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.