breath

So what is this, this breath?

It has helped me live, grow

I did nothing.

Blood flesh height weight

All formed effortlessly with the guest

Coming in going out,

I see some airtight food there on the shelf

Fresh as mommies!

So what is this, this breath?

The outsider takes me slowly to death

Air intrudes in moments immeasurable in me despite me.

Balances life and death,

I have inertia so to fight to defend,

To offend to maintain my stance dignity,

Grace and position,

Cause it’s healing and killing in the same stretch!

So what is this, this breath?

Like an invisible invincible paranoid

It comes and goes.

Creation and destruction at one go.

I have all the reasons to live,

In the way it is…

With the constant conscious companion!

Who teaches me to live in the moment!

I won’t give in till my guru gives up,

But I’d have this question still in me,

Thrown up in the air,

Be it fair unfair,

So what is this, this breath?

I am

i am

I have the power in me

To be bound by my own ecstasy

I have the power in me

To be chained by my own sympathy

I have the power in me

To create my friends enemy

Deliver my thoughts thinking waste

From works that only cut and paste

Focus at the point without haste

I am in all my universe

Floating with it I traverse,

With its rise with its fall

Tiny puny little small and tall

Steady unmoved with every little bit

I am in it, for it, and I am always with it

I am in every single all

27 June 2014

Hidden clarity

Hidden clarity

The moon,

Hiding in broad daylight;

The city,

Inside the clouds;

The sun,

Keeps the world in the dark;

Relatives,

Inside death;

All outside the purview,

To emerge in the mind

25 June 2014

mess

mess

Complete mess

No one works

No one

Stars, brooks, mountains smile at the working-ness

Winds are perpetually playing

Flirting with the livings

No seriousness

Everything that is so much in abundance

Is on a sabbatical leave

Learning how not to work,

How will the world survive if it’s only rolling and

Giggling without trace!

25 June 2014

Poverty

Poverty

Blades of grass,

Never been able to count

The leaves in shrubs or from hanging ivy,

Fruits effortless of plenitude,

Yet, amidst all of this,

Poverty doesn’t count.

24 June 2014

Margin

Margin

Sand and the sea,

Pushing an elastic margin, bit by bit,

Territory is marked… for ages now

Different colours fight,

The outside bleeds into edgy foams,

The inside is colourless and hollow.

24 June 2014

raindrops

sudden big raindrops
type-writing in ample space
non-stop emotions

Some triplets

Falling leaves

Leaves falling from trees

A boy underneath watches

A barber at work

Counting

Heaps of fruits grounded

Counting fails the colour huge

One to nine numbers

Flowers 

Flowers in full bloom

Smile, ready to go places

Or just dress the ground                                      

Thirsty

Crows with open beaks

Look above with thirsty hope

Clouds waiting to fall

Losers

Losers

We like to talk and write about success

For losers to listen and read,

All in the name and hope of encouragement;

Would we ever embrace a loser, sell a slice of penned speech

About the courage to sail through life as ones,

Reading stories of success mongers who made it big and great

Alas stories of readers never sell for here it’s not

The trading of value at any silly rate!

Come closer, take a deep breath and see how

Stories are written in the kitchen, at work, in families,

On the buses, on the roads;

How bills and taxes and piles of other fate

Refuse to open the famed golden gate,

How bad days are written off in the books of nights

First of every month runs for the next

How life is an imprisoned text!

Come closer, take a deep breath and listen how

Heartbeats of millions,

Want don’t want to sing, how gatecrasher legs steal the rhythms;

Of beats hammered around the Halls

Half-accomplished marks written off in the crack of Walls,

The soggy eyes, blue with jealousy ask a somber why

The imagined feet crashed into the red carpets

Life consumed in this thread of utter lie!

What is so wrong in losers

Who are never to be sung,

Not a tune for the real survivors;

Successes in ways that mock through the paths

Bit by bit, moments of sighs and highs go waste and cherished,

In and out of bars with attempts and tries

No one, none at all talk and write about successes of failures

All lovers blinded in their ears and deaf in their eyes!

Why is the word a sound so averse

A word that walks with most to traverse,

As losers in life write poems and tell;

Out of the mind and out of the shell

Straight on our faces, for those who survive,

Live without plugs with volumes of breed

Come on friends, bring it on, for those alive

Strong simple stories of losers indeed! 

