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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!’.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!