Des Profundis

past nightfall and midnight
i cast my hook, my BAIT
no phantom mouth comes to
eat my worm and die
i wait
LATE IS THE TIME
i sit, i'm lost,

sleep overtakes me and i keel over, mate
with its tentacles, foamy scaly blanks
in the depths of hell glows a were-light
each night, each sight
by weeds of indulgence
or forced abstinence it blights
waters plights
its troth with my words and fires
unwont-
i do not know where the path lies
i tire
till morn comes and i do wake and bathe
emerge finally at least not wan not pale
wake wretch each morn
the dawn does harbinger
some new thing good or ill for all the world
where nothing's certain there is hope of good
i understand why, now, He first made light.

another one by krittika and koshy

1. Sand - man2. Coal - hole3. Dust - viper4. Gurgle - gushes5. Granular - stone6. Echo - Floyd7. Cobble - Dick Whittington 8. Rare -entry9. Organic -structure10. Skin - trim11. Nature - human12. Water -piss13. Grain -paint14. Bare - breast
15. Nocturnal - bat16. Iridescent - light17. I -why?18. Greed -lust19. Asymmetry - power
Thank you so much!You're welcome
Krittika/Koshy

Aditi and.... alliteration

Alliteration – combined poem written by four people, namely Aditi, I , Allwyn and Solomon

artless airs
buried byres
catchy calls
darting deeps


uneasy understandings


eon eaters
yeah
yeah
now you're rolling
rolling
failed fixes
game goners

hushed hopes

invited insiders

gurgling gushes

jailed jams
keyed kellings
sorry keeled keenings
or keeled kennings

kissed keyholes

larders laid
yeah hehe
that's very poetic
married misunderstandings

haha

natty newts

mysterious muse

operatic o.p.d.s
yeah
I'm going through the entire alphabet
paid purses

optimistic opium


wow
cool
queer quims
lol
raided radios

queer qualms


hehe
screwed sails


racy requests

trading troubadours
underpants underfurnished
no
undefined undergrowth


lol

unsaid understanding

that's deep
but common
i want frivolous, frivolous is fun
not common but more like cliché
true
frivolous fun

frivolous fallacies

veering verisign
yeah
veritable vacuum

warped whims
that's better than verisign though verisign is weird hence interesting
warped whims is good

aditi lost the internet connection :(
xylophone xenophobia (allwyn)
yolk years
zen zenith (solomon)
full stop

Aashim - coming of age and comeuppance

You and me

A beginning
fast,
and unknown.

My eyes
shaded
I loathe
this
magical tree.

This spectacle
in
arid skies.

I lost
You.
I lost
You and me.

Hovering,
this craft
waits;
for glimpses
of hope.

Time perfects
this wander
Around you.
With you.
You drift,
I wallow.
Eyes prying.
you hide
while
i fly.
But still
I miss.
You and me.

just Us.

Fumbling and faltering
I reach
for that shade
I first fell under.

time to remember tagore's gitanjali

Where The Mind is Without Fear

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore

mumbai

thinking about my homeland that i still love, india , mumbai
Share
Today at 2:44am Edit Note Delete
Every revelation is a revolution
no time to lose , no time to be personal[ edit delete ]posted 11/27/08
when significant things happen one has to set aside one's owm pettiness
history has escalated into moments that change things
the world was changed by 9/11
india has been changed by gandhi's death, the babri masjid demolition and now this mumbai attack
india is either going to be destabilised and broken up or it will go the hidutva way now unless we can raise enough voices to counter the change - sane voices that speak sense and hope for the future
i am proud to be an indian though i am no longer in india
i grieve for today's dead and for the injured and their loved ones
they are my brothers and sisters
i am proud to assert again that there are many in india in all its religions who are not fanatic or fundamentalist or violent and with these i take my stand
with the many here who honourjesus, buddha, gandhi, martin luther king jr and the other pacifists who made a difference to the world
i do not see any other way forward
violence is no answer except for self defence
justice is the answer, not death sentences
we will fight
we won't give up our hopes and love for our land,
every inch of which we treasure
may a new dawn break over the india i dreamed of as the india of the future
may tagore's poem still come true
long live india
victory to india

Shyamli - Prudence/nice cadence

Dear little Prudence,
run far and widefrom the entangling vines.
My arms,
They call to you in temptation.
Reaching towards and snapping at your
Dancing feet.

Dance your way out,
Oh prudence from the south,
Swing away from the beguiling smiles of men who pat beside them, the ivory sheets.
Beckoning for you to sit beside them, although these sixteen years of yours in this moralistic world would've,
Probably, taught you otherwise.

Oh dear prudent one,
How times have changed you, and carved into your frail translucent palms,
The name of the one who holds your heart, tight
The same callous hands that tug at your veins.
Mere strings tied to your limp, tired arms.

Ah, prudence,
With your lovely ballerina slippers,
Mace and satin - twirling and nodding,
Gracefully, smile heartlessly and unfeelingly still, in the cold while spotlight.
Twirl - nod – smile,at the empty rows of seats.
This echoing colleseum of unwatching eyes.
Unpresent.

At present, prudence, you are alone.
Possibly the only one, in this wayward town who still believes,
In everything you're told is right and
Even the rigidity of those rights and wrongs.

So sway to the words of a jilted Madonna.
Dance little lady dance.
Sway, sway away from all dem bad things.
Sway, sway away from all dem bad things

Arpita - 2

A legend passed me by
A stolid color
It seemed strangly appeasing and quick to pass
I seemed to leave the found
Sooner than I had picked it up
Let it be
The younger
Still waiting
For the two of us
I turned the corner
And emerged
the white countenance from the greyness around
the younger sat
behind his vocal set of two
and warmed me
With his accepting being
he questioned my calling
and showed me
two foreign lands mix
with my heritage
the objectivity broke
and clear reasons abridged
he cares for his art
and for survival
a condition of balance
with clear perspectives
the reason remains unanswered
it's still unfinished
with the first nail out
and the whole coffin to go.