17 June 2014

Coffee Poems

Coffee Poems


Clean cover

Debris on the earth

Dirt muck need complete cleaning

Child locks the cupboard

Misguided

From the cradle

I came to dance, sing and play

Daggers of thoughts born

To drag me till the grave

Sunlight

Sun from my bedroom

Hides behind the edifice

The light wakes me up

Elusive

Sunset in the horizon

Truths lie in front of our eyes

Sky falls in blue smile

Poems you could enjoy over a cup of coffee.
16 June 2014

In time

Birds flew away

With the quiet evening sunlight

Night wakes up from sleep

Deforestation

Lost forest, tonsured

Angry winds blow without pause

In search of some trees

Game

Old man on terrace

Feeding the pigeons, watching

Football match is on

Space

Maid left for today

She will with tomorrow come

Wash and clean my space

Work

Bees at work like ants

The stars, birds, trees, brooks, toil quiet

No automation

Reflection

A beautiful pond

Water steady and peaceful

The sky shows so clear

An interesting game

An interesting game

When will you come to me?

When will you set me free?

When will you let me be?

Eyes wake inside and see!

Am I in search of what I am?

With meaningless traffic trapped in jam?

In the way of the road, what is clear unclear?

Ears inside the wheel can so openly hear!

At the centre of the mind is the puny little quiet,

At the centre of the being is a living small sight;

The silent in the middle is at ease and at peace!

The light in the middle a universe of bliss!

I am engaged, occupied,

Absorbed, involved, nothing denied,

A game so engrossing where every time I choose,

Whether to win or simply to lose!

12 June 2014

Waiting to clear

Sheep block winter road

People in cars wait, shiver

Take out woolen clothes

Back into the future

Maid washing clothes; brushes softly.

It must be my father.

That sound of his shoes at the last two steps is his.

He will catch me not studying.

That must be my father.

His almirah opens. He arranges his dress,

Takes out his dhoti and banyan;

That must be my father

Water drooling in the bathroom

To relax his fatigued machine.

A child jumps into a pond. Splash!

It must be my mother frying fish.

Rainy day today; no school, what a welcome to the changing season

Fresh smell…rhythmic rains…

Good…good things are happening in the kitchen.

Back into the future

Pressure cooker whistles to the sound of my mother’s conch.

Pooja at home.

Prasad waits for the owners of slippers waiting outside.

Ma smelling of dhoopdhoona.

Train whistles to take the holdall and us to a faraway place.

Clothes washed and hanging;

Treasures intact; to take the old man

Back into his protective and stable days,

And bring him back again into a changing state;

Back, all the time; into the future!

Note:

1.      Almirah – cupboard;

2.     Dhoti - is a traditional men's garment worn in India. It is a rectangular piece of unstitched cloth, usually around 4.5 metres (15 ft) long, wrapped around the waist and the legs and knotted at the waist, resembling a long skirt.

3.     Pooja – worship;

4.     Conch – a large spiral shell used before and after pooja;

5.     Prasad – foods and fruits, as offerings to Gods and Goddesses; after the pooja, it is to be consumed by the devotees.

6.     DhoopDhoona -  dhoop (incense stick) and dhoona – a special powder put on coconut skin and burnt to create a good atmosphere for pooja. It is also believed to be good for health, and is used as mosquito repellent.

12 June 2014

Rape

Rape

Rape appears again.

With its creative pare, faking pain

Fruits of pleasure hanging, lying, floating

On parts of nature,

O beauty!

India ‘is the cruelest’ place.

Where grimace is the name for the powerful grace;

Green shames unleash red tapes and lace

Horror blue showers on fertile lands,

Grasses hang and leaves drop from the naked tree

From where these rights become so wrong

How I’d pen a different song!

Though nothing stops.

‘Move on’ the weakest call that survives,

Buildings don’t collapse on insolent mud,

Businesses don’t crash on sticky thud,

Works don’t smash on the crackup grounds,

Ladies, women, girls don’t cease to solemnize birth

Gentlemen, guys, boys don’t tire to comply.

