A poem written by a poet, religious intolerance , necrophilia and allied things

Poet you have done it right
As a very very modern poet should write
Fusing elements that you have found
Floating in the thin air ; quite unbound!

You dared to put into your lyrical grace
Things that we the people oft do brace
In our daily lives, filled with false pride
Our acts of violence, vendetta and verbal jibes,

Some one talked of doing unholy things
Ghastly and diseased thoughts which bring
Shame in my blood, angst in my veins,

And I ask myself, am I getting poisoned too?
Am I losing my mind, slowly becoming death?
Am I making a compromise with intolerance?

But then , poet, you are a learned man,
You have written many things, seen through plans
Of political flagbearers changing attires
- One coat glittering for a ball,
Another subdued one perfect for a Fall,
Nehruvian hats, non nehru caps,
Saffron shirts guarded by black cats,
And so on and so forth happening oft,
Poet, don't say you're naive and ignorant of
How political affairs are handled here
Even that do I not seriously care,

But where is there that musical magic?
Where is there that piece of literature?
Poet, you got up in your sleeve
Several tricks with rhyme and motifs,

Come , pour them more in this muddled time,
Bring to fore the artistic sublime,
For that is what we can always claim to be true,
More than anything, the eternal view,

A yogi proper is a difficult find,
Necrophilia can only please the cursed mind,
A poem even more beautiful can perhaps make
A statement just, bold enough to unearth mistakes
Of the past, the present and even of our forefathers,

Now, don't say poet you do not know
Where from the wind of truth really blows,
And where does it really go?
To which frontier? To which heaven's gate?
Where a poem differs from the mundane rest?

Spectrum

When he was born I remember how had I dreamt
Of him becoming big, oneday like other kids,
Ryan had been the eyecandy
Fair with pinkish hues on his cheeks,
And how we tried to build our little things around him,

Our world was around his needs,
And he would rarely talk back,
Even when he was three years
He would only shout and scream,
I asked my spouse
Oneday after gathering enough courage
To face any truth
'Is he okay?'

We went to the doc,
And again I asked the same thing
'Is he okay?'

The doc nodded his head
Somewhat dubiously,
'He is, I'm afraid, in the spectrum'

'Spectrum?'
'What spectrum?'
My spouse asked him,
She was having beads of sweat
On her forehead
And on the tip of her nose,

'Gosh...we are so lost'
I thought I heard my wife almost cry,
Was she wailing?
Prehaps,

Then on
We are living on the spectrum
Of light
Punctuated by dots of inexpressible silence,

Silence was the key word of Ryan,
He remained silent,
Ages grew,
The trees in our backyard grew too,
Ryan turned ten,
Silently,
Almost stealthily,

Then oneday...
(Probably that day was Sunday,
I was reclining on the sofa,
Ryan was sitting beside me with a scrapbook)
I noticed (quite nonchalantly)
Ryan was drawing pictures!

How wonderful the drawing looked
Full of colors
As if a rainbow had descended upon his scrapbook!

I looked and looked
The spectrum of colors
Filled me.

To Derek*

To Derek*

"He saw the poetry in forlorn stations
under clouds vast as Asia, through districts
that could gulp Oklahoma like a grape,
not these tree-shaded prairie halts but space
so desolate it mocked destinations." In the world where poets and so called intellectuals
Throng like unashamed swarm of bees
Seeking honey,
You stood like a monumental passage of grief,
You talked about home and exile,
Black women with shiny foreheads
Resplendent and oily,

The people in New York called you
The Mighty One,
A poet who had been profound and complicated ,
To me, you are as long as your poems
Which made me travel to torqouise seas and white sands,
Palm trees I heard roaring in the air,
In your words the world seemed restless yet strong,
Passionate yet morbid,

You have made me find beauty in distant lands,
In wings of pelicans
And candy floss shaped clouds.

(*this writeup is dedicated to Derek Walcott, the poet extraordinary)

Tiasha , me and poetry

Can an evening be
A thing of beauty?'
Tiasha asked me,

The lake before us
Caught all the hues that passed
On its  water, a picture of dusk,

I looked at the scene
Calm, still and serene,
And wondered what it did bring,

'Surely it can', ventured I
As a possible reply,
Looking at the colorful sky,

Tiasha looked at me
Her eyes speaking quietly
Her love , her unsung poetry,

'What did the evening
To us really bring?'
She asked, almost singing,

'Love', I thought I should've said
'That really the evening made,
That really sky before us laid, '

But then I those words left
Unuttered, not expressed,
I just in my heart them kept,

Tiasha being what she always had been
Perhaps gathered traces of them from the scene
And my hands to her face she doth bring

And then she kissed on them gently and soft
Like an angel perhaps, straight from heaven dropped,
Making me unburdened, as if held aloft,

I felt I had become a bird then
A creature winged, devoid of pains,
Ready to fly with her,  my lovely maiden,

To faraway lands, distant shores,
Where evenings such always colors pour,
Only to find love more and more.

