To An Unknown Friend

Stay a while, my friend and stranger
The day is still meandering, and there’s still time
Those drinks you had, how are they faring
Does the mind tell you where I am now, near or far
The disheveled hair on your head, is it painted
Or are you yet young at heart to outgrow the Time
The way you walk, never steady and in control,
Does that affect you in what you see
How does the world look, flat or round
Does it look twisted or covered in glamour
When do you sleep my friend, or do you not
Is there a sleep that helps you dream

The world is passing us, the children laughing
Horns honking, footwear grazing the side walks
There isn’t a thing still, all are moving

While we sit here, on this lonely bench
By the side of this antediluvian road
There are flowers blooming, lots emptying
Pans frying, fans whirling and some even hooting
Things are ever frantic, let us be not like that
Let us sit here, till the close of day
Why are you drooping, hold your head steady
We aren’t done talking, my man, you and I
That stain on your shirt, does that sting friend
Did the potion spill into your soul
Is that why you are looking at me fearfully
Don’t be frightened, I am not your darkness
I can be the light you were seeking in your nights

This drizzle, it isn’t from heaven, it’s the tears
That you and I shed together, may be not here
Nor anywhere, but still we shed them together
For we aren’t divided, we, you and I, are ever together
That sagging chest holds a thousand terrors
The drinks can’t still them, they garrote the drink
Don’t get up, you can’t yet walk, I am here my man
Though I don’t even lift a hand to make you steady
I am here still, with you all the way

Stop looking at those happy faces, embraces, and kisses
They aren’t real friend; they are off a passing show
You had partaken in that show once, as I had
They are bland, at least to us sitting here
You are now muttering assent, I see your lips move
Don’t wipe those dribbles off; they are droplets of your pain
You aren’t wagging your head to the music now
Are you, the music stall across is what this is all about
Noise, more noise, there isn’t a lapse to the noise
It blares day and night, winter and summer, burial and birth

She could be your girl, the one approaching
I see I was right, she isn’t happy with me
And is abusive towards you, you are doing great, old girl
He is drowning in your love; we were having a nice talk
About just that and he was doing good
Now you cart him away, with bitter looks at me

Fare thee well my friend, you can’t drink
This sorrow away, for it has claws of steel.

Crossing A River

The Original Story

 

“Two mendicants, having taken a vow of celibacy

 Were about to cross a river

 

A pretty lass was about to do the same

But was looking with fear at the rushing waters

 

The young mendicant suggested that

 One of them carries her across

 

The old guy said:

 

Son, we have taken a vow

Of celibacy, we can’t do such things

 

The other Said:

 

We have only taken

A vow of not marrying, not one of Not Carrying

 

The old guy Said:

 

 Do what you will

 

The three got across and went their ways

 

After a while the old guy grumbled:

Yet you shouldn’t have done that:

 

The young one responded:

 

I deposited her on the shore itself

Strangely you seem to be still carrying her!”

 

 

 

( This was the old tale. Yet what happened was this):

 

The Real Story

 

The old guy

Seeing the younger one quite set on carrying her across

And grasping the dangers of bodily contact

Volunteered to carry her saying:

 

 Just watch our rear, when we are in the waters

 

They proceeded thus to the other side

The girl turning her head to look at the boy often

And the boy blushing when their eyes met

 

Water being a fine conductor of nervous energy

Their rapport was instantaneous

 

At the far side, after thanking the old man

They both took off together

 

The old guy, watching them disappear

In the distance, mused:

 

When you carry something precious

You either don’t put it down

Or you make sure that it stays yours

Before doing so

On Mynahs and Puppeteers

On Mynahs and Puppeteers

  Amusing is this tale

Some insipid friends, out of congenital debility

Or out of unblushing and irrepressible weirdness

Bought a few  Mynahs

And fed them words only such souls can think of

To show them off to all and sundry

  

The rest couldn’t take to this fancy

Because, those words were from places

People try not to notice all their lives

They smelt of unclean environments

And the sewages that run under their feet

It’s not denied that ‘some’ like these places

And would wallow in them all their lives

(It’s their choice, yet why punishes others with the reek,

By bustling among them shoulder to shoulder?)