Arpita Rawat - new poem, in progress

I met with time late that morning
Couldn’t tell my day’s running
And when I did step out
That’s when the wind turned
Murmuring the calling
With a feather in its cap

The crossroads is where it stood at
Unfailing and rich
The compromise was on its landing
Its space
Its sanctity
Its religion
I felt the sweep again
Further I went to the force
It paved itself for me
With waste from a gypsy land
With stolen smells from the past
With a touch of interspersed life
With style
And so I stood before it
Feeling the gnaw I knew not of
Feeling, and yet not knowing

Uncertainty strengthened my steps
While keeping in sync
With the rhythm alongside of me
She breathed her calmness
Relieving me of trepidation
And giving me focus
(To cross over and not to fall)
To my calling
To our calling
It had arrived
I felt no thunder
No revelation
There it stood
In the clothes of the ordinary
No light no thunder
It wasn’t a revelation
My calling seemed…
Ordinary?
Mundane
And
Unworthy
Of the day long siege
For the glory I hoped to find
I sought my lens
And saw through it
So opened the demon-like mouth
With blood stains and the darkness of a forest
But
Then came the words
The melodiousness of which
I describe with tapping fingers
With harmony in them
With innocent pride
In the words of a shishya
An artist
A performer
A dancer
He sang high to the tunes
Of what was
Of his asset that is movement
Of his deep lineage

Happy with the nonconformity
Of thoughts and flexibility
Of ideas
I redirected myself to
The younger, with deeper faith and knowledge

The path seemed smaller
Yet the magnitude of the realm
Increased beyond the highest.

mandira sharma edited - i don't get it but it's a good poem - maybe about mother or place or city or nation or lover?

When the days are about her
'She' is in all her form,
When the rose is her
And so is the thorn.

I lie there under her Blue,
I am surrounded with freedom,
Now true, I am now grounded,
I know my elements,
I don't belong to the fragile supplements,
I am part of her, I was 'Born'.

With her it's easy,
To think of the 'Infinite',
Rhyme becomes breezy,
Close my eyes, I just might.

But it's never a complete darkness with the sun,
And it's never a complete daylight when it's all done.

I toss between 'Life' and 'Me',
They are not the same, I am sure,
'She' can be with me and I with she,
But life knows how to lure.
It drags me to the edge
And then releases !
But she is the pitching wedge,
A lofting stroke, yes, please.
The game begins again and I run,
Wire, maze, player, all that's done.
But will I return, oh yes, I will !
Will I return, oh yes, I have to !
Game of ladder and bill,
Somethings I can never do.

Clock strikes mid-night,
They run inside the caves,
For it's the time of monsters, silly plight,
For if you open your eyes in the days,
Their silhouettes are visible in broad light.
The night is scarred for ever,
But it belongs to her,
And she is so soft, oh yes, sir !
Then why all that terror ?
The match sticks strike,
There is light,
Darkness and her now alike,
There is still freedom if I might.
Rhyme has a different meaning now,
Life is not the 'Belligerent',
Me not 'Neutral', that I vow,
For now I am as indifferent
To her, as life to 'me' and 'how'.

Prerna

is working on a film on Indian gypsies.Interesting.

Samia's new blog

samiasingh.wordpress.com

MORE NEWS

Shyamli made one of the best pixtella's in her class.
Farewell to Aditi, Shyamli, Prerna and Roanna too.
Last I heard Roanna was doing a kind of film on the MAIS Principal with Philly.
Aditi was doing the creative writing course. Along with Shyamli, Aashim etc.
Prerna is still writing.
Pol Science is much in many people's thoughts these days. Radha Mahendru, for instance.
Tejus wrote something on Taare zameen par, which I thought a worthy attempt..
The show must go on as does the bandwagon.
I'm reading Lila by Robert M Pirsig, a book given to me by Pratap, and doing research on Bob Dylan, writing to friends and writing, in that order.
Arka is busy traveling and performing.
Avy has superb stuff written and put up on his blog.
http://avygravy.blogspot.com/
Am I like a rat deserting a sinking ship?

Phantastikon - modern Tagore

Hooked.

My voice has many shades.
It pours out of my inner body,
Throat and neck.
At the end, empty
I feel like a fool
And wait anxiously
For anything,
Even an echo,
In return.
But as usual, nothing -
Silence.
I switch off,
Nauseated by, my voice;
Switched on,
Permeated by, your Silence

Till the next, time.

What is poetry?

Ezra Pound said: Literature is language charged to the uttermost with meaning.
If so: Poetry is langauge charged to the uttermost with significance. - Koshy.
Poetry is prayer. - Samuel Beckett.
Phanopoeia
Melopoeia
Logopoeia
That is poetry. Plagiarized from the Grecians via Pound.
Amen.

News

Roshan is back and still writing, wrintg poetry and doing it well
Look at his blog often, please.

Goodbye Couplet

Should have had time to split a beer
But - am too busy, and the time, too near.
:)

More news for and of the lycralyricists.

Roshan is somewhere in some forest figuring out whether to write or not and the validity of poetry.
Samia, Aashim and Pratap are all fed up with design but not with art and literature.
Aashim's working on his mother's poems , hoping to illustrate them and has publishers lined up.
We still want to bring out a lycralyricist collection of poems,
Culling out the best from this blog,
Vaibhav has written a book that may get published by UNICEF.
Ashwin is busy doing his dip film with Vinay Ghodgeri. Promises to be good.
I'm leaving Bangalore on October 2nd - Gandhi Jayanthi - and India on October 3rd.
I will be in King Abdul Aziz University, English Language Centre, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and hopefully they allow use of mail and gtalk.
All this has some kind of cosmic significance no doubt.
"we are stardust/we are glowing"

Poetry makes nothing happen

In you, in others,
In all around
I see
By change, or chance
Or
Mystery's decree.

Can't be scanned
Anymore than
Feelings can.

This Wingspan.

Never paid (me) a single cent
Yet
(I) pay for the privyleague.

My palm spread
A-cross, your cups
Local area networks pan.

Make something happen?
Un-open, unhand?

Our liquid gold for your finest starland.

Be done by as you did - the poem I read out, edited.

If anyone has a moment to spare
Listen, please:
They're killing our brothers and sisters like mice;
Some hide in the jungles to get away
From the death-bringers.

Don't Christians in Orissa have eyes?
Are they not human? Are you truly Advaits?
Do you really think you're Arjuns who've run
The gamut of the karmic wheel?
No. The Jaganath's chariot rolls on
And will crush beneath its mighty rim
Your women and children
Or make them join
The party of those you hated enough to kill.

History has many contrived, cunning corridors,
Blood violently sown always reaps its desire.
Not as one thinks. It turns against
The ones who made it unjustly stream.
See, see, Christ's blood streaming in the firmament.
One drop could have saved Faust but he just couldn't
Get hold of it, nor any drop.

I wish you'd taken a leaf out of Sree Narayana Guru's book
Who said in reply to Gandhiji's query
Should conversion be allowed?,
Whatever the religion,
It's enough man improves.
But you've probably never heard of Sree Narayana Guru.
If you'd been there at that conversation,
You'd have killed him.
Now you've appropriated him in my naadu.
The kind of pretentious thing quasi-intellectuals do;
What the Pharisees did with the prophets
After persecuting them.

