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.