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.

Same Old Stuff

My confounded muse can hardly explain,
How each mere sight will unleash those lines
That swim from the depths of my soul.

Rhymes that were absent for weeks shuttle back
And swing into new shapes and cling to her curls
With music that chimes with her smile.

So I conspire with time and implore with wind
To extend her stay in my sight; as seconds
Move on minutes and minutes to new hours
That whiplash my soul into shapes that are wrought
By agonies of unfulfilled hope.

Knowing none of this, she smiles and then leaves
Trailing my heart in her heels.

Unspoken

I'd rather be the tinges of light on her lips
Than spend our hours thus far.

Even as nectar that drips along stem,
In days that are drunk full of spring,
So would I cling as striplings of light
And flicker on her curves with abandon and zeal
With ecstasy of surrealist thrill.

Or would I tangle in truant little locks
And swing by with grace her forehead and cheeks
Which beckon as if shores to a sailor now lost
With songs that'll gallop through your veins.

Or would I dangle as rubies in ears
That dazzle my eyes among hot summer waves
And glow as if lighthouse in dark brooding storm
With light that'll shine through my nights.

These be the fond little hopes of a heart
That seals itself tight with professional keys
And speaks nothing more than is must.
Bound by the fishnets of duties and don'ts,
The artisan of words now discards his ware
And engraves his lot to an adoration blessed,
Distant and silent at once.

Storm

She stormed through my days,
Full of parched breath of March
With torrential timbrels of soul.
Roofed by the fresh-ripened dark bosom clouds,
I bask in the brushstrokes of diluted gold
And tune up my flute to her laughter that rings
As blusters of gales through these reeds.

Shorn of my calculated playthings on stage,
I spread myself wide, as an arid brown land,
That longs for her fingers to rain on those beds,
Where green little poems shall embody and sprout
With symphony of forests evergreen.

Shaken and stirred as palms amid storms
I gather my leaves in an evening now stilled
And wait for the lightnings of smile that'll strike,
And sparkle my nights full of flames.

Martyrs (In memory of a student killed in police custody)

Plucked,

From the start-studded branch full in bloom,

It falls among ensanguined waves that have borne

Too many of fresh-fallen gems.

Packed now with fragments of petals amid rush
My streets, they have moulded a lost autumn-look,
With nooks full of red fallen leaves.

These will no longer just sodden lie;
But flown atop waves full of much-needed rage
Will harden as crystallized shells that'll blow
And crash their towers of ivory and glass
With roars that'll singe sullen shores.

Even as throned powers revel now or gloat,
Petals and leaves do murmur in gloom
And plot their eventual doom.