George Bush Jr., Advani and Osama bin Laden
Saddam, Khomeini, Hitler and Stalin
Togadia and the Hindutva murderers,
And the Taliban and terrorists of every other hue
This plain-speaking, harsh, so-not-a-poem
Tells you the hell of hatred is all that's left to you
Unless metanoia comes, as it yet may, strangely,
Even as it did once to a Saul of Tarsus!

And you others who have never seen how
The maruts caressed their ordinary faces
The faces of the dead ones, green twigs snapped to pieces
So suddenly
Just as zephyrs still do yours
Or don't know they too heard the kisses of tender lips brush by
Touched thunder rolling across wild, green places
Tasted the nectar of raindrops on the sly
You who never smelled the scent of the Oriya Christian's sweat
To realize it had the same sweet, sour, tear-stained smell as in your armpits,
You indifferent ones, continue pretending until
One day they come for you too with their tridents
And there is no one left to help you by then
Because you purposefully did not intervene
(In your turning away from everything but your petty lives)
Though they were -only - Shylocks, like you,
Not trouble-makers going around
Carrying pictures of chairman Mao,
To make it with anyone, anyhow.

Nothing else I can do at present but write
& pray and love the Logos and believe.
I write all this just to let you know
I am trying to walk in the footsteps of the dead
And their loved ones whom you didn't consider human
The martyrs' blood relatives, their spiritual kin, and their wives and children
Who have to forgive you all, now
You and you and yours and yours
Like Staines' wife once publicly did.

Blood seeds the hearts of the next Generation.
Of those who are like-minded.
Like Jesus
Buddha, a nameless Zen master
Lincoln, Ramana Maharshi
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
& Nelson Mandela and Tiananmen's students.

Behold, Mahabharath, I show you a miracle.
By the time your next pogrom comes around
Our tribes would have increased,
With rhyme, without reason.
Dark, sand- coloured cockroaches in your tumultuous barns,
Unquenchable, like your innocent children's eyes.
May they shine endlessly, in the play of lights,
Like little Chinese lanterns, like pretty Indian diyas
Or Mozart's twinkling stars that still make some of us marvel
In the distant reaches of the unfettered sky
Candling and beaconing us to some beautiful thing Else.

May man as he is today never set foot there
Except he dares to change beyond hatred's dare.

by A.V.Koshy

Ruchika - finding the flow

DEW-DROP

Dew-drop

On a leaf top

A universe within itself

Sliding and twisting

Hopping from one leaf to the other

Gliding towards destiny?

The quest cannot be completed

The thirst unquenched

Unless and until

It loosens itself fully

Destroys self

To meet the river

Flowing under the tree

Unnoticed

Carrying carefully

Uncountable siblings and lovers

Together?

Samia - self/reflection

It is I I detest

not you

for you are not

affected by anything,

not by me.

I am.

I scatter them thorns

carefully,

around every door and window

and keyhole

that I see,

I scatter them thorns

while I take my shoes off.

For I wish not to escape.

For I am scared,

I am scared

of my failure,

of the moment

I will know

I am not

what I think myself to be.

I paint dark shadows

I think them thoughts

that are poison,

that do nothing

but grow

into more, multi-rooted, underground

beneath my skin,

beneath the words,

beneath my eyes.

I poison myself

for I am afraid

I have entered

Into a wrong turn.

And I cannot grow here.

I poison myself

for I am with you now,

and this is not

how I played it out

to be.

I poison,

as I am lesser

everyday.

The better bits of me

have vanished.

Rotten,

fallen off,

stuck in distant places-

all that remains is this

decay.

This mass

I hate to call myself.

News update

hope you guys keep looking at roshan's blog - there's damn good poetry still coming up on it

http://fromsoultosand.blogspot.com/

Dear, dear friends, lycralyricists of all hues, sizes, ages, and colours and shapes.....et al

I will be reading a poem or two along with Arka at the Maya Contemporary Art Gallery on Nandi Durga road or thereabouts on this Sunday, Sept 7th. I hope you all come along and read your poems too. It will be good to get together once again. If you're coming please reach there by 6.45 because Arka seems to have put in some stuff about registration and such- like things which is needed for things to go in an orderly manner I'm sure.... come along for old time's sake and also as a kind of last/middle/first appearance of all of us together....!!!!! Can't really say not knowing the future.
I promise to read out my poem in a way that will hopefully (not) rock the house.
Arka will correct me I suppose/guess if any of the details here are wrong....

A Poem for a Grandmother

For Mahamaya Sarkar, died September 13th, 1984.

I remember not crying.
At four o' clock the school bus had dropped me
At the appointed place, like everyday.
I don't quite remember who'd picked me up, now.
I remember asking after you, suddenly, and being told
You had 'gone off to god', which I could make no sense of.
I remember being startled by many strange faces.
I don't remember your face too well,
I remember a white clad figure on the cot,
I remember playing with your lips, opening them
Giving you funny faces. You did not resist.
That wasn't surprising - you never did.
I remember your teeth were somewhat brown.
I was hurriedly pulled away by adult hands -
I don't remember whose.
I remember you had made 'tribal costumes' for me
Out of palm leaves, and crowns that had cost no blood,
And flutes I could not play.
I remember you wearing both your glasses to amuse me,
And when asked how you looked, I'd promptly said, 'like an ape'.
You almost fell down from your chair, laughing.
You never had any money to speak of, yet when you came,
All the way across town, your hands were never empty.
I expected them not to be - it was my right.
I remember, better than your face, your stories
Of a childhood in Tripura, coming home at sunset
On a buffalo, Men who'd been swallowed whole by pythons
But survived. I remember crying my heart out,
More than a month later, at Indira Gandhi's dead face
on the TV screen. Years, lost kingdoms and eternities later
I'd realize, that I cried for you.

by Arka Mukhopadhyay

Aashim - new love poem

I LInger


Stars bright,

All accounted.





I float





Overwhelmed

by fleeting glances



I hum.



My place

Intoxicated

Intertwined



I hum.


sheep frolic

options emerge.


A glint

from a glance.


music softens.



I hum.



this liberation

stands


still.


Breathing

this Orbit


I hum.



Treading softly

into arms


I wait.


states of mind

melt concrete walls.


yours/mine\theirs/ours.



I hum.

with you,

I linger.

Karno Guhathakurtha - A ghost story

Pitter-Patter Drops
The water works commence
Pitter-Patter Drops.

Just a little left,
Only a little left now.
Still, pitter-patter.

Another day spent
Making way from the Gallows ……

Ugh, still more to come.

Night hath come, once more.
She acts mysteriously,
This specific night.

