Raindrops

I cup my hands to collect raindrops, my lord, 

variously on my fledgeling palm, 

all outstretched and flimsily beseeching

in school-girl cloths on monsoon day, 

to come to an asking palm,

over well-fed earth, in alms. 

Some raindrops, lord, 

do.    

They gently trickle down

and affect my skin so, 

tickled to triumph,  

my baffled sense may know. 

and they trust me as basket, 

lord, 

and I do my best, 

to hold them there, 

until they find the cracks where my fingers are.

Often, I do wish I had no fingers.

They were trusting enough to reach me, 

choosing to land on one loving palm,

over pattering to  muddy ground.

I shall honor that.

I’ll hold them and regard them as beautiful

as they shimmer before me, 

I see in them plainness and reflections, imaginations and 

maybe, inverted images

of futures

and I shall see them there and hear them, 

glowering in art of their making.

Dancing to wonder.  

and when they inevitable trickle down to the cracks between the fingers, my lord, 

when they slip me, even if they never meant to, 

on terrifying fall to gravity's calling, 

not to worry, my lord, 

I will send a tear with them as well, 

for company.

like a great love’s purest souvenir. 

tossed

Over the hedges that framed,

Sweet glassy visions

That had met the earth and

Tasted her nativity,

You tossed,

A fondness so green.

Like the slim cresent

Of a chickoo that mother chopped,

Were those saccharine sugars,

Passing silence in the halls,

You tossed,

Frivolously.

Frisking a summer air,

And some showers in Port Blair,

Atlases and prim laundered cloths,

You travelled and tossed,

In sleep.

Fine lines and brush strokes,

That defined the costline,

On your parched paper,

Couldn’t secure delusion.

For you had tossed,

Her.

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.