A Prayer for difficult times

This poem came to me on the last day of an intensive journaling workshop, Nov, 2018.

The skies grow darker, the clouds heavier

the winds are howling and blowing hard,

the thunder is crackling and the ligthning pierces like a sword

striking terror in the heart

 

May i trust and fear not the elements,

may i have faith in the depth of my roots,

and may i trust the womb of the earth to hold me and protect me

 

and may i invite the clouds to open and send forth the rain,

for it comes to wash me and nourish me

may i embrace and open up to the wind and listen to the song in its howls,

for it comes to blow away all that is not me, all that needs to drop and go

may the lightning strike and burn to ashes the fortresses, that this me has erected -hoarding, protecting,separating

 

May my faith grow roots, for they say the roots reach deep and wide reaching, interconnecting 

and may i see, that space where what seems like the inside and the outside and the me and the not me, is but one big forest

Five lillies

Five dainty lilies bloomed today, on a monsoon morning, on my window sill

swaying tenderly, violet and gay, peeping through a rusted grill

a welcome pause  from the morning flurry

tiffins and lunches and all that scurry

with coffee in hand,  I mused ..

Oh lillies as time passes and things unfold 

They say the globe will warm, glaciers will melt, our lands will flood 

the forebodings are grim and the mood is of gloom

and I wonder oh lilies will you still bloom here ,on a monsoon morning, on my window sill ?

Don't you fly away to New Zealand or Canada to flaunt  your dainty petals on some far away hill

FOr I will wait here ,on a monsoon morning, with some coffee and an eager quill

Things fall apart

Things fall apart, 

words, promises, moments .. 

the heavy scent of besotten love ..

like fragrant camphor sublimate,

a dream was it, was it not ?

Pointless scrawls of a restless mind

The pen makes pointless scrawls,
doodling out shapeless thoughts
for, the hand that holds it is restless
coaxed by the managerial mind
to be productive, effective, purposive,
a mind schooled, cast in brittle molds
schooled alas, to be blind to the beauty of stillness,
the fullness of emptiness, the joy of nothingness,
a mind ever wanting to run to the finish lines of nowhere,
to change, to tell, to make , to do
to rationalize, hypothesize, intellectualize, criticize
to find succour in a futile heap of verbs ..
while the heart yearns to just be ..
aimless, guiltless .. just be ..

A meeting

Me and a friend travelled to Etumanur in Kerala  in July 2014, to meet a close common friend who had just lost his mother. The three of us were meeting after around 10 years, in Kerala amidst the monsoon. The nostalgia of a wonderful time that we had spent as colleagues and friends in Cyprus, a mediterranean island lingered over us, diffusing into the melancholy of the bereavement. This poem is about it .. 

to god's own country,death summoned us ...
we met and mused .. about a life , that death eloped with ..
and about our lives .. of times gone by on a quaint island, cyprus ..
memories sweetened, marinated in time's vinegar
as rains thrummed down, birthing life ..with bursting vigour
in myriad forms, bustling and throbbing

life ..amidst bereavement ..
silent thoughts amidst cicada singing..

embraced by a seeping strange warm  mood
a sweet ache,in a lingering  melancholy...

glass, coloured bangles, a heap of jingles.
all curves and bows, no jagged angles
on sweltering afternoons, toying with smiley s and half moons
broken bangles shaping sweet bonds
... me and my daughter , jingle with hearty laughter

Do you believe in ghosts ?

"Do you believe in ghosts ?"

“Do you believe in ghosts nanna?” asked my daughter

“Yes and No” I said, complicating the matter,

In the day, when there is light and everything is bright

I am a rational man, my reason sharp and my logic tight,

But as light fades, beckoning the night

reason slackens and imagination awakens !