There is a Moon this night.
A subtle glow lights my path.
I thank thee, O’ Night.

Homeward bound, I am.
To the place where my heart is.
Oh, but for these Drops.

The incessant Rain.
She seems permanent,tonight.
Vindictive and vain.

Came on hard this night.
Cuts mine skin. The slivers fly.
There is none in sight.

From a short distance,
I see my abode – calm, fine.
Am nearly there now.

Aaah! I see it now.
Hot coffee and a nice book.
Home sweet, almost home.

Just a little left.
Only a little left now.
Like a hop away.

Sounds of keys. I arrive.
I enter my palace. Yes!
I breathe in and look.

Everything. Perfect.
The sweet scent gets me always.
Everything. Exact.

I take the staircase.
My room is on the first floor.
I need to clean up.

My room. Everything mine.
With its bed and a cupboard.
And an attached restroom.

No power tonight.
I enter the dark restroom.
Moonlight aids my vision.

I freshen up.
I feel cleansed. Just one more chore.
The mirror is tilted.

I look into it.
Nothing has changed. I see me.
It has been quite long.

Time has passed, since then……
The flesh hanging from my face.
My bones, visible.

It has been long since…
The 10th of May; three years back.
I breathed a new being.

Steve Jones did warn me.
Mixing chemicals can harm.
Boy! Was he right then!

“You’re doing it wrong”.
Maybe I should have listened.
My looks suffered. Heh!

Hmmm.. This is me now.
Oh well, should have listened then.
Now for some coffee .

Aditi again

Childhood and Innocence


Say Cheese

Looking for the green smell in crisp gold

The heart seeks solace in reminiscence

Nostalgia becomes that sweet pain

That balms the scars of today

Gone are the days

Of mellow smiles

That shone in eyes

That did not carry the burden

Of being grown up.

-----------------------------------------------------

Do you realize how old you are?

Act your age.

Act mature.

Act responsible.

Act sensible. Behave

How can you laugh so uncontrollably?

That too at something so stupid !

Keep a stern face.

Be Serious.

Stop doing this,

Stop doing that.

It does not suit you

Stop grinning this way.

Stop being so silly.

Stop making mischief.

Stop getting cheap thrills out of small things.

Stop playing pranks.

Stop laughing.

Stop smiling this way.

Stop. Stop. Stop.


This is what kids do,

Not adults.

At this age?

You got to be kidding me.

That's more like it.

Calm and composed.

Not an emotional sentimental Fool .

That's how we grown-ups should be.

An example.

Now where were we?

O yeah...

Such a pretty picture

You were a really cute child

And O my !

What a smile?


Precious.

Just too precious for words.

A poem on India

Independence Day

India of the reaching out
Reaching forth
Reaching in
Reaching up and down and……
Over
Where my people have either too much or too little
O India

India of the bad roads
And wide, open spaces
Environmentally virgin and raped
Polluted, happy, sad, poor, rich
"Dvd, vcd, cd, id, icecream"
No other place has such sign boards
Full of poems
Where else but in India would I be able to understand
That clichés and mistakes and typos are also part of the attempt
And lead to interesting quirks in the
Writing of great poetry
O m' India

India of the "deathly hallows"
Where each minute someone dies
Dogs men women children the old
Dying
Mourning
Born, each minute someone laughs
Someone cries
Nothing changes it's horrible
The tears of the world remain a constant
Quantity
O Beckett.

India of the jostling
Terrorists and betrayers of the innocent in the attempt to catch terrorists
And the terrorizers and the terrified
That bans the minority's student group that turns violent but not the majority's student group that does so too

India of the varieties of all the insane and sane
Beautiful
Terrible things in the world
Where everyone is crucified except the rich
And they are empty
But don't care because money lines their empty hearts
Even Buddha wouldn’t forgive them but they couldn't care less

India where I can freely plagiarize
Dylan &
Piss on the road or shit
Break traffic rules and not get caught
Give money to beggars and drunkards
And be politically passive and correct
And politically incorrect and an activist all at the same time
India of the largesse
Divides & integers

India of her independence days
Where they should hoist flags in international schools like the one I teach in
But don't usually
And hoist them where they needn't, in regional schools like the ones I learned in
Where all is inside out
Upside down
And freedom advances steadily
Like an ever vanishing mirage
Of rainbow hues
Made by the splashes of petrol wasted on the roads
Reflecting the ozone-layer affected sun

Once I wanted to save India
Now I love it helplessly
And want to leave it
Though it will never leave me

Yeah, India of the metros
Of flies and crows, not mynahs
People endlessly queued up
And no Dalits anywhere in sight
Cowshit, dog patties, human excrement
Skyscrapers that mushroom cloud up everyday
Beyond the reach of the lousy common man
Who never existed
Middle class mayhem and in between suddenly occasionally patches of white and blue skies mocking the entire tapestry of crap
"Howl." India.

I remember there was another India in my past and in history
And a future one in my dreams
Things I won’t explicate on.
This is today.
I salute
Another independence day
Free of nothing. Free
of everything, especially
Free of saying it's all gone
Down the tube
When it's only in the pipeline & arriving faster than the speed of all light still.

Arka Mukhopadhyay - Morning/ A Single Poem of Linked Haikus.

Sudden shock of crows
Tearing apart the fabric
Of a slate-gray sky.

Early morning flight
Brings in weary travellers
From a distant land.

The paperman throws
Stories of yesterday's world
Within my four walls.

Sounds of distant death
Shatter the silence within
My half-waking mind.

In some dark corner
I hear the lizard ruling
Its empire of death.

Jibanananda - two translations by Arka Mukhopadhyay

1.Sky-sublime

Suranjana, do not go there,
Do not speak with that young man, there;
Come back Suranjana;
In the night of silver star-fire;

Come back to these fields, these waves;
Come back to my heart;
From distances to distances - farther distances
Do not go with that young man any more.

What speech with him? With him!
In skies beyond the sky
You are like clay now:
His love sprouts like the grass.

Suranjana,
Your heart now is the grass:
Winds lie beyond the wind -
Skies lie beyond the sky.



2.O Heart!


O heart,
Quietness?
Are there but dead forests everywhere?
Up above, the moon
Scythes through clouds, forever seeking a path.

On the owl's wing,
The firefly's body
On the blades of grass, there is a dew-like grayness.
Does nothing shine?
Is there no more sound?

Still, life dancing like a thin myna
On two yellow feet, says:
How old are you now? Forty?
Many hours of desire came and went
And yet without consummation?
Who are those on mule-back, in the sun,
In bloody, tireless voyages through mountain tracks?
Must Patanjali come and tell you
The difference between those
That but sit and fall into death's pit,
And those that fall off mule-backs,
Vomiting blood?

