Monday, December 27, 2010

If She is Listening...

What do I expect –
Midnight calls and Christmas mails?
Or perhaps some jokes in sms?
Or is it my search
For a wireless bridge
From where may I hawk
My tears for her ears,
Beyond this traffic
Of everyday needs,
To float my toys
Of inflated Self,
That profits on wounds
With unconscious ease,
Stabbed as it is
With unkindest cuts?

I’ve unlocked my windows
And watch:
The unfolding play
Of unceasing flux
That burns and stings,
But regales as well,
As quietly I wait
On keys of night
In rarest of times
For symphony of showers
That soothes my soul
And opens my eyes
To a morning all-smiles
Glistening with pearls
In sunshine on leaves.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Swapan Kole - Killed 15.12.2010

I have seen my streets
Now streamed with blood
And heard with fear
The tears that roll
Along the cheeks of orphaned souls
Or even worse, their parents lost.

Beyond the songs of blaring cars
Beyond the calm of cushioned rooms
Beyond the shops and malls and all that rush
What are the ghouls that stalk
My streets, my city, my state?

I have lost my subtlety and seek
A space to mourn in meaningful peace
From where our souls, battered and bruised
Must take to the streets
And cleanse it of filth
To restore to the hearts
That sanity and song
Which afresh must preach
The dignity of man.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Unspelt Desires Dance

My unspelt desires dance
Beyond the fence of do's and don'ts
And tease my strings of
Perfect masks
To loose and flap
In monsoon breeze
To feel the rain on open lips
And drench anew my arid words
That long to break in glowing flames
And kindle what my hands  have not
Wrought so far in black and white.

Sings to moon the moistened grass
And rattles all my window-bars.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

A Jackal to his Sour Grapes

Neither silence nor eloquence
Has the power to cleanse
The essence of sadness
That pains my sense
And drips through my rhyme
Like a spastic's mime
That struts and frets
And puts out the light
As a comatose dream
In upward flight
That falls and breaks
In sordid night.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Midnight Musings

Too long the breath of nights –
As I long for a text
To pour out my thoughts
And hope for a nod
Or a glint or a wink
That at least would feign
The hint of a bond
And lift my eyes from caged unrest
That yearns and waits
For musings at night
Which could my soul
Now soothe and bless
With lips that linger with hope and fear
And voice that hums with rhythm and dance
The dreams that roll in lanes of soul
And promise in blaze the hope for a whole
Beyond this rubble I so long have borne.

The tones then clamour and shout from my cell
The news of FLATS and CARS and SALE!

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Musically Yours...

(To Madhavi…for those who know)

The shadows now glisten
And quicken my pulse
As shrouds now shatter
Like clouds in summer
To usher the songs of spring
That sing, through bones and veins
With palpitating strains
And thrall my soul
With calls that gleam
And burst through the seams
Of petrifying times
To dance and dance
In paradisal trance
Till visions and dreams and songs can weave
The tapestry of art I never shall leave
And thus memorise
From eve to sunrise
Her essence that knows no bounds of space
But compacts itself
Into moment’s incense
And resonates in me
With soul and sense
The chimes of stars
That praise and bless:
‘Rejoice! Rejoice!
Rejoice! Rejoice!’.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Transit

Arrivals, departures, delays -
Endless train of winding queues
Matched with twang of monotone calls.

The stale air swivels
Through the doors and drags
Its belly to the seats
And after a curious glance or two
Slops.
More and more of twangs and queues.

But there she came
In brightest blue
And in strokes of instant charm
All my sighs were filled with sky
Fragrant then with dawning light
That shoots my soul in joyous flight
Into the realms of fancy's bliss
Chiming now with lilting peace.

And then my call to join the queues...

Check in your visions and leave.
The world flies like thrown rocks -
Further both from dawns and dreams.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

What's In A Name?

I puzzle and puzzle
To name those words
That soothe my nights
As coastal breeze
And flow through us
As rainbow bridge
Lighting up my shabby nights
With all the glow and glimmer of
Brightest hues in vital dance.

I am the forest who sings
My tunes back to sea.

"Categorize, categorize" -
Hammer on the anvil blows.

