Lone Ranger (In memory of Neelkantha Bagchi)

Boxed in the penumbra of mutated weeds
That suddenly are labelled as banyans and oaks,
I search for a branch in the clear light of day
From where I may sing now my lore.

Left without axes or saws rather sharp,
I falter and waver and try but in vain
To unleash those squadrons of thunders I dreamed.

So I seethe as if grilled by lightnings unseen
And harvest that poison of time in my limbs
As I churn its seas for one final cleanse
That'll restore our gardens unspoilt.

[According to Indian mythology the god Shiva would drink the poison derived from the churning of the seas which would eventually yield the elixir of life. The poison turned his throat blue. Hence his other name is Neelkantha, the one with a blue throat]

Misfit

Circled by slingshots of lamda and pie,
I'm swayed by the vectors of contempt and lie
That emplot my self within Eulerian graphs,
With constant of doing-what-I -hate.

Such are the prices of growth they'd said
And I am all sold-out of late.

So how did old Tom spend hours in his bank,
And dredge through his wasteland of self?
But I can't risk spells in the asylum or church
To sustain my fabrics of neurons in stress
And count little rosaries in train.

So battered by the brickbats of turbine and torque
I call to my aid dear Auden or Donne
And hew their jargons with dictions of self
For symmetry of semiologic shields.

Patched up with armours of allusion and trope,
I dance among circuits and unwanted chips
And practice with phantoms of hope.

Sighs and Wings

In the stillness of dawn, to sighs I've asked
Their lineage and destiny untold.
Flitting among shelves full of papers and books
They've whispered me tales full of petals now torn
Amid debris of silence that piles along walls
Or cleaves our bedsheets with barbed wire lines
In these our dawns full migraine and cough,
With concern now caught in its bluff.

Foreclosed with too many of dues still unpaid,
We scrape for the ounces of trust that'll loan
Perhaps a few bonds to us still.
Jumbled in fractions of aggregated dross,
We gasp among compounded interests of loss,
As idiots in ponzies of heart.

Spanning over ebbtide of dark deeper night,
Unbroken wings of cranes soar in flight.