All the dead forests,
All the dead forests of my life perhaps say:
Why must you go to the world's sunlit din?
Why needlessly do you want to walk
Beneath the sky, blue-throated
From drinking the poison of creation?
You won't, won't find anything anywhere;
Death alone lives, as eternal peace
In the endless darkness
Of dissolved forests.

Yet, I say,
The few days that I live, let's walk in the sun;
Let's see how the grass of this earth;
From creation's poison-tip and
Crushed humanity's darkness
Brings forth the blue universe;
Let's think - let's think -
If you but dig into history - penetrating
The many, many deep mines of sorrow -
You can hear, like healing,
The sound of a hundred waterfalls.

Pig's snout on a stick.

Life, what they all hold ‘most dear.’
Their many hands, clutching mobiles -
The many mouths, moving, the teeth, the tongues, the lips, 'moving' -

And the children excited, laughing, shouting, running, weeping -
Tears: a luxury the news just brought in.
The grown ups, grown up: as it becomes clear -

Apocalypse is undoubtedly a wake.

Fear is a smell:
Lavender, for no reason.
And one wonders why
One wonders why
The clouds still amble lazily
Across the gray-dark, rain-laden sky -
This friend of mine, meanwhile, dressed in fluorescent pink
Complains how the unheard explosions blew her plans
To sing in the "Glorious" choir that evening, away –

Yet, as death and life go by,
Hand in hand,
Sundered strangers,

No one really seems to want to die.

THE ACCURSED - By Avy

Accursed are they who live
heads turned away,
twisted backwards,
swollen eyes peering
inwards,
tongues grey with night-moss,
licking
dog-like at the sores of others,
leper-fingers feeling-less,
pointing
to what lies beyond the circles
of dead penises and dry vaginas
excreting
desires denied;
accursed in their certainty
are they,
the devourers of pink life.

THE INCORRECT CORRECTED - By Ragini Ramanathan

They rot on the streets,
Completely homeless.
Let them rot in camps!
They are nothing but pests!

No!
That's politically incorrect.

Lesbians, gays they're everywhere,
We throw stones, curses and sniggers.
Let's lock them in a cell!
Our aims will be better!

No!
That's politically incorrect.

Our mothers, sisters, wives
Our slaves.
Lock them in their homes!
Let them never see daylight again!

No!
That's politically incorrect.
We corrupt, we loot,
We cheat and succeed!
Let's take over the world!
Let it fall at our feet!
No!
Because we're politically correct

Samia's new poem

It is to our end I drink

To our beginning

To steer myself away

from those tired stagnant waters

To our new beginning

My friend

My love

Our last ritual

For nobody got closer

than us

to me

We live now

like we should

and you know it

Free

Thinking

Drifting

Breeze

I do not know

What will become of us

Ever talk

while sipping tea?

It's time the frills disappear

We

now stand here

Still connected

through something

even though it does not appear

A toast to you

my dear

May we meet again

as old, old friends

on a sunny day

in the green breeze,

when time would have made us

what we have always wanted to be.

News

Aashim says he wants to start his own magazine.
Ashwin is hard at work on his diploma film that promises to be both lyrical and poetic.

Roshan Ali

As you all know Roshan has gone more seriously into writing than ever before.
Here is his blog - visit it to know how his writing gets along more powerfully than ever before under the star of lycralyricism.
http://www.fromsoultosand.blogspot.com

Vaibhav scores big

If you can check the latest Down To Earth issue..... some pics I shot and stuff I wrote/copy-edited has been published ..... hehe.....


Vaibhav
email sent to me on June 20.

Pratap's new poem

Echo’s Unheeded Warning


The loneliness.

Of walls built into strongholds.

Green fields. Once nourished with golden light,

Now barren, dead, quiet.

In the silent stillness, grey constructions,

Loom over murky skies;

Smooth stone facades reveal nothing.

Buildings multiply, the city grows – evolves

Clouds engulf, conceal,

the light of a perhaps wise past.

The golden lining really a shadow.

Where does the future lie?

The city expands.

Clanking factory wheels and crankshafts multiply.

By the second. Time saved is progress made.

The scheme.

Mass produced, cold steel boxes of intellectual misconceptions

Packed and mailed through my trusted synaptic network.

Birds lie belly-up under ailing apple trees,

As rotten as their fruits, clawing at the sky;

Pungent air, thick with viscous poison,

We suffocate, breaths rasping. Pleading.

The sun implodes into white light - the original emptiness.

The end is not near. The melting landscape whispers helplessly so.

We must yield; submit to the Shadow whose wrath

Spits incessant fires from hell. A juicy boar on roast.

Take it nice and slow. Don’t forget to let the skin

become golden crisp; and leave the meat tender inside.

Delicious.

The city explodes. Devours my green pastures.

Walls coming up by the second. There. There. There.

And there. All around, their steel sheen beyond my control.

A few steps too far in, or perhaps many. I cannot turn.

The only way is forward. Inside.

Sucked in like an acorn into the voracious depths of a black hole.

I can only hope what my colossal journey reveals will be beautiful.

If it doesn’t, I shall look out for the raven that waits patiently,

To pluck my eyeballs out of their hollow sockets. And I shall say,

Thank you.

Aditi's poem -after a long time

Fragile smoke

Twilight bliss

Some shadows

In some light

Fraying hope

Of a reunion

Long awaited

Parched eyes

Inked with

Unrest

Of white nights

Dizzy hands

Humor the anticipation

Ticking

Mocking

Sniggering


His last word

His last glance

His last touch

Before they parted

Still etched

In her moist breath

Black wisp's caress

Silent tears

INABILITY

By Ruchika Jajodia
PID 401
11.7.2008

Sometimes when I read a poem,

How do I ever write one?

I toil at it,

yet nothing rhymes or flows from within,

Nothing lyrical,

Nothing poetic,

Nothing simple,

Nothing complicated,

Nothing at all.

Just blankness. A space.

A space so empty and white and hollow.

A space so pure.

Yet it beckons confusion, irritation and frustration.

Why can’t I do it? I waste.

Why do I feel like that?

Too much do I expect of myself, maybe?

Too much do I go against the tide?

Pushing extremes,

Managing expectations,

Of me and my neighbor.

I question – Why do I do that?

What am I trying to prove?

Nothing!

Nothing at all…

Or maybe a lot.

I guess at the end, I achieve nothing

but pain and suffering,

is self-inflicted,

torturing

More than anything else.

“Life is a suffering” said The Buddha.

So, am I trying to negate it?

Go against it?

What stops me from accepting it?

Why don’t I just accept it?