But I am guilty; burn the poem for in here I solicit a revolution,

You will not allow me to enter this pious premise I know

For I write here to stop everything on this treasured soil,

What is the need for growth, for wealth of any kind!

When being a rapist is our potent pride.

I am guilty of taking law, the blind into my own hands.

I am guilty; I should be punished in no time,

Curb me down I know I will get my judgement so quick

This bard is guilty with poisonous stings

No girls, and they’re not my ‘ma’ and ‘behen’, they’re girls with wings

See! On grounds of disrespect you could put me behind the bars,

No girls I say are safe in India,

Violated in this failing country of ‘dead habits’!

Let the world know how virile we are.

India tops in honor killing and rape,

We are here to nail down love, and drain our lust without escape

My country is the cruelest country,

You have another ground to bring this brute to book.

With a foolproof pen inking so openly white

Go hunt and hurt with all your might.

Laws will wall you save your claws

And tell us stories of women’s flaws.

O beauty!

On parts of nature,

Fruits of pleasure hanging, lying, floating

With its creative pare, faking pain

Rape appears again.

Note: Ma means mother, behen means sister. One of the common ways to refer to Indian women to show respect; however, men are seldom referred to as Baba (father) and bhaiya (brother). In India, we think that women are more respected if they are referred to as mother and sister, and not just as women. The poem has 47 lines, crafted and hammered as a reminder to lot many things for no use at all.

I was not sure of whether I should share this poem until I thought of keeping my being sure aside. Yes, 'rape' has become a statement of power in India. Women of all ages are first raped then brutally murdered with the relatives of the victims running from pillar to post for justice.

09 June 2014

Free show

Light and sound on stage
Crickets playing with fire-flies
Audience hiding in trees

Times

Numbers, passwords scare
Memory under arrest
Times to modern times

Child's play

The child sees first rain
Captured in video
The wet smell escapes

Passengers

Train reaches station
Passengers chatting so long
Leave with moments passed

wave

Train running away
Children on the meadow wave
Passengers wave back

A drop [from the son’s diary]

A drop [from the son’s diary]

Mom teaches Chemistry to her son

From her school book, neatly covered in brown paper;

A drop, in the middle of the label

That blurred the year with an off blue splash,

Was that of an ice-cream, she recollects…

‘Time didn’t run away

From the indolent soporific book why,’ she thinks;

A drop wakes her up, turns old in a whiff

In a room, with an impatient son,

Waiting to figure the bonds!

04 June 2014

Said unheard

I am Om Amen

Sounds roaring on the deaf beach

Snails hiding inside

Father, child

Father walks, child runs

To keep pace… child grows…walks still

Holding the old hand

All stars

All stars

Throwing light to sleepwalkers

Buds and seeds awake

closed it firm

closed it firm

Through the pages,

There were stories trapped,

I was reading me, in all of them;

Who are they? I wondered!

In folded time, dressed like me,

Paged for love innocuous like me,

Banished in pen, like me,

How horrid is the link!

If I had thought and lived like them,

Am I their devil or are they my spook?

Where is the link?

I closed the book as a norm,

Looked at nature,

Yes I told I was quite like it,

In a way,

Yet unlike;

I opened the book and closed it again,

With fear and doubt,

A swelter mere, so should I fling?

What is the point I thought,

I am happy to link!

I opened the book, and closed it firm.

This poem is about taking responsibilities. Closing link (done three times in the poem) does not mean closing ties and bonds. However, living a life that has been lived thousand of years ago is something with which the poem doesn't comply. If you remember three shots of Meuresault in 'The Outsider', the first shot was a reaction, as a norm, the two following shots were conscious. It is about taking charge of the action, however sad it is; once one has committed an action, one has to stand by it. Here in this poem, only the third shot (action of closing the book) is done consciously. So when the book is closed for the third time, the poem is taking charge to withstand the discomfort and other consequences without blaming anyone. Closing here is a creative beginning. However, it is open to interpretations.

02 June 2014

Mist

Mist

Moist morning in mist

Meadows trees shiver in lakes

Clouds erase the paint

Eyes open vision vapours

Steps smoke through the way

02 June 2014

Missing

Missing

Rain and the Sun

Playing hide and seek for long

Rainbow on the sky

Rain hats and umbrellas on

A child peeps, hats off

02 June 2014