Invisible figures and eerie voices taunt me and frighten me,

the courage by day abandons me. Doubts and fears buzz like a bee ;

A proud atheist by day, I am shaking in my pants,

Pleading to the gods, muttering chants

But when again the night slips away

I am by daylight .. bright and gay

the previous night, now an amusing secret

between me and myself, to none I will let

and now I am a rational man, flaunting reason and logic,

Until darkness seeds doubts, when I'll need god and magic

Broken Bangles - A poem inspired by a friend and her 7 year old daughter

glass, coloured bangles, a heap of jingles.
all curves and bows, no jagged angles
on sweltering afternoons, toying with smiley s and half moons
broken bangles shaping sweet bonds
... me and my daughter , jingle with hearty laughter

Whistling in an empty room ..

whistling in an empty room ....tossing notes up in the air
like smoke rings of an indulgent smoker , soap bubbles of a child without a care
notes that aimlessly waft 'n wander, walls adding echo to the choir,
sculpting a formless mood .. that gently seep into the whistler and the whistled ..

no ears to please no words to carry, only a brief dalliance of the whistler and the whistled 

..

let bygones be bygones ...

a poem that was written in the run up to the last election when Mr Modi was elected, when Modi likened the Gujarat riots to puppies coming under a speeding car accidentally, when "educated", "well travelled" middle class drooled over him and brushed aside his record in Gujarat ..and said "let bygones be bygones " ...







Let bygones be bygones, oh come on, lets just move on ....

we are yuppies .. we dont care for dead puppies ..

so what if there's blood on the road .. we'll wipe'em and let our sedans fly ..

Let bygones be bygones, let a thousand lotuses bloom

so what if they bloom in marshes of blood, if that is what it takes for lotuses

we'll slaughter puppies ... to pinken our lotuses,

Let bygones be bygones, let them be, arson, rape, slaughter, charred bones,

its not here, its not us, its not now : so don't ask why, don't bother how ..

It doesn't matter dear , as long as our malls glitter, just cheer ...

Let bygones be bygones, we'll forget em soon,

we'll use the bones to brew our spirits,we'll pinken our lotuses with the blood,

We'll drink, we'll eat , we'll celebrate till we drown the memories of strewn carcasses ..

Let bygones be bygones, oh dont you worry my dear yuppie, we'll get ourselves a new puppy

we'll buy em , we'll clone em .. we'll manufacture em ..to our whims, to our fancies we'll design em

we'll make em exotic, cute, adorable, puppies that will die smilingly under our sedans, puppies that are disposable ..

The queue ..

In times of VIP passes, special darshan, gold club check ins, privilege banking  this was a rare queue .... where money, privilege, celebrity had to wait .. in a queue .. for its turn .. a queue where  designer cotton rubbed against mud stained crumpled cheap synthetic .. where id cards didnt have ‘Platinum’, ‘Gold’, Silver on them , where the fragrance of expensive perfume from  bodies pampered by air conditioned cars, mingled with the  odour  of sweat of hard labour ....

 fingers roughened, ridged, scarred and those delicately manicured .. all received the same dab of ink .. dabbed in the same careless way ...

wonder if this queue will vote for a fairer world .. may not ... but the queue itself was a thread of possibility floating in an otherwise cess pool of a vulgar living depravity .....

Intensive Care Unit, September 2012

Bed no 19 , a friend, a wife, a mother, a grandmother,

a happy heart, a sad heart, a scared heart, a troubled heart ..

Bed no 19 is now a heart in trouble,

a heart, now, some binary beeps on the screen,

a body covered in a gown , a listless green,

with gadgets, probes eavesdropping on her veins,

overseen by a few brains in unfeeling white,

smart brains in unfeeling white measuring the systoles and the diastoles of the heart,

Doctored brains, sharp and bright ! looking for trouble in a heart ...

Bed no 19 , a friend, a wife, a mother, a grandmother,

a happy heart, a sad heart, a scared heart, a troubled heart ..

Where is the hand's touch that can feel the heart's pains ?

Where is the feeling heart that listens to the pulses and the rhythms of the heart?

Where is the caring heart that can listen to the troubles of a heart ...?

silent volcanoes

 there are times you call out when quakes rack the depths of your hearts ..

when it spews out a a lava - of long fossilized thoughts..

hear the howls, the screams, the rumbles and the angry remonstrations ..

but listen to the silence, the cry not cried, the words not said,

for they might reveal something ..

the anger, the fears, the anguish, the explosive melancholy that spew the lava ..