They may have applauded this bizarre-

Feint at being amusing, (both the old and young)

But those ‘some’ is not the entire human race

It can’t be, since, even Nietzsche ended up mad

And these idiots can’t be the supermen he spoke of

  

The Mynahs did so well

That by a week they were

Using the same terms to honor their masters

Day in and day out

Though blessed with the skins of Rhino’s

The idiots were a bit worried too

Their Mynahs had started to get under their skins

And make inroads into their squishy souls

That too is not to be wondered at

Since even such souls play with ‘words’

And words emanate out of their own awareness

Of their lovely (lowly?) selves, or the mire they rise from

  

Now they are out to instill some sophistication

In the Mynahs, but alas, the benign words fed to them

Still come out coupled with the refuse of their master’s souls

And with the fumes of the decay they carry within

  

As last seen, they were struggling to strangle

The birds, one by one, unnoticed, and on the quite

Those who have been watching these hapless souls

Wonder only at one simple thing:

  

Why are they so bothered of the shame now?

 

On Didactics

On Didactics

 

Teaching the cute little wild cat

The sum of life is hard; it can turn bad, ‘cause

The darling is wild, and can only be had

By its silly neck—always remember to catch it firm

(And as one of the old masters told me)

 

“It is cute, absolutely sweet

But it is dark and mighty wild”

 

She stands up on her hind legs

Exposing the pristine fur on her belly-side

Her claws spread and her mews rasping

She’s ready for fight, her furs are alight

Her eyes aren’t the same on two

Con-secutive moments

They suck you in, and spread you thin

You be better on the look out

Or she would wound you dead

 

If you aren’t a cat whisperer

Don’t ever think of  teaching it

And you would be hard put even

To get someone to train her

 

I picked on a  poet for the purpose.

But that soul  brushed me off with these lines

By singing:

 

“My love is not speaking( to me) any more

So how can I speak on my own “ (‘Own’ is elongated)

“It is he who speaks through me

And without his words I am no more” (‘More’ is also drawn-out)

 

That’s some powerful insight

So I left in peace, no business in meddling

In love affairs.

 

Well I have now decided to release

The  cat kid to the wild.

 

If poets can’t train a wild cat, who else can?

On A Split Hydra

On A Split Hydra

                                                                                                  (Poems on nature)

She split into two
No one knows how
There’s some who say that
It was a hacked and bisected thing
Just a chance happening-
In a moment of pain

 

It doesn’t matter
How it came about
Where there was one
Now there’s two
And the one clasps the other like
It has iron claws
Everyone who looks at the two
Would learn it at a glance
There is no help for them
They are fated to part

 

Yet once split, it started pining for
The split part
It grieves and cries over it
Over and over
It has turned maudlin
Those who watch, feel the rent of the heart
The tearing of the eyes
The snot blocking the larynx
The juice in the troubled voice
(Even if it’s a hydra and we
Are being anthropomorphic)

 

Yet It’s a sad thing
Who’s there to console the poor being

 

However hard it tries to hold on
It had splintered apart
The more it
Stays separate
The harder it’s going to get
The older part would age and shrivel
And the sprung part would grow
And move off
It’s how the world goes on
You can’t hang on

 

Those that became severed
Can’t stay united
Yet we are all such fools
We think we can find some way
To repair the incompleteness
That we see in ourselves

 

It’s a fact of life that
All repairs need be in the heart
Letting go of something
Is an art
Its learned through pain and
The inevitability of loss
So let us say to the fading one:

 

Don’t cry, you darling thing
Learn to live with the hurt
Learn to let go, learn to
Receive the pain. You aren’t alone
We are all with you.
We are around you, and we know
How you feel. We are there for you
Aren’t we all one after all?

The Art of Living

The Art of Living

 

 

I had slept

Without a mosquito net

On my first day in the new city

 

Did I say slept?