Acceptance is the key

Something with the ability to sail the destructive storms

to serenity.

If I am peaceful within,

Then I am peaceful without,

And there is nothing to fight about.

Nothing to dwell upon,

Nothing to relive,

Nothing negative.

It destroys and removes the garbage,

Clean.

Just blankness. A space.

A space so empty and white and hollow.

A space so pure.

I have the choice.

I always had the choice.

Either worry and trouble,

Or happiness and peace.

Being comfortable with my own self.

Accepting myself the way I am.

When I am happy

Good thoughts flow in,

Good things happen,

Expectations are not burdening and over powering.

So maybe,

One day by the grace

Of the power

Much more greater than I,

I’ll be able to

Write a Poem.

Isn’t that what I intended to do in the beginning?

So for now,

I am not going to get perturbed,

I will let my thoughts flow as they want to.

Is there anyone who has been able to stop time

Apart from The Greatest?

Let go and let in the Almighty!

(END)

Ruchika Jajodia

11.7.08

Shyamli Panda - that delectable mocking tone!

To these honest proceedings.



You stand hollowed,

Hallowed more

by your own misconceptions

and discontentment.



I wish you would see

reality as i do

as real, is never

the same for us two.



I'm preoccupied as ever

with my need to sneer, at

every brainwashed, unfeeling

Slave.


This mighty parade.


They surround me with

their shuffling narrow gazes.

Their uncaring disregard for

their own path.

Watch!

They stumble on their own toes...


You stand so well amongst the

Circus bearings,

so loved, adored and adorned

with your false sense of pride.

of self consolation only bring,

More scorn from me and further

Acceptance from them.


You rise so high,

Head filled with the likes

of helium and vacuum.


I meander, distracted as usual.



So you see, you will do good.

"I will only weigh you down."

This blog's on fire and doesn't stop rolling - Krittika Sharma this time around

Skin Leopard Guns Filth



The leopard never understood why guns were harmful. That was probably because he was dead and on someone else’s skin before the sting hit him. I told him it was frightening- the sound, the metal, and the filthy relationships it created between everyone in the world. But the leopard was fascinated by it. Guns are beautiful he said. I would press it to my soul.

I can’t think of a single designer who has not gone through the leopard skin phase. Some replicate it, but some actually buy it from the dirty poachers who carry their guns into quiet forest and kill the poor animals. Like my leopard here, other leopards are curious about the gun- like a diamond to a lady. The spark and the charm lures them, not realizing that their guts mix with the mud and make the earth filthy. The stench of the leopard’s shocked breath, the rotting smell of the last drops of urine and the fresh smell of defeated blood. It's all for the skin, after all.

aashim again - on a roll

Through to my head

these droplets fall.


Admiration

Rages through


Uncontrolled

yet aloof,

my mind..

Blank.



as Gargoyles sit

portraits speak

I listen.


Vibrations escalate

Bubbles overcome

This day beautiful.



Nights of ecstasy

Raise towers

and height's

Peak.



Betrayed

yet

content

I listen.



I listen



To hallowed depths.



I float

amongst wet cats

and sleeping divas.



Willfully accepted

feelings contained

I feel softly.



a spy?

biding time

effort.


a call for CHANGE

screams through.






cliches aplomb

I reveal

this air

as I

listen

to




voices stare.

Aashim again, with a knock out post-love poem

A fish i did catch.

i let go.

only for want

i swam back

i searched




water murky

mind aloof.


fleeting glances

memories curt.


i still


i still



drown......

Keshava Guha - on Narendra Modi

The Greatest Gujarati



I was born as a refugee from Karachi

Rolled through Delhi with his army,

Indoctrinated and impassioned, en route

To rescue Ram, to raise his spirit.



Call me Advani's accident, then- my

Mother reached the hospital by slipping

Through the cracks of the Sindhi god,

The man meant to save us all from secularism



And its related ailments, who failed. Our

Sins, and values, and constitution lived on

Surviving even the hand of Ram, and his kar

Sevaks, monkey soldiers reincarnated.



But it is Gujaratis, not Sindhis, after all, who

Make Indian history. And in our haste we

All forgot that Ram is dead, and dead forever.

That our hero was younger, bearded perhaps,


Charioted, a he-man, not a sadhu. There is

Only one saviour left, and it is him. His

Coming was prophesized, after all, for who

Has not heard of Kalki?

Aashim - new series?

Illusions?

Scenes of resentment,

brave gestures falter.

Stories told,

memories unfurled.

Laid bare....

We sought...

comfort?


The facade falls.


You loved I didnt.

I loved You didn't.


Head strong

stubborn to admit.

admit to scorn?



I question faith

belief maybe..


I fall






EyEs unforgiving.


truth...

the truth?

I loved you for me.

Roshan's latest poem - as usual, in good standing

I have seen the habits of necessity,

Traverse the lengths of many electric poles,

That flash by.

Each one, another segment that goes unheeded.

And as-if to mock evolution, everyone rushes to survive,

Some knowing the truth- but there is no other time-grinder,

Nor dignity-spout that can match the ease of struggling.

When there is no agony of choice, there is none in the chosen.


I have traversed those distances,

That flash by like montages of passed things,

Sat among those who have fleetingly seen,

What flashes by, only to look away or beyond.

Beauty is a luxury that they cannot revel in.

Other things have taken the place of love and beauty,

That drive the world by whip and tong.

And it is to this that they have pledged their duty-

As was done in the White City, to pay a debt of life.

Only to find that the served was living in death.


To be among them, who travel by habit,

To see the joy of a crisp morning, pass by as just another one.

Choice ground to a habit like powder,

Taken every morning with a word of faith.

The world must be free, to revel in their hearts.

praps - rewrite - now it's tite

(untitled)

Like a musical instrument or a blank page,

I sit silent – potential energy

of infinite permutations and combinations.

The turmoil, the conflict, the urge, the reluctance

Constantly meeting into those singular points of existence –

here and now.

A drop of ink falls on the page, slowly spreads,

Dries almost instantly. It’s the thirst. The thirst,

That cannot be quenched by water or wine.

A root shrivelled into disability,

seeking neither water nor wine. But what?

Something; I’m not sure but I think.

The thought. The root of perhaps madness.

The coin thrown, falls silently, infinitely;

Into the fathomless depths of that dry well

And probably lands on its two multiple faces.

The thought. The thought.

I think.

In solitude is comfort. And the root,

That sucks in biased truth.

In truth, the wall lies; growing steadily stronger,

More solid, “further” removed.

In truth sits that dayglocrazie,

Like a blank page,

steadily disappearing into oblivion.

pratapaditya n deb - philosophy

Like a musical instrument or a blank page,

I sit quietly – potential energy

of infinite permutations and combinations.

