indolent city...on a springy, sunny day...

Walking across a sleepy street
On this sunny bright spring
Touched my sap filled pith
All the indolence did it bring...
Felt like there was too much of peace
Felt as if the city was without pulse
The madness I so much missed
Only felt the soft rumbling of waterfalls...
I walked through the shadows
Of trees falling here and there
Watched how little swallows
Hopped and danced on my city's lair!
The cars passed by
Windows black reflecting
The noiseless city how ply
With softness how did it sing...
Watched the city girl there
How with her friend shared
An icecream cone pink
Where the alley with J.N.Road linked...
Saw the tall buildings wearing the rays
Of Sun, on their glassy shiny facades...
Saw empty parks with leaf strewn beds
Saw how the Mughal stagecoaches
Towards the monumental laziness led...
On the maidan vast and open
Saw people out of their bonsai pen
Stretched out under trunks with white and red paint
O how my city only drowsiness lent...
On this springy sunny day...
As conditioned, I with my sap lay...




 

fast and slow...

I am so aged dear
And you're so young...
Tell me how could we co-produce
A love story long?
I've walked forty nine hundred miles
And you only thirtyeight
How could we bridge the gap
How could we shorten time straight?
With your bubbly heart dear,
You run so fast
How can I catch up with you?
Like you, I can't kick up dust...
So I go slow, huffing with aches
And your speed racer
I know ...don't possess brakes!
So you go real fast, at lightning speed
And I just stand here,at your homestead
I would just wait here,
Watching you taking off the road
Your quicker speedometer
Can ever bear my load?
Fast and slow
What a strange meeting dear!
I might fall off
And you sound-speed tear!

a letter...never posted

'Can you hear how under my steps
Dry leaves get trampled, as I tread?
Can your hear through my call
How fishermen sing at the end of their day's toil?
Can you listen how life still flows by
When for me your tears go dry?'
She chewed the end of her pen
And thought of by the evening post it be sent...
 So she neatly folded the letter
Wrote his name visibly better
On the white envelope
And  went out to it drop...
She walked briskly through the crowd
Her eyes reddened under the shroud...

There the box stood like a red post
There should she drop her letter of course...
'But what is the use of this exercise
When love had met with its demise?'
She thought just before dropping it
Through the narrow tiny black slit...
'Why I wrote it first of all then?
Why? answer me?' she asked her soul with pain...
Standing before the red post box
She thought winding her vagrant locks...

She stood there...not only that day
Every evening you find there her may...
If at that appointed hour you pass
That street post box,you'll surely find that lass...

Last evening when I went there
Overheard the story of her
Her lover went away with a woman
Leaving her a black curse, an omen...
She had lost all her wits
Every evening the red post box she meets...
There she stands with a letter in hand
There you find her like a ghostly statue stand...
The crowd, the horns of vehicles never deter
Her to come to the red post box with a never-posted letter...

pain-alarms...

When you're engaged with toiletries
Front of the oval mirror beauty you tease
I just become a poet
Watching your heaving secret
The way you add mascara black
With brushes hide your undereye sack...
The way paints evaporate
For the city you become all again set...
The way within your corset you hide
Lone memories of evening rides...

Front of the mirror you choose to wipe
Pains and struggles by your singular swipe
Of that powdery blotting sponge
Instant beauty how you launch!
How you go through a simple makeover
Ready yourself to be the perfect lover...
O man! what a supple way you choose
Pain-alarms... how you put 'em on snooze!

But I know at the end of the day
The alarm will be ringing to sway
You again with tales of grief
Making you teary and you would sniff...
At that moment dear, I wouldn't write
For your helpless soul brings me gory sight
Then dear, I would cease to be
A scribbler nonsense, a poor soul me!
I would then be your lovely kid
Stand by you with a sponge really big
I would then try my best to blot
Stains and blemishes that you forget not...

on your acid, wish could pour, buckets of base...

You sometimes storms evoke
Being the vortex 
You sometimes rip me apart
An acidic venomous text...

You sometimes so fiery
That I turn into non entity
You sometimes so cruel
That I fear your thrown-away pity...

Sometimes you are sombre
Like the grave yard at dark
You sometimes a phantasm
On my mind how you lurk!

But somewhere deep down
I perhaps know your frown
I know the reasons perhaps
Why you pant and severely gasp...
I know the causes tight
What your strangulated poetry fight...
But knowledge has its limitation...
Can't move the earth to another station...
Mere knowing helps me not
Mere knowledge can't change the lot!

Wish could have been another man
Ignorant but with a magic wand
Wish could one easily sweep
Acid rains twenty thousand miles deep...
Wish...to bring in ecstasy
To you dear, a winged fantasy!
Wish to bring in a paradigm shift
Wish to help you catch the drift...
Of the air that overwhelms me
Of the tide of the bluish sea...