That isn’t even an exaggeration

That’s an utter lie

 

The room, the cot, the night, the sounds

The earth itself

May have slept

 

Me and the mosquitoes didn’t

We fought

And I was not deadly bruised

I was totally mauled

 

The next morning saw me

At the nearest mall

Searching for a mosquito net

 

Then on every night

I would spread the mosquito net

Over my bed stead

 

And by that time

All the mosquito’s in the room

Would be inside it

 

Happily  I would close the net

Insert all the corners under the bed

And sleep on the floor

 

Poinciana

Yesterday

Through the pale Violets of dawn

A traveler was seen slow

Mute tartars were then foraging

In the viscous souls of the flowers

Their faces mauve with the violated blood

And their black hides and swishing tails

Twitching as flies protested at the brutal feast

The muffled tremor distinct and threatening

 

A dead breeze was hugging the ground

Faintly caressing the torn and fallen petals.

And as they fluttered on the ground in mute pain

The sky seemed to turn its grey visage towards the overhanging cliffs

But they yet stood still with the weight of the sight.

On the far side, the distant hills, unseeing and bluing

Were heaving their bosoms up

Surfacing through the failing mist

 

There air had turned still, harsh with its bated breath

And the sun hovering over hills now pulsed livid and angry.

As he passed through them, the traveler

Left the liquidators jolting–still for long moments

Their heads rigid, nostrils wide and flaring

The curves of their horns showing fretted and coarse

Their jaws yet working, eyes hulking vast and scared-

The skies spread through the irises, and something dead in them

 

As he now was stepping carefully through the mushy dents

Made by the hoof marks of the grazing kine-

Some of those still gaping fresh with deep and brownish lesions

And the field vivid in a darkling green, soft and still to his feet

He saw a Poinciana flaming by the boundary, its canopy

Spreading its wings, sheltering e’en the marauders in its shade

Miscellanea

 

Materialization’s

 After going through a few serious works

And after reading a thousand limpid words

I start to think of the terrible worthlessness of it all

 

Whether those words luster or not

They all seem to be  heavy with thought

They all try to teach me how to live

How to think, how to laugh, and the like

 

And I am now so completely bemused that

I am thinking of mass materialization as a serious option

For, how can I practice all that they preach

With this single and hapless life I have?

  

Where the Roads Merge

 Down the road there’s something nice

A brainsick one is helping someone across

The old lady  is saying something to him

And the kid is muttering to himself

Both seem happy with the exchange

And both easily desert  the other on the far side,

Slowly limping off -following  their separate ends

 

I am not watching it, possibly,

Who is watching  it then?

In  conversations with………

 The Atheist

 “My God, how can

You believe in God?”

And  The Believer

 “ I hate it when

They say

There’s no Love”

  

The Fun Life We Are Having

The Fun Life We Are Having

  

Fixtures aren’t that bad, those things stay put

And may even glare us down as we get near

Nothing to do but do the circumventing

And the ducking and weaving,

Digging and hauling, till you topple, or they topple

Fixtures are all in the brain, they loom

Like pyramids, containing the condensed

‘Wisdom’ of centuries, they are logical in structure

And do all their battles with obsolete dicta

When they fail to move us we move in to move them

Hence it’s nice battling with a fixture

It can’t move while we can, it can’t smile

But grow old and vanish…………

 

Yet strictures are definitely gooey and sticky things

They play obtuse, use swords and abuse

Speak in dialects unknown to the civil tongue

Get red in the eye, show aversion and gore

Issue edicts, talk of gods and sub gods

Quote from obscure texts- Hence all strictures are

In the mind, fed by a deep sense of insecurity

They harbor the memories of battles lost

Honor stripped, positions sabotaged, they deny logic

And delve into the abyss of the past to gain strength

When they hunt us, we can’t be blunt or pull a stunt

The battle isn’t with words, it’s with blood and spit

It isn’t nice to go to war with a stricture

It walks in shades, and works through our minds

Options against them are nonexistent

Other than to Issue a few of our own

 

The imp possible’s

The imp  possible’s

  

He peeks at me through the half open door

But I don’t dare say “come in” to him

I know he is trouble

He is the holy terror of the neighborhood.

 

I tip toe to the door

And try to close it ever so nicely

I had almost got it done

When his tiny nose came crawling in through the slit.

 

“You gave me a fright”

 

I murmured to the short brown hairs

 

The imp is merely one and half feet

But his eyes look several thousand

 

“Ride” He points to something beyond with his open palms

 

I had heard of his ride

His father had just got him that the other day

 

The other boys all had big rides

So he needed one too.

