Rose is not a word

 

The word rose doesn’t

emulate any colour, no matter
how perfectly read,
it doesn’t carry any sense 
of smell either, however
flawlessly the speaker accents.

Poetry cannot die

I will prove to the world,
with my indomitable words,
poems can kill all wars,
all anger, jealousies, hatred;
here’s to my lines, read 
or unread, but they lie in 
black and white.
I will keep playing my tune,
until all wars end, to you
I’ll sing, with a heart 
in my head, ‘poetry 
cannot die, it is 
never ever dead.’

In the circus of things

I had tied all of you in a rope,
until you ate, dressed and spoke,
wrote, and even thought like me, beyond 
any scope; with your entity, civilization,
language, attire, and food, lost in our hands
of power, prowess, intolerance, to ape me, 
became your condemned destiny.

Now, with all of you locked up in my cage,
I speak of justice, liberty, disarmament,
I score you down for distorting my language,
I mark you high for your neutralized accent.

The odd one

In the garden of tulips
a lotus was born; the gardener
smiled, but those in power,
surprised; they ordered to pluck 
the intruder, it was thus thrown
outside the border; the earth, like
the garden of flowers nourished 
the outcast with light, water, and air.

At work

Write, till your eyes turn in,
read, till you look within; you
will soon construct a different world,
where the azure paradise will fall
in love with your golden garden.

In the midst of miracles

The sun and the moon,
the earth and the sky,
the water and the air,
heal my world from
this warring lie.

I know of no other
gods and goddesses,
no kings or queens,
no princes or princesses,
I worship you, your highness,
cure my world, tired with
hatred, anger, lovelessness.

The meadows and the gardens,
the seas and the oceans,
the flowers and the fruits,
the brooks and the rivers,
the rocks and the mountains,
help my world to see,
your bounty and treasures,
enable them to hear the
sounds of your beats,
empower them to taste
the benevolence of your juice,
to you alone, I sink on my
knees, bless my world
deliver it from the disease of wars.

The kind wind and the breeze
so mercifully do you grease
all my sentient beings
so they love, live, and play,
every night and day,
I know you’ll never ever leave
us to die; in you alone, I believe,
teach my world with your pure
touch, how to caress, care, and cure.

I pray to you with all my heart,
my world, you’ll never fall apart,
with all your selfless teachers around
let our feet not lose the ground,
we’re blinded and deafened by
the debacle of disaster and deceit,
help us see and hear your miracles,
let them activate the sleeping brain,
let them rejuvenate our heartbeat.

In medias res

I can dance in the middle of a war
like a cattle in the slaughterhouse,
I can sing in the middle of greedy
hunger for power, like a severed
rooster; I can die in the middle of
pious talks on global peace and
harmony, I can drown myself in
guilt and shame in the middle of
theoretical cacophony;
I can be mesmerized at the autocratic
insistence on growth and development,
when millions starve under the indifferent
firmament; I can chant spiritual mantras
in the middle of inequality and caprice,
like a gang-raped teenager, seeking justice,
I can dance in between the designed gap
of word and action, and listen to volumes of
discourse on integrity, on one hand, I become
rich, and on the other, I breed poverty.

Freedom

When you go to 
a wise person,
seek love, do not 
seek wisdom,
an invaluable lesson
that can deliver
absolute freedom.

Intelligence

In the human world,
everything that has no 
sense makes sense;
intelligence is blinded 
by the visible, deafened 
by the audible, while the 
one that’s holding it
is cosmic intelligence.

Human beings are, in
essence peaceful in nature,
but they are also insecure;
intelligence is the way out,
but it is also the trap,
the key is to unlock the gap.

A purposeless visit

I went to the neighborhood
where I grew up, just to
see if the condition of the
house where I lived, the field
where I played with friends,
the forbidden place beside
the ganges where I smoked
my first cigarette.

Everything about the locality
had changed, I felt like a stranger
there, I was kind of expecting a
familiar face, I found none.
I was also worried about the
small talks of the big people,
what to say if I met anyone,
why was I there, what would
be the credible purpose! 

But I walked past many times,
felt like running but my knees
didn't permit; the open field,
transformed into a multi-storied
choked me completely, I was
wiping my tears, thought would
have come with a makeup,
but no one could recognize
the weeping child wiping the
moist eyes in front of a high rise.

I didn't realize that my age
was my natural disguise.