That would've neutralized
All your distressing malaise
On your acid wish could pour
Buckets of base, more and more...

meeting my June on stage...

Sometimes one finds
what one pines
So I felt once
When by chance
I found my her on stage
Leaving me quite amazed...

What happened thirsty me
Went to a club, and at one corner did I see
My nomadic love...sitting crosslegged on a stool
With the wooden guitar on a drool...
Saw her hair how by the wind did flow
And how lights played on her fingers dim and low...
She was trying to work on a stupendous song...
I looked at her for several minutes long...
Don't know if she made a note
Of me, who once the songs for her wrote...
But felt her strumming got a new tune
Just the way she lent music to my scribble in one June...
That happened so many years ago
That my memory came faded and slow...
Only had a faint glitter
Of how she once tuned my letters...
Remember how by sitting beside me for hours
She changed the meaning of summer showers...
Remember then her hair was cropped
And her eyes then how held me aloft...
We both sweated on those black and blue
Lines, bringing to us a fervour new...
O how then we gelled as if we're made so
O how our poems and music passed us through...

'Take me to your arms' she sang aloud
And for the first time her eyes met mine, no doubt!
I also kept looking at hers, after so many days
Mentally traveling to a time, that kept me alive always...
She was singing giving to the song her all
And I felt how on me June made a silent toll...
I took a last look at her, seeking knowledge
Of my presence, and left arrested by her empty, nostalgic gaze!

your lipstick...my red taped file...and a wafer of life...

On a twilight golden
You came by red lipstick emboldened
I stood transfixed
Overcome by feelings mixed...
Felt like planting kisses on you unprecedented
Felt like leaving your secrets by red all painted...

When all these thoughts
Left me immobile
You by your talks...
Opened my red taped file!

One by one all the pages you read
How I grew to a wanderer from a kid...
How my first crush fell like a shooting star
From the black sky on a desert far...
How next a train track me took
To a land of calypso dance and a small brook...
How  Segal's Love story brought in
Differentials related to love and sin...
How next I came across
A wall painting covered by greenish moss...
How thus I metamorphised
To a mind where only scribbles reside...
And also some other forms
Seeking smoky pleasure domes...
Seeking lights of the Sun
In your decorated frolic and fun...


Now that watch you so much engrossed
With the book of mine you surely get tossed
For you find yourself there sure
And your unrest finds in me the cure!

I can see you in dire straits
How you roll over with my opened flood gates
How you laugh and also cry
How your lips part with a smile and sigh...

Through your reactions as I guess
How I've left you in a perfect mess...
Felt like an imbecile
With you so much taped in my file...

Can't you leave those useless papers?
And unwrap that lovely wafer
Which we could both bite
From two ends and lessen the divide!
Surely by doing that we would meet
Your lipstick would leave me then a red streak!

forgive me....and my escapes...

Last evening
Riding on my one eighty c.c engine
Suddenly got the flavour of spring
Coming to me like tiny white blooms singing...

Stopped to look around
A tree not far away found
Wondered what kind of tree was it...
Which brought the evening to me lit...

'That's our lemon tree...'
Someone said looking at me
Stopped awkward right on the village road
That disappeared into the city broad...

I smiled and again looked
At the tree and the maiden
Felt both of them how me shook
And poked me to flip open
My notepad...and my pen...

Soon I was engaged
Into a poetic phase
Forgot all my priorities
Didn't want the upsurge to miss...

Now you would be surely crossed
Finding me under a lemon tree lost
But what could I ever do
When the lemon tree brings me cue?

Forgive me if I fail
To fill the water in your pail...
Forgive my absurdity
My escapes from the blazing city...

i could've spread out like murmuring drops of rain....

Why so it happens?
Just when thought you would for me a word breathe....
You didn't do that...and under the rains I seethed....
On your verandah so watery
Carrying tales of yester years....so scary...
But then another day you came
So brave and unvanquished
Taking every bit out of me....squeezed....

You could've gone to another land
Leaving me here,under the banyan old....like a memory stand!
I could have spread out then...
Like the murmuring drops of untimely rain....

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

a mythical Peepul tree...

See the Peepul tree there!
How with slabs of  marble it glare!
See those young lovers under it
How cozily on the marble they sit!
This tree has a story dear...
I can tell you, if you wish to hear...

You know...some stories lay like layers
Of dust on the downy staircase
Untrodden for several years
Not read by anyone...
 Such a story wish to share
With you, if you care...

It was a night
When the seven years' fight
Ended finally with aplomb
And from the debris like a defused bomb
He rose...and started the long walk home...
The night was still so dark
He lost all his memorized mark
He staggered still to find a way
To the dawn of the newest day...
He had all the hopes...
By dreams of a domestic beginning he was doped
So he walked bearing all the pain...
He walked through bodies maimed and chained...
His eyes were engaged in a search
For someone with brown curls he marched...
Someone who to him promised
To be for him when the rattling would cease...
So he walked searching for her
Under the curtain of blackish tar...
So he walked almost dizzy
Dreams of his love coming to him so easy....