 

One can see him wheeling it among the other boy biking fanatics

(He can’t yet climb on it)

And quarrelling with them

He calls them “bitches” and “sluts”

No one knows where he learned them

And the boys are pretty pissed about that

Strangely those are the only two words he could clearly utter too.

 

“Hmm, hmm” I say troubled. I like the imp somehow.

 

He wriggles past me into the room and starts handling things

 

I try to get some sense into him

 

“No, no, not that, that’s my pen”

 

“No you can’t take that, that’s a

Laughing Buddha, the favorite of your aunt’s”

 

(He doesn’t believe in aunts. This aunt being my wife

She would probably murder me if that statue got broke.)

 

The little terror was having it pretty good in my writing room.

 I again tried to normalize things.

 

“No, you can’t, I said you can’t, that’s the mouse of my computer

The lights you see in it are not fitted there to attract bees like you.

Don’t ever think that”

 

Well he has seen the morning paper by now.

 

“Now don’t tear the paper, there may

Even be some news in it you know”

 

I manage to remove every other item to where the

 Tiny devil can’t reach them.

I surveyed the room; there is not much he can do now.  

I turned towards my computer.

After a while I start hearing noises from the inner room

 

Well the imp had locked himself in that room and was making

Hell inside

 

As all good things happen in our lives, my wife comes in just then

And starts wailing

 

“What have you gone and done now!”

 

What, what the hell do you mean, he is the one doing that!

 

And you let him into the room. I had my trunk open, it has jewelry

 

I relaxed. Wonderful.   Its only jewelry. No big deal.

 

One thing you can say about a human wail, it tends to attract people.

Soon there were all the girls in the locality around the door, the big boys smelling mischief, were not far behind.

 

Girls started cajoling the imp

 

Honey, open the door, wont you, you like chocolates, I have plenty

 

The revelry inside picks up momentum

 

Sweet, it’s your mamma, I have halwa for you

 

It’s getting merrier inside

 

The boys want to break the door down.

 I wouldn’t have any breaking down of doors.

 

All the while the girls  are directing

 Freezing and deeply pitying glances at me.

The big guy, don’t know how to control a child,

Now he has got the little guy locked inside.

 

I am all too familiar with the way girls think so I hold a poker face to it.

 

The cajoling is going nowhere.

 

The imp is grunting and whooping inside and there is a constant noise of things breaking.

 

The time was getting late too.

There were conferences.  

Without my participation of course I being the main culprit.

A consensus was being arrived at.

They want to break the door open.

 

I got fed up and moved towards the door and shouted

 

You little capsule of trouble, I have your bike now,

 It seems a good bike to me.

 

There is dead silence for a while.

 The imp has pretty good ratiocinating faculties.

There was the clatter of latches being pulled and handles being turned

The imp shoots through my legs towards his precious bike

 

I look at the guys and girls and hold myself humble.

 

The girls are not impressed at all.

 

My girl says

 

You shouldn’t have called him” a little capsule of trouble”

He is not a capsule.

 

There were pitying looks all around on the girl’s part.

 

 To call a child a capsule! A little darling at that…..

 

I was getting pretty pissed at the patronizing attitude of the girls.

As if everyone is nice out in the world.

As if such imps could get along without being mauled once in a while  

That would be tantamount to  an injustice wouldn’t it. 

 

“Oh, should one call him “mother Theresa l” then” 

 

I ask

 

More pitying looks

 

“You guys should know he destroyed every single item within his reach.”

 

Then you should have moved them out of his reach. 

 

The girls hotly respond.

 

The boys are enjoying the beating I was taking.

 

Well I was not taking it any more.

 

I say coldly.

 

Thank your stars you don’t have anything worth it where he can reach.

 

The silence was one that you could only cut with a laser beam

 

 The boys are trying to maintain composure and terribly failing.

The effort making their faces into grotesque sculptures

 

They now think hard and astonishingly  vanish from the site

 

 The girls are having some sort of spasms and there were many an

 Interesting look directed towards me.

 

They leave as if the world is full of joy and they are enjoying it

 

Slowly the coast clears and peace is established.