The turmoil, the conflict, the urge, the reluctance

Constantly meeting the lone points of existence –

here and now.

A drop of ink falls to the page, slowly spreads,

Dries almost instantly. It’s the thirst. The thirst,

That cannot be quenched by water or wine.

A root shrivelled into disability, seeking neither water

Nor wine. But what?

Something; I’m not sure but I think.

The thought. The root of a possible insanity.

The coin thrown, falls, silently into

the fathomless depths of that dry well.

The thought. The thought. I think.

In solitude is comfort. And the root,

That sucks in biased truth.

In truth lies the wall, growing steadily stronger,

More solid, “further” removed.

In truth sits that dayglocrazie,

Like a blank page,

steadily disappearing into oblivion.

I don't understand the phrase "in truth lies the wall" but otherwise the poem makes complete sense to me.

Shyamli - a lovely magical romp of the imagination

An idle Sunday.

There is someone at my door,

Addressing me,

with regular raps on the hollow wooden frame,

calling out at intervals,

what I believe used to be my name.

I would apologise, my friend,

But I am too preoccupied

with my own absence,

Or, atleast pretending the same.

For I, presently, am too far away.

Caught up,

in a giddy swirling mass of a day dream.

Lying here in my half crimson room,

Smiling slight…slightly,

at the ceiling, which grows higher,

Spiraling way,

way high into the stratosphere.

There is someone beside me,

Murmuring honeycombs,

humming faintly into my ears.

And thus I, so raptured…

find myself unable,

to answer your calls.

And a spangled rodeo horse

Neighs and canters

around my feathered pillow,

chewing at my hair

as I swim..

through Dollops of creamy mists,

engulfing sight and mind.

Maybe another day, my love,

Will I stumble to the door way

and turn that knob…

Today however, I am sailing

over my own body,

Rowing with my tiny oars

through this choppy mess of winds.

(atleast, the mist has cleared)

I can see the oceanic vastness, barely though,

through the fluttering dayglo wings…

purple velvet to a gauze of gold,

Blurred by their own velocity…

Choo choo.

My ferry turns wayward,

Misbehaving, in this flickering excitement.

Static, a tense restlessness,

Glows when I smile,

through my teeth.

I see my reflection break,

into ripples as I step through

this hall way of mirrors.

Only to be sucked right out

of the enchanting illusions

by your rudeness.

you knock yet again!

I meet my bed with a dull thud

And a sigh.

Your persistence bothers me.

The development of a frown however,

Is intervened,

(you’re a lucky bastard)

by my white horse…

Neighing, cantering, chewing…

the ceiling still spirals.

AND, the rolling thunder,

tumbles around as

Falling cars and misshapen cats fall

Unsoundingly,

around me and my tambourine umbrella…

I sleep… drowsy slumber dreamy sleep.

I sleep through it all.

shyamli - this poem is for a friend who recently passed away.

We hold on

to our mistaken identities,

Thoughts.

Glances.

Misread and misinterpreted,

Meander slow in beads

of viscous sweat,

Down,

Leaving behind trails of soot,

Purely for the sake

of remembrance.

You nurse your bruises,

in the shade

of the giant vines and canopies.

Brilliantly coloured orchards,

in your simpleton backyard.

No abysses, darkness or voids.

No scorching suns,

to spoil this day.

Wandering through the wisps

we meet, yet again, in your

Vivid delusional escapades.

Through the nights,

we shall hold on to each other

and a warm cup of tea.

The wolves shall eventually tire

and run away,

we shall be safe, alone,

yet again.


I put in the context because I felt that then we get to see that it's such a deadly poem.

rebana - some poems - they seem to become better as they go along

so i 've attempted some editing

A word full walking

Moved a melting gaze

Into an embrace

Of gibberish darkness

-----------------------------------------------------

Happiness is an allegory,

Unhappiness a story…

-----------------------------------------------------

It’s funny how the tables have turned…

I finally find a self, I call it mine,

I build it up and make it a shrine

Then I search for my star in the darkened sky,

My star that’s lost in a blanketed lie,

But the planets have moved, sliding around,

To match the fate of a table turned

* - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -- -- - -- -- - -



This was the poem that inspired my 2nd fiction film (although my 1st real passionate attempt)….it was a strange experience trying to create a film from a poem… but it was the only way I could do it…

COLD DEAD SLEEP

Coffee day, cold coffee, cold sleep,

yet again I grow sleepy.

Eyelids leaden with chewy sleep.
as the corporately dressed feed me their smiling lies.

Their feet adorned in steeped precision,
Only serve to sever my true ambition down to a cursed rendition of many a so called stalwart condition.

Existence isn't a mystery to one
Who contends in history.
Each word that was written once,
by the powerful faith that moves mountains,
Builds, brick by brick,
The wall that surrounds the destitute prostitute of our plentiful times.

This isn't no poem that will entertain your lustful tongue,
If I should rhyme is very much my own decision.
I detect your wry smile at my wistful folly,
A sneer is all I have for your unhearing ally.

Faith can move mountains or drench a mountain's work of pride.
Its powerful innocence pulls a wanderer's quest to its demonic end.
What a sad pity it is then, to settle for corporate heroism,
With its coffee & quiet delinquents lurking in the corners...

With all my growing likeness to an evangelic angel,
I begin to drown in the lurking drowsiness,
Of what the death of a society brings to heroic celebration.

samia - can you retell a story?

Can you retell a story

like it's never been told?

For you seem easily bored.

Memory only is beautiful

for the good is what is chosen to be retold.

Time is precious

for it stitches together

you and me.

The lover and the loved-

our assigned lives,

how did it come to be?

Revive?

Like a song

you cannot get rid of

for you are enamoured

by each note, word and pause

and that itself

begets its death;

no warning

no apparent reason-

until it's that season again.

Love was never meant to grow cold

old

mould.

Haven’t we walked down

this way before?


We have reached

that point again,

my love

my friend-

save this water

from flowing away,

my cupped hands

and I re-tread that way.

I look

a reflection

looks back at me

yes

it is still me.

I do not want to become

disheartened or cold


I do not wish

this dullness to remain

unfeeling, numb

disdain.

Is this the best

we will ever be?


Loneliness is worse

when somebody is there.

Silence is louder

when you are here.

aashim's back in action - wolf, wolf!

Time wasted….


Pondering…..

Over fragments and doors,

Frost holds minds,

Eyes held on the floor.

“Bow to thy master!

You are but my kind…”

An invasion,

Accompanies the ice.

In it’s being,

They would not suffice.

I lament its origin,

A floundering school.

Error a margin,

Faith lost in its pool.