Love, let's be selfish

Love,
There can be a lot of wars around
Cries and sobs and tears
Somewhere in Syria there might be heavy deafening shots
Of bullets, bombs , shells,
In another part of the globe
There might be riots
People might take swords in hands
And get engaged into carnage unholy,

Still
Leaving all of them aside
Like two selfish beings
We can always cycle down to that field
Where the sun shines soft
Caressing the grass and the trees,
There, love, we can always hug each other
Forgetting everything,
Like two very selfish beings,
There you can always hold me tight,
In my ears you can always drop words sweet,
And I can always hold your lips
Onto mine,
Savouring the moments,
There , love we can be selfish
Till the world will learn to be selfless,
Till our love teaches the world
The essence of tranquility.

The dusk was slowly settling on the street
Facing which two friends sat
The aroma of coffee filled the shop
And they had so many things to share betwixt them,
Small but significant things,
Like their joys and peals of laughter,
Undiluted, pure, uninhabited,

The dusk looked perfect
Devoid of any ornamentation,
The dusk looked human,
All too human.

We remember

Ah! Even after so many years
Still how one can hear
Cries and sobs and screams
Of millions teeming
Half fed, beaten black and blue
Before gassed without any cue,

Ah! Even after so many years
Still how can one hear
Wails and pantings and dirge
Of people in blood and mud
So horribly painted and greased
Before their throbbings of hearts ceased,

Forever,

Ah! How still how after so many years
One can their weepings silently hear.

The warm wintry sun and we

The warm wintry sun was going to sleep
When thinking of you I walked a few miles
And reached that place where we did keep
Our little secrets like  simple things
A smile, a laugh, a kiss and a pat
And some very very personal belongings
Your diamond nosepin, my tattered pocketbook,
A key chain and a peacock shaped ring;

The warm wintry sun was going to sleep
When following your trails I somehow reached
That particular place where we did keep
Our simple little unforgettable things-
A scene of our heads resting upon other's,
A saffron red sky painted like a flame,
A musical flight of a dove's white feather,
And many insignificant inconsequential names.

A night to remember

When the moon came down upon me
One night as it shone the most
I thought you were there just beside
As I got that whiff of scented rose,

Love which we both bore in hearts,
Then we perhaps both felt strong,
And the moon yellow, large and low
All that quietly witnessed for long,

The night had thus beautifully turned
Into a delightful hour of communion
You and your thoughts when laid bare
All my  pent up  passions young.

Mail woman's lover

Mail woman mail woman
Where do you go?
Is it not painful for him
To stand waiting
For you in chilling snow?

Mail woman mail woman
Where do you go?
Has the day not ended
And the evening descended
With light turning low?

Mail woman mail woman
Pedal down you to that place
Where waits your man
Half frozen braving cold
Only for your sweet embrace,

Go there and plant a kiss
Right there on his parched lips
And say a few words warm
Into his ears soft till they will glow,

Mail woman mail woman
Where do you go?

Picking berries

When the air is so ripe
And berries when hung red
From those branches of our trees
Why not we go picking them
Tasting their goodness
So filled with the scent of the wild
Moist, juicy and sweet?

Do they not welcome us home
And tell us not our wanton pleasures
That we savoured for ages
In our hearts like the way
We fell in love ?

Granny's kitchen

Have I ever told you
My granny had been a wonderful cook?
And how much we longed to go
Our vilage home where she had stayed
All the summers and rains and winters
Only to savour dishes she us served
And her lipsmacking delicacies;

When in the afternoon we got tired and hungry
Playing around, sweating and out of breath,
She would just give us a call
And we would run, scampering,

On brass plates came piping hot
Food made by her,
As we started gobbling hungry as we had been
She would sit beside us right on the floor
Sometimes fanning us if it were summer months,

I would try to sit near her
To get some extra helpings
A bit more than others,
A spoonful of pickle or a larger piece of fish,

She knew perhaps my hidden thoughts
And always remained so condescending,
Dropping a big dollop of tamarind sauce
As if by mistake on my plate,
And I would just smile at her
While she pressed her lips and winked at me,

Her kitchen was her place to pour
All her love and affection for us
Through her tireless works, her foods,

Her kitchen was her very own world
Filled with aroma of spices and dry fruits,
How many times we tried to steal
Cashew and nuts from containers there
And how many times were we caught
By her (for she would get the noise of utensils or jars moving in her kitchen
Even if she would be yards away),

Granny's kitchen was our place to be
At the evening too,
When we would gather there
To listen from her stories and tales
As she would spread a mat there
On the earthern floor for us to sit,

How many evenings had we spent there
Dozing off to sleep while listening to the adventures of the princes and kings,
She would then perhaps call our parents
To carry us off to bed,

And even while we were fast asleep
We would be dreaming of the kings and queens
And would be thinking that everything happened before us
Right there at the kitchen,
Sometimes in our sleep
We even got the smell of spices
And that unmistakable scent of granny-
Her betel leaves.

Come friend, lets go there once again...

Come friend, lets go there once again
Where once we haply went
After a long unending summer-
That summer which us scorched and burnt
And brought the sultry heat right into our souls
Drying them, almost making us parched,

Out of that, remember mate?
How we went away like leaves
Blown away,torn away almost from all those things

That brought us down, 

O how we flew 

Carried like birds , 

Feathered things 

Borne by the light 

To that place 

Where silence talked to us like our forgotten selves

Whispering us to remain awake all the day

Only to grasp the meaning of our journey 

So made ;

Come friend, lets go there once again.