I shrug and gaze at distant gleam
As our words awake to dawn
And fill my heart with morning scent
Fragrant with that nameless song
That knows no species
Neither cares
But breathes a rainbow world in dreams
To which my days do daily pace.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Clamouring Silence

How should I confess
My lonely days
To one who does gaze
At my robes and stares
At jewels and gems
And feels what she sees
To be the real deal?

I can't make a show
Of misery and sorrow
And wallow
In the charity you throw!

Words are just all
That I'll ever have.
So if there's one
Who cares and craves,
Read on, I say -
Decipher if you dare.
(But try not to curse
If you find only you)

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Ulysses Redux

My days pass as
A series of empty halls
Where the silence confers
With dark echoes
Beyond the bustle of the teeming street.

The compass fails to map
The deepening depths of
Silent seas
From where no spirit shall
Rise and guide in dreams
My ships to throbbing shores.

O Father have you forgotten me?!

Voyage without end -
Parched passion, in dry eyes.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Peeping into Pits

Silences stalk beyond
The receding fences
Of echoes
In cramped rooms
Where the smoke swirls
And floats
And blurs
In knowable stagnant metric light
Which only has moulds of known
To impose on that unknown
And wall the tunneling song
With engineered clang
Resonating long
Strong, too strong.

I've lost my keys
And search with a torch
That flickers and jitters
And cracks with a flash
As I drop and drown
In rubble and ash.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Concert of Pain

Why should I bother
To struggle and totter
And bear on my back
Ventilated passions
Or coagulated dreams
Which never shall glow
Or bloom through the vein
With vivacious songs
Of first monsoon rain?

I'll play out my days
As fabricated ads
Of mismatch and mess
In stultifying maze.

Silences struggle
And string together tears -
Elegies in flame
In concert of pain.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Devising a Diction

Devise if you can,
Some diction for a soul,
To frame her face
Through words that are not
Dipped in the rust
Of advertised songs
Or sullied with grease
Of titilating films;
But offer through the rhythm
Of palpitating beats
The dionysiac dance
Of one sudden glance
And strum through the heart
The ripples of love -
Condensed in a smile
Spilling through her lips.

Dredging my soul, I struggle for a tune
To harness my dream in unparalleled gleam.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Rehearsing an Old Plot

Woven in mist

Their faces

Appear in my dreams

And stalk

The spiraling stairs

Of heart

And with lips entice

As I swoon

In trance

And taste at once

The unforeseen bliss

That drips

From those eyes

And fills up my cup

And spills…


Away from the doses of grime and grease

From struggling silence

And fretted unease

Their songs now call to my soul

As I roll

As a fish that is coiled in a net

Of trust and duty and who knows what else.


I am drunk in my dreams

And hope

For a flight

With angels of light

Who I know shall fly

With others elsewhere

Beyond my gaze

In unflinching haze.


And still do I dream

And conjure in vain

Those eyes, those lips

Those enchanting songs

That drag my ship

To who knows what shore

And toss my soul

As a cloud in a storm

That hopes for a flash

To pour out in rain

Songs of a hymn that is unheard of yet!


I tussle with life to sail in my dreams

Punctuating days

With half-hearted screams.

Friday, May 14, 2010

A Pawn to his Queen/s

I wonder by what magic lamps

The streets lit up with thousand charms

And then with spells she rendered me

A pawn to beauty’s sorcery.


Still I search in dim-lit lanes,

As like wind-blown withered leaves,

In vain for all those wonders lost,

Yearning for that ecstasy

That will not let me be.


Dreaming so of rarest light

I long for sparkling, starlit night

When all the figures fading by,

Will one by one come walking back

And fill my dreams will untold bliss…

Perhaps to be sealed with a kiss.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Midnight Monody

Desire,

Dripping from a red dress

Puzzles my sense

And makes me so digress,

That all the mess

Of colour and stress

Shades into curves

Of exquisite shape

That dazzle and delight

Like a snow-capped sight

To a sun-burnt son

Of Saharan plight.

So my stinking pool at night,

Blossoms bright

With grapes and rose

Armed with replays –

Infinite.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Eternal Flame


Away from the circles of starless night

From all the lanes of winding fog

From the depths of dark and roaring clouds

Let me follow forever

Your matchless stride wherever

In all our struggles and strife.


Lead on with clearest eyes

To your towering height

And save us from ourselves

O Guide! O Pilgrim of Light!