Futile were my chances,

Bemoaned by my pride.


I scream.

An error.

A change in tide?

An excuse.

Time wasted,

Awe consumed,


I

Retire.

I

Retire

another new poet -second poem - very tight and having a good vocabulary

introducing Radhamohini Prasad

A rummage of alphabets fall
Out into the abysmal zone
One must know, the closed gates said
Those who innocently tread
Routes of the eventually accused
Only those shall seek refuge
Who, heinous of crimes have someone's predilection
In this meditated lacunae

Hours framed by the district magistrate's well nurtured diction
Yet nothing more wholesome
Than a failed human
Dying by the hour.

I've decided to expland the blog -new poets coming in

Introducing Kasturika Kumari -finished poems -something rarely seen

1.

Piece by piece

minute by minute

in the folded bud

of an orange flower

the insect

disintegrates,

dies.


2.

Onslaught of winds

Caught in a vortex

Of blue clouds

Autumn leaf.

Hanging by

a moment ago.

Alone

on the dead, dead carcass of

blackened wood

Torn asunder.


3.

The imprints through a hundred

Lined pages

The sunlight through a hundred

White sheets

The sound through a hundred

Ear drums.

This is how the heat in me pounds

The pressure swinging through

taut strings, pulled to bareness.

Edges frayed and

centers.

Two more by Shyamli

Disappointment


I am left here,

With no words,

tears or ache.


No sense of feeling left

in my fingertips as

they claw at my eyelids.


Cover bleary eyes,

ridden with bitter…


Bitter grief.


It escapes slow,

as I comprehend

your decision


Slow,


In anguish I squirm.

Only one thing burns


Clear,


Crystal in the cards…

It glimmers.


I shall, in return, do you harm,


"Your home will be in flames."


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The present.


Wrapped, in a spectrum

of superficial lies,

A glimpse of thoughtless hope,

I saw you looking my way

And you saw

that glimpse of foolish faith.


Thus, you,

Conniving heartless, you

wrapped a viscous black

Plague and sent it, in a letter,

Fat, stuffed obesely with

NOTHING,

just another crushed dream.


I tip over, towards that white cold void.


Fragments…


shards…


blood.


I move on.

roshan - well, what can i say , almost no word wasted...

I am new to this world.

And yet sometimes I drown myself in music.

Gather the sheets closer to me, bunch them up in front of my heart,

Lest a stray shot pierce it.

A drunk stranger once told me that there are places where,

Hiding is not escaping.

Beneath the orange autumn I tried opening my eyes.

but I did not see- the immeasurable beauty of freshly sprung yellow,

Nor did I see the smiling eyes of a proud mother.

I will never see the fine dust from a crumbling leaf.

Yet there I stand, I can see the fire approaching, beyond the orange glow.

Beyond the fierce orange of an angry sunset,

I can see the pain- twisting.

What is this life?

Shyamli - my petite

My petite,

my shallow petite

William Jones,

I am not … your girl.

Not anymore.

I am, however,

the unfeeling shore,

waiting,

Sandy dunes and all,

waiting, for another wave.

As I wait I feel the green

Lengthy vines sprawling,

Indolently yawing,

Over my bare bodice,

Trenchant, deep…

prying for something to thrive on.

Azure, the flowers,

now bloom

Over my body,

I wait,

Not for you.

They bloom still,

expanding and heaving

with every gasp that racks me,

As I bury you

in my grains

o’ white and yellow

and at times,

the crimson

Onto which I reflect…

your reminiscences.

I loved you,

And I never shall again.

My dunes are erupting slowly,

Embossing you with gold.

You are beautiful William Jones,

But you were a fool to believe,

(that) the clamorous silence was for a reason.

We are, presently,

in your car

and I can barely see your

non existentiality,

Or perhaps, it is probably

my lack of existence,

that simply deepens in your

wraithlike shadow.

And the wheels still turn.

I

am

not… there.

You were foolish, William Jones,

you never Were.

As I never am.

The dust,

I am just the dust on your temples

You lay on your dreams…

cloudy, dusty, dusky,

Dreams.

I never am/ was.

And thus, I never left you behind.

I just went slightly astray,

Clambering down the burrows

that haunted the fork,

we once reached.

I crawled,

to pick up the fallen.

The stray fallen bits,

of talk, of the conversations,

My solitary chronicle.

And thus, though I loved you, William Jones,

I never shall again.

The vines have embodied me.

I.

I.

Me.

No - one,

I am.

After a long silence -Shyamli - and what a voice!

A year, days, months, an era has passed me by, since I last indulged my cynical critical ego. I sit here, this black keyboard on my lap. Realization sinks in, about the stagnation that seems to have plateau'd itself, and it sits poignant and smilingly smug, in and around me. My mentor, you, my reader, you, I apologize, I have no more beautiful words to enchant you with as my thoughts have puddled up in the centre of the wooden floor, around this high stool of utter ignorance that I sit on.


The purists have killed me.


The death of experience as mentioned by my reminiscent and equally wistful colleague is a farce. As if there was such a thing then how is it that I am experiencing it anyhow? It seems as though the whole world, my mind and soul included is caught in a rut, of greed and apathy… this is the epitome of foolish materialism and I can feel the corporate rat of a world sink its teeth slowly into the flesh of my calves as I sit… blissfully dreaming in this cave lit by the flickering light of my computer.


I pine as I belong nowhere and yet I belong to my comrades who too belong to this nowhere… I am the undead, caught in between two wholly different species of human intellect and mind sets. And it seems they are both equally skeptical of the other. I am tired of trying to explain my thoughts and thus I shall not bore you, and expounding my theory would imply my presumptions of you as an ignorant and intellectually lower being.

So I’ll stop.

Right here.


I believe I strangled my child like pretentious poet when I realized how small and insignificant my worries are… and I only hope now that others do too. Stop with this verbally infested carnival of freaks… self involved narcissistic FREAKS.

I shall not be one with you and your games… I shall not humor you by being brittle and vulnerable. I shall not be beautiful.


I am not beautiful.

As beauty itself has abandoned us… she left when we became what we are.

Apes.

I mock at you… and spit, at you your naïveté. Do you not see how meager your feelings are. Love isn’t even a feeling anymore… and pain? APATHY?

Get over yourselves.

The cosmos has spoken and we shall rot… our skin shall burn and blister, our gums shall reek painfully bleeding as we pick at them with our jagged nails, and our foolish politicians shall sit on their thrones and pretend they aren’t the lepers that they are. Corruption isn’t just a word… it’s a phenomenon and we my friends are in eye of this storm of hurricane proportions.

But I, as I scorn denigration, shall not speak