dots and slashes of me, the loser...
I know... it only requires your singular click on mouse
And your smiles...with which you could my unrest douse!

if you had left your shoes...

Now that the night is silent and somber
Barring the shouts of street dogs, I just wonder...

Where have you gone?
Are you from me totally withdrawn?
Thought would find your last few steps
Leaving a few dusted remakes
Here and there...on the road that bent
Towards the sky carrying alibi faint...

Thought perhaps you would be deliberate enough
To leave a few insteps on my green grassy turf!
Thought again you would shock and surprise
Me, by sending through delivery man a big boxed prize!

Thought you would leave your finger prints
Patches of your nimble fingers on red ribbons and strings
With which you've left me here forever tied
Thought perhaps you would leave your shoes at my bedside!

It would have been another story God!
To match your shoes feet I sought...
 Perhaps that could have helped me to write
Another fanciful story of a missing glass slipper
And the prince who by feet test chose his bride!

meeting of two kites...in the sky liberated...

'Perhaps I wouldn't have the city left
Had we not earlier by some stroke of luck met...'
She muttered looking away at the sky
Overcast still but kites colored there did fly...
One green, another red, another known... the candle
Colored dots wide, near, close, separate and in bundle...
She stopped uttering those lines insipid...
Watching the movement of kites so rapid....

'Whatever you had done, done it perhaps right
Sometimes it is good to go out of mortal sight...'
He mumbled, reflectively hanging loose
By her side, thinking ways once she did choose...

He remembered how one fine day
Several years ago he had met her to say
That it would be better for him to stay away
From the path that led to her house night and day...

He remembered how once he had, not by giving any reason
Left her there like the fallen leaf of forgotten season...
He recollected exactly how he took up pace
Not turning back at least for once to her face
To ride away from her house, her street, her post code
Leaving a long trail of orange dust he away rode...
For he thought of exploring lands still not seen
He thought of living life to the brim!

Now after so many searches and explorations
He again found her at a different station
Far away she also had ridden 
From her village she also had disappeared sudden...

'Now we're so liberated...that we could like kites fly
But our pure passion us now perhaps deny...'
She muttered inaudibly once again before her voice did die
Effortlessly like a strong brooder she did justify...
Ways of hers now living it all alone without any companion sure
Far away from any groans, moans, meaningless conjugal clamor... 

He just sat there totally petrified
Thinking if she told him the truth or she lied...
But never did his vocal chord made any noise
He just sat by her in a wordless, ceaseless repentant poise...

















 

a painting of a painter...

'I still paint...pictures of my own
When the sun goes down
And my daughter sleeps off
And I my curtains drop
And sit a while before the canvas
With my easel and long paintbrush
And then I start to move on my own
Engage the canvas of my mind by brushes drawn...
Sometimes it takes a whole long night
I draw picture till the sun comes bright
I draw myself, my darling...and trees
Whoever comes to me with beauty unappeased...'
Saying all these, she dropped her eyes
Playing with her bracelet, and left a sigh...

I looked at her elegant eyes
And found how a cut mark still lies
Just on her left eyebrow
Hidden under the glasses she wore
I looked at her long fingers
And thought by them she with paint lingers
She started again, as if she knew me for years
Talking on about her life and fears...
How she had moved from one place to another
Where from she last week bought a bag of leather...
She told me so many things unasked
How on wintry days under the sun she basked

And once tried to paint her love red
On the canvas how she her prince unmade
She talked and talked...about her past and present
Living with several scratches and dents
Etched by one too many men
She walked down her memory lane...

I looked at her eyes that carried that vine
Producing lovely soft smooth exotic wine...
I looked at her wooden ear-ring
Moving like small bells forever chiming
I looked at her with a submerged soul
And thought of sketch once made on a scroll
By me perhaps using a black charcoal....

It was a sketch of a painter sitting
Before a blank canvas-
With her dreamy eyes knitting
A pensive and melodious song...
So full of love and impassioned longing...

 Thus a painting of a painter came to me
Images of life she made me see...
Images so much old and yet so strong
Images casting shadows dark and long...
Thus I became a painter just for once
She providing me all the stories by chance...

flowers could wake...after the quake...

Sometimes God knows how
You come to take a seat by me and somehow
By saying simple things sudden
You just leave me maddened
And make me cry like a child
So moved by your lovely rebuke mild
As if you're exercising your right
On me which only love can decide...

I only pay my obeisance
To my fate for giving me chance
To be by you so overwhelmed
By so much love, being wrapped without end...

Wish you would forever me chide
Showing me the ways like a true guide
For the road is always a big maze like
Full of thorns, troubles and weedy spikes...

God! who ever knew even rebukes can be
So much with love come to me...
Who ever thought flowers could wake
After the earth is shaken and ruined by the deadliest quake?

tramless motion of my city...

Like the tram line of steel implanted and fixed
Into the asphalt before my home
Upon which trams no longer come
You left marks on me jinxed...

When the twilight lend copper shine
On it after the day...begone
You arrive right there lone
Like an artist performing mime...

I look at you with wonder
Fantasizing the drops of rain
And the noise of distant thunder
Reliving my pain, so secretively waned...

Dream of the tram's smooth run
Days of togetherness and fun...
Days of riding through first class
Sitting face to face by the window glass...

As if saw you there me before
Brownish silky hair of yours
Running easily on your face
Sitting with you in a blank tin case...

We moved through the city fine
Following the tracks serpentine
People and shops also moved back
We're then so by love struck...

Then at one particular point
With your palms mine joined
In the tin case on wheels
I had taken my death-pills...

O what a day was it!
Before you I was allowed to sit
How a moment made eternity
With you on a tour of the city...

From the Babughat to maidan
Running after the setting sun
Copper filled dreamy light
Holding on to your palms tight...

Now still the track runs
Every day before me burns...
In the copper twilight reality
A tram-less motion of my city...