Sidestep

Fragments of conversation,

In cluttered heart so old,

Sidestepping those thoughts that glow,

A memory made, kept, sown.

Identify the constellations,

That crowd out flaccid hope,

Braiding the nervousness,

Brevity of soul.

You could become the middle of the song,

A pithy Stanza, frameworks of preciseness,

Trepid eyes in reflections,

A vanishing tempo, safeguarded.

Like tiger strips of summer growth,

Past a lawn into the spilling wilderness,

Livid to untimely interventions,

Love---has grown.

At the edge of your telling lips.

Unusually.

Gāndhārī

Time waves collide on blindfolded eyes,

And the eras, like bees, sweep at heady perfumes,

On a flowering bough, thrilling in bloom,

In palace gardens, cascading hourglass dunes.

The shying lavenders scent the vaulted routes,

Of history and splendor, pillared and true,

Classic fable, and all that she sees,

Beneath blindfolded eyes, they’ll always be.

She knew of times that were as young as she was old,

Days that blushed to daubs of patterned gold,

Kingfishers dived to sagittate pride to treasures that float,

Just beneath agitated waters, in feisty beak to hold!

And now in blindness she only feels,

Her husband’s love, for all things green,

Dritharashtra, she calls, and Sanskrit seems,

To not grasp enough of him, fondness to feel.

Dritharashtra, she calls, in blinded light,

In blinded love, inept in sight,

Husband, I give you a lifetime, she cries,

Legacies leak in tearing eyes.

A love like fire, like sacrifice;

A love like fire, like sacrifice.

Begging day

The tongue to be smothered by heavy phonetics,

The palate to be tapped, a plea of merciful composure,

Shaky with the begging, in principle, understood;

Beneath these asbestos roofs, to be pitiable.

The name-calling, dwindling,

As their summer frivolry speeds through village roads,

Leaving me with package,

Like the begging rewarded, like surprises in gunny bags.

Maybe a dosa, half-eaten,

Maybe exotic food that spoiled,

Hopefully whipped with warm ghee,

That cashews litter.

I greedily clutch, unbending.

The veins spitting the excitement,

In a steady drone that surrounds, I see,

that far away there are coconuts; I could kneel for kernel….

To quench a thirst, to scavenge,

I clutch, still, anticipating somewhat.

Blue-veined and old, walking away.

Into the streets, to beg another day.

My survival, under these asbestos roofs.

With only the trampled sands to sing my song.

Carry me Away

The constellations have been burning,
In their own secretive qualms,
A distant twinkle of quarrels they witnessed,
And maidens stand charmed.
Carry me away.

The mundane black of cables,
Droop in pessimism,
Crows gather by the murder,
Picture-perfect sobriety.
Carry me away.

The creative minds scribble,
A poem, an article in proud papers,
A nomination today, Pulitzers,
A teenager closes a masterpiece of a diary.
Carry me away.

There is a factory worker, hemming overtime,
For export factories in Dhaka,
You buy cloth wipes, clean a counter.
Swipe off grease on embroidered tulips,
Carry me away.

Until

I know of a place where the bees do hum
where patience learns to paint with sun,
the rivers, in their paths to churn,
round and round at every turn.

I know of a place where busy men run,
To and fro, seldom with fun,
Waiting upon, and new things to learn,
And regressing again, in incompletion.

I know of places with honking horns,
saturated sights, grief and woes,
fruitful and faithless, and all things greater,
like love lost and recovered.

And yet, they stay not the same,
for when they lack the essential,
every beautiful nook and goddamn heaven remains,
solitary.
until he comes this way.

Tenacious

I seek you in the wind,

that gallop through mud and sad,

And ride upon the weary souls,

that frequent my hinterlands.



I seek you in the rustle,

that makes touch-me-nots curl,

That waltz across the still waters

of coy delight, in many a ripple.



I feel you whimsical upon the hair,

In rattle of the windowsill,

I seek for the sound of drought,

Through crumbling walls, a struggle.



