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.