He found her nowhere in her village
Only found her abandoned mirage...
Under a Peepul tree so leafless
He thought he got a glimpse of her lovely face...
So he neared the place stretching his hand
But his palms on the tree trunk did only land
He touched the bark of the tree and stroked
And got by tears fully soaked...
Under the tree there was a stone
Bearing her name, as it for him shone...
He dropped on the makeshift grave
Cursing his own wasteful life by God thus saved...
He clutched the stone by all his might
And for several days and nights
He just lied there and profusely cried...

After two weeks or so, a scavenger party
Found how a worn soldier on his love's grave got liberty
From wars and pains and wasteful life
How wondrously he for another world took the dive...

So...you see
How stories lie under a simple Peepul tree
Buried from view of all of us
A story become a myth thus...
If you just go and touch its bark
You could still get some hints to embark
Upon a journey to the past...a creeping shadow
Of love, which would you surely with a legend bestow...
You could then lose yourself into a myriad mystery
Of love lying deep there-a forgotten history...

touchwood!

I am not lying...babe...
You're my rainbow cave...
Where once Coleridge to conceive Cain stooped
And also by the maid with dulcimer got so much moved!

Come'n! don't you believe it my sleepy dove?
So calm and composed as you sit on my spring roof
Keeping me from the din and bustle so aloof?
Come'n! my rose!
My Vanilla Sky...so close...
You could once be property of Paramount Pictures Production
Considering how you fill me with dance, romance, comedy-a super combo-sensation!
You're a resource
Linking me all the time with love's discourse....

And I recline, I think, I deconstruct
And make scribbles your kitchen air-duct...
I be post mod, be ancient
Trained by you!
(my fiendish friend!)
From nonsense verse to a movie Hollywood
I find you everywhere...
And I'm not lying...touch wood!

sunday girl...

When the nine o'clock rays of the sun
Fall on your sleepy face through the window
I know today is all for fun
And today is a Sunday...

For on weekdays you go out
Well before eight thirty five
Sundays only allow you
To stay on bed as you like...

On Sundays you stay for me
Come to the terrace several times
On Sundays I frequently you see
Running smoothly through the book piles...

Sometimes you would take the basket
To visit the vegetable man
Holding me in your heart's casket
Walking under the Sunday sun...

Sunday is a lazy day
For you to unwind
For me it is a bit different
I get you perfect on my mind...

still miss a format, into which for you all of me would fit...

Last night when your time for me elapsed
I didn't hear a single thing...
Only heard how birch trees collapsed
And felt somewhere within
The telephone did ring...
Wished to get to you through the phone
Be by your side so much alone
Wished to send you across a few
Moments of our past homely view...

Had I that strange machine
To cause some kind of miracle
I wouldn't have turned all lights dim
Wouldn't have turned to a rock-bottom sale!

I would just my mind zip
Up into a folder compressed one
And sent that for you to keep
My lovely morning's black swan...

You would then just unwrap
Getting into a kind of time-warp
With the mouse you have a digital display
In your living room you would have me 'on play'!

That would however make redundant
All I did write and paint
Not so digitally clean
On your mind's non HD screen!

Last night on I am thinking sure
What could possibly be the best procedure?
To send to you my mind digitalised
Or to keep them on pen and paper internalized?

Last night on, believe me, I was on a tech tour
To find ways and means to my mind upon you pour
Finally found no such working option
So sending you my mind through scribble, like a simpleton!

But still I miss a suitable format
Into which all of me for you would fit
My words, cries, sobs and laughter
The systole-diastole of my every heart beat!

Me a linnet could upon sword press my breast...if you so wish...

Me a linnet sing a song
When for someone your eyes long
Someone very close to your heart
Someone from whom you've forever fallen apart...
 Me come every other day
To be near you for a brief stay...
At morn, at noon, at lonely night
When your cheeks glisten bright
By water salty so cleansed and bathed
When you're love sick,down and feeling betrayed...
Me a linnet see  you there
Pining profusely for someone near
Someone for whom your doors are left ajar
Someone gone from you seven light years far...
Someone on whom you once so much relied
Someone taken away from you by the harshest river-tide...

Me a linnet come to take away all
Your poisoned nights filled by gall...
Me a linnet wish you to come out
To see how from cacti flowers also sprout!
Me a linnet wishing you a love filled life
Without pains, thorns, blood and strife!
Me a linnet wishing you to fly
With me to the big,broad,blue,gay sky!
Me a linnet could upon sword also press
My soft feathery clean white breast!

Your bindi...