I seek for you to fly me home,

On your freedom’s back, in contentment

to hear the silence these winds have blown,

Eroding turpitude and plowing slow.




3:53 p.m.

In all quiet

Mount me not on squalid streets,

A monument of stone and praise,

Where the crows find perch and

Stranger’s gaze,

Upon copper or bronze,

Not human, this.

Burn me not for chastisement,

To bathe my ashes to holy thirst,

Upon the banks of the great river released,

In fluid time, to be carried in.

Pat me not into the earth’s midst,

Where insects crawl on unworthy decay,

Mocking and dismissive,

As below the stone I lay.

The eyes that see, that saw, that said,

Will belong as immortal, somewhere else,

Living forever, remnant,

In cursed lightlessness, blind, never again.

Make me relic of the school,

On medicine’s table, proudly spread,

As they cut and peel not on death,

--On everything that I have left.

Study and marvel how they worked,

How pure was that, the blood that flowed,

The heart that skipped and how it roared,

To youthful fancy, see me as more.

Hold me in awe, as you work,

As you learn from thought, intellect earned,

As aged doctor, you one day become,

Thank the soulful cadaver.

So enrobe me in this, not in sadness,

When cherubic skin the time has aged,

Talking of stories, those my own,

Humbled in life of gallant endeavors.

This post from a medical student inspired this.

Starless is the sky

Paper mails that were confined,

To closet that was stashed high

with a hesitant hope that you berated,

Starless is the sky.

Jobs, Stock Market and cleverness,

You thought you knew and all was said

Undaunted in love, regardless

And starless is the sky.

Home’s too away and coffee too black,

The paper mails keep coming back,

The job is gone, the one you never enjoyed,

And starless is the sky.

She heard that day from high prestige,

A place of dreams, grand university!

Paper mails then came to me,

But in darkness, my stars sparkle spectacularly.

For heart, happy-go-lucky,

There was cancer in the family,

Hospitals, flowers and recovery,

It isn't starless, my sky, said he.

Stretching through slick emerald trees,

All the way to Tennessee,

And beyond to the wildest prairie,

There are stars, everywhere you see!

So when with love, hope, joy and pain,

You’re sequestered and everything’s in vain,

Revisit your lonely balcony,

And then, there will be.

Stars in your sky, stars in your sky, stars in your sky,

Promising Eternity.

Believe me.

My affection is a wayward thing

My affection is a wayward thing,

Flying here and there, far reaching,

Trifle tumultuous, violating,

for absolute freedom, aspiring.

My affection is a wayward thing,

like a child in all innocence, weeping

Clingy, emotional, solvating,

in entire streams--consciously recurring.

My affection is a wayward thing,

Shelter in you, seeking,

And when all the shade moves away,

terror rips the soul, it frayed!

My affection is a wayward thing,

an easy timidity to win over,

a little heart, sweet to melt with supple kindness,

An ice-cream, a bear hug and a compliment today,

My affection is a wayward thing.

The Flute

Into my flute now, if I could breathe,

I would breathe slow, in gratitude,

As ageless voices echo deep,

They rebound back, in a dance of music.

Into my flute now, if I could breathe,

I would whisper a song of gratitude,

Not of love and gain, or loss and pain,

But of unbound simplicity, unexpressed.

I’d tell my instrument of a listless night,

Of long years and shadows, now gone by,

A transient discord of horror, and then again,

A bursting melody, not in vain.

I’d tell him of this special soul,

The one who creates music in expertise,

Drumming this vibrancy, unparalleled,

I’d tell him of the minstrel of a far off grove.

I’d breath to my flute, a harmony, a soul,

A voice unheard---unheard before,

And I’d like to tell him, that although,

I cannot tame the winds into a waiting fist,

I can call the music my own!

The flute is eternally mine,

But sometimes, a lungful of winds do visit.

As I breathe in and out,

They echo back, unceasingly, never to leave, never in relapse.

