Melting moments

When the child beside her mom

was licking a vanilla ice-cream,

I didn't know where it came from

but I found my poem and my theme.

The eyes were closed and the tongue, busy

drops of dots fell off careless and easy.

I thought of my past that dropped from my time

to let it just go, I thought was a crime.

The child finished the stick with a smile on the face,

the two went away with the happiest embrace.

I was worried for reasons I never came to know

but the things that I loved I’d never let them go.

When I have those goodies, I am never inside it

I pay for the food never enjoy what I eat.

The child taught me now to relish every stand

I’m feeling light this time, with an ice-cream in my hand.

The lines

Lines of silver light

falling from the moon

as poems,

piercing the darkness

of the world.

Words are diving

into the non-static fall,

every word is joining

the dancing light,

rods are becoming sharper

than the cones

eardrums are merging

with the calming tune,

sound has gone silent.

Bouncy eyes can behold the writer,

enterprising ears can hear

the painting on the dark pages,

humming through the nebulous stages

of the world.

Futile,

futile is the effort to capture

the blurred unity of 

the effervescent lines

bound to re-appear

cleaving straight through the hollowness

of the world.

High up in the sky

A vulture, an eagle

flies high, very high

but their eyes

hang down and lie

on corpses, cadavers, insects,

they come into the smallest little space,

from the top, they intrude into

the domain of their prey.

Like an eagle I wish to fly

let my starving wings and eyes
enjoy the sky

Dead facts in living fiction

Stories are imaginations from facts,

facts derived from stories.

The link never dies.

Form of life lies

in facts and fictions

through croaking words,

memories travel like a nomad

on the lost-and-found stage,

the dais collapses in the oceans of habits,

more of same habits

and surfaces again

with a hope to be written down

and trapped afresh, as if new, in the books

whose pages flutter like a calendar,

the sole object that the ceiling fan

excites in a gloomy room.

In the midst of modern living

imagination is also hijacked,

dark circles prevail around

every pair of eyes

that sees like a mastered horse,

disillusioned by the sounds of gallops

as free will.

This continues in the pool of life

where the imaginative animal

dies like a frog.

Facts and fictions keep on

insisting, arguing, back-chatting

whether the frog is actually a toad

and if it is really dead or living.

The silent sounds in between

Poor power

Power is poor

when you want importance,

prominence by highlighting

your visible possessions, positions,

your focus is on the other,

their looks and their voices.

When you show

how you are lost in your 

flesh-bone identity traps and threats,

how worried and stressed you are

safeguarding your stance,

how you have to work to win,

make things happen for you
at the cost of those others
whose looks and voices haunt you.

Pure power

Power is pure

when you give importance,

prominence by realizing

your unadulterated connection

with the higher self,

when you find your true identity

beyond your body, you listen to your

own rhythm and voice,

when you see

how relaxed you are

with the gains and losses you have

earned and learned

in the forever well-wishing drama of life’

how work is done,

everyone with you wins

and how everything happens
on its own.

The stampede

Stampede values

submerged in the centre-ville.

The sun was shining up

walls are full of nice graffiti,

beautiful, aesthetic words garnish them.

Onlookers come and read,

to pay respect.

The content is on the modern discourse

running on the stage;

peace, disarmament, global warming

throw up as oeuvres of

firsthand painters and writers,

while off the stage,

on the real dais

it’s about striking the iron when it’s hot

like the smiling star up there.

Gloom and darkness prevail

as the plat du jour

same recipe, day after day

same outcome

work doesn’t stop.

Meetings on peace

helping the poor continue

much like the sun

which cannot not rise and set

or like the paintings on the walls

ornamented with words

on the stage

bushwhacked by the other field,

the falsest reality will never yield.

Gogul's head

Gogul has a list of names

inside his head.

He stays with them

day and night,

and every single time

he misses the bus

to catch his flight.

He feels heavy as a rock

for the file’s a huge block

any new person he meets

he gets a shock

to find it matching with the list.

Toms and Joes

With hurts and woes

Harrys and Stephens,

Oh to him, the dossier stiffens!

Tired and heavy,

he was sitting under a tree

when a fruit fell upon his crowded head.

Then all the names dark and read

disappeared and in a minute fled…

he became light and bright

rested under the shade

for a little while

and went home with a bit of a hurt,

leaving them dry and dead.

Another story

When you were there with me,

doing the chores, running the house

paying the bills

putting on the table those palatable meals

smelling of an unmistakable you,

I was writing a different story;

reading newspapers and novels at home,

going to work, drinking coffee

with another cup as my company;

how many vegetables grew in the kitchen garden

how many were bought, I had no clue

I knew the home as home.

Suddenly when you are not there,

when I enter the house with my keys,

the garbage smells of home-delivered food,

plastic bags,

when I notice that vacant chair in the coffee table

an emptiness fills my heart.

I see myself caressing my memory,

a translucent field, where

your being there overtakes everything.

Now

when the front corridor has still the impression

of a shoe wrack, 

I realize it had walked away

with all the fondness and warmth

that occupied the corner of a space

I no longer see as home,

I am trying to write another story.

Response

The sun was somber,

apprehensive;

It was looking at the clouds

beginning to weave an image

of a cobweb that’d soon

cover it, along with its glow.

Looking at this,

you were writing on the page.

Words had totally covered

your feelings, much like the mesh above.

In the meantime,

the poorly drawn cobweb was done,

it did cloud the sun

soon, a gloom took over the day

your words, your structures

are failing you as you write…

pages wasted in lifeless letters.

You are unable to draw the exact picture

with the acceptable rules of the craft

still your image of verse is so deep and strong

that you cannot go beyond

the prescribed guidelines

you are also scared of being outcast

even when the gossamer has cleared

the text on the page, washed away.

The sun is on its track

smiling, glowing and gleaming

at you, so you could peacefully

personify your response.

Eagerness to bring to light the imaginative

Lost in the physical

In every minute,

The frenzied world though

Writes and talks about

The non-physical.

Confused in the erudite debate

Between truth and lie

Condemned to be trapped and irate

In the destiny of debris

Each one of us

Pushing the insipid rock

Of the punished Sisyphus.

There is this someone

Waiting for the world,

Perhaps to wake up

Or to tae a plunge into an awakening

Slumber, instead of

Blaming anyone for the retribution

For in the court where the judge and the victim stand

The onlookers don’t see the struggle

Of that someone in the forsaken land

Trouble seems to be with

The three-letter word

Does it need to be cleared?

From the heavy, déjà-vu mind

Word that’s abused

From the time we left the abode

We called our home.

How would it matter!

The world wonders

But the desperate dais needs to live

For the sake of existence

It needs to re-create ways

Of survival

Words wouldn’t help

Feelings perhaps simple and naïve

Could usher in the light.

It is light, it is light

Keep your eyes closed or ajar

Through the door

It enters and simplifies

All defining words

Without limits of what it is

And what it is not

Unties the most stubborn knots

No need to name and fight

This the world accepts

Dives deep in unending delight.