Certain things leave their mark
For example that round shaped dark
On my bathroom mirror, left by your
Bindi carelessly stuck, by you, before perhaps water you poured
On your naked self, soaped aromatic, glistened touch...
You left bindis such
Here and there...
Almost everywhere...

On me how many times the red powdery thing
Your presence by your embrace soft did bring...
Once...almost you laughed and giggled
Seeing that red mark vermillion
On the left side of my face as it stayed a fiddle...
Another day on my white shirt the mark you laid
Tons of detergent failed to away it fade...
You still smiled naughtily
Your love you expressed so heartily...

Your bindis surely captivate me,
As you do by your clean forehead
Your hair falling upon your eyes unruly
Also sometimes dropped me dead...

They say your bindis carry your most pure soul
I find them helping me to unwind my ancient scroll...
The scroll that still registers
Your every move so meticulous
The scroll that still possess
Your bunch of poems and proses...

Your bindis... color me
When I am so discolored
Your bindis...strengthen me
With all the blood of a martyr's valor...

Time! please...let me make her a poem mine!

Dropping for me hints of a tune
My violet dream walked slowly past
In an idle breezy afternoon
Amidst prosaic settings unjust...
Saw my violet metrical romance
Slowly with a smile on her lips pasted
Made my uncorrupted syllables dance
On asphalt road my poems she tasted...
The dreamy bunch of  hasty metre
Had the promise of an anthology
O how with violet spray they lettered
Stanzaic patterns forever dodgy!
God! please make her stay for me a moment
Time is so fast slipping by
Let me shower her with my poesy pent
Let me make her a poem mine!

searching for you, finding you...but in others...

You are so much in me
That you in other women I see...
At the entrance of the Sudder Street,
Saw someone from behind
Thought you're there to me meet
So standing patient and sidelined...
Thought to call her...
Taking she as you in known salwar
With flowers of pink stitched all over
Hurried to her, my waiting lover...

'Sorry! to keep you waiting here...'
I mumbled clumsily nearing her,
She looked up, with amused face
Making me realise in your dress
Someone else standing for her man
'Sorry! I am utterly mistaken ma'm'
Saying this I looked around...
Feeling how with you I'm always bound...

A few yards from the incident
Just where the underpass laid
I thought again you your wait spent
For me, being the truest maid...
So once again rushed there
Running through pavements thronged
By people, hawkers, beggars shared
For the underpass my heart then longed...

Skipping a few stairs at one go
I panted to reach where counters sell
Tickets of plastic cheap and slow
And thought found you under a blue veil...

This time also I return with empty hand
Can't find you in my city's magic land...
But surely through others I found out
How you keep me under suspense and doubt...

remote control...

Never seen you from close
Only in my dreams you pose
Like goddess of love sometimes...
Sometimes like an ethereal fire
Sending hopes and me inspire...
Sometimes you come like an eagle
Swooping down on me, making me fall
On you, overpowered by your strength
Wonder struck by your drop-down length!

Never seen you even from distance
But felt like always under your lens
So lovingly monitored every day
Felt like a lump of wet clay...
O how you give life to me by your touch
Shape me up to meet the standardized match...
O how your fingers on me play
With your nails you sketch my day!

Never seen you from near, from far...
But on me you play without bar...
You must be the remote control device
Switching  me on every minute at least twice!

i am a leaf just...and you the veins on me...

i think i am a leaf...
And you veins...on me spread
Supplying me my daily bread...
Water, food, sap...through you come
You also hold me back from the tempestuous charm...

When i would be dry and withered and seared
Fallen on the grass fully bared,
You would still remain like a shadow
With your veins spread on my yellowed hollow...

Like dreams of the past you would remain
With your stories of vein-like crisscrossed lanes...
Through which came all the nature's nourish...
And memories of growing green through you i would cherish...

i think i am a leaf just
And you, the bearer of my unforgettable past...

in an elevator,with you...while it started to rain...

Like a floater,you came to be by me just
In the elevator's glassy bubble,
That went down fast,
Putting me into a concrete rubble...

The bubble down straight went
To hit the city's thirsty basement,
Me too went with it down
Clinging to your curious frown...

From thirteenth the elevator plunged
My heart to your eyes lunged
The numbers receded quite abrupt
Floor after floor you and me dropped...

At the tenth the countdown started
Your lips for a whisper parted
'Its going to rain...', your monologue
Kept me with your eyes bogged...

The clouds through the glass looked welcome dark
Saw how God  had sent the watermark
To draw pictures on the bubble of glass
With you, encapsulated, me moments passed...

You and me in a capsule
Had the whole cityscape to fool
You and me just in a spell of shower caught
While the city suffered another drought...

Reaching the floor marked luminous G
You  left raindrops for devastated me...
Unwittingly you, gave me that little space
To be clung to rains and be forever restless...