The surging waves never damping---the laws of nature, to impudently defy.

It unwinds, tangles, like a tiresome stray,

But the stubborn music, familiar to flute, my child, has come to stay, has come to stay.

The songbird spoke at 2:49 P.M., for the favorite musician of the far off grove.

More fortunate than I?

The fair has come to town today,

And the mud roads I trample,

In earnesty, to kick up the dust with trinket-bound feet,

And a traveler’s stories to hear.

The tramps are all huddled and still,

The travelers bicker and joke,

The accomplished smile through fish teeth,

And showcase treasures galore.

We endured the far off lands,

And these are our trophies, they say,

Trudging through the desert sands,

Foreign mountains and orange sun in may.

To win and fight for all that’s sought,

We plundered fearlessly, and sacrificed,

And this is the fruit of sweat and blood,

The sweet riches that in pockets jingle.

It means we’re brave, and there’s no cause for treason,

It robbed us of our youth and age,

And yet, we are the kings of our lands and reason,

Reasoned the old man today.

He felt himself a fortunate creature,

And I was glad that he couldn’t see,

The veil that hid the coal-black eyes,

Brimming with genuine pity.

I left the tramps to gape at glimmering treasures,

Founded and unfounded,

For they might win a thousand more,

And never as I, be fortunate.

In my heart, I know love,

And to be loved back, ardently,

With all I hold dear to me.

That, more than he!

For he was but foolhardy,

To travel the many lands and fight,

Historic wars and fatigue,

To collect for himself a few coins

Pitiable!

And for I might be just a somebody,

Who’s little and doesn’t matter much,

But in my heart I am satisfied,

That I am fortunate, more than that shallow soul gone awry.

And hence, I walked away, more prosperous than everybody.

For the richest fortunes are intangible, you see.

Everywhere to be

In her garden, beneath the flailing skies,

Fertile soil in frightful quiet lay,

Waiting upon the right winds to blow,

In her faithful humus, happy seeds to sow.

And seeded they were, not one but numerous,

Spreading their roots and suckling on her wealth,

Grabbing nutrition, with their greedy tendrils,

Growing burdens, and weeds, aplenty.

And then one day, the benevolent winds planted,

Gently, a good elm in her midst,

So as her fluid arms flowed in and around,

She embraced him, completely.

For she was water, a tricky aquamarine,

Quenching, needed and yet cruel at sea,

But that special tree you see,

Was nourished, for it wasn’t just another weed.

Oh how he grew, splendid and tall,

And oh, how he spoke of grandeur in fall,

Oh, that poetry in silent calls,

They were much more than she’ll ever recall.

And when to the winds he bowed and thrilled,

Through her, ripples he sent, multiple,

Developing, constant and unfazed,

Nurtured, caressed and gone away?

Oh what language they shared—a coexistence,

What laughter trickled through his veins,

What disregard in innocent games

A disposition, frankly pleasant.

She gurgled, she smiled, she basked,

In her lovely brook by her tree,

Beneath his scattered shelter she played,

Meandering coyly but then again….

There is sun, who paints the heavens,

And science wrote, in the back of its heart,

That she should embark,

On fateful journeys, painfully endless.

And so, a cruel transpiration tugged,

Her droplets from the tallest branches,

She left with “this is survival love,”

You should transpire, and I shall fly.

Was it goodbye? He seemed to ask,

You nourish me, and I wish to last,

Stay here, will you, please?

From the sun and vicious cycles, can water beg release?

And she left to reach the burning sun,

Who pulled with allure, natural

It might have seemed so feral,

wrong, weird.

But understand this, love, with heed she always returns,

Through the many miles, and countless turns

As dew every morning, to see the loving elm….

as dew every morning to see the loving elm!!!

Before evanescing to rightful brilliance.

And she wishes only but this,

To belong with the skies, and the trees.

To journey along, mindfully,

To heal all hearts, and everywhere to be.

She'll live as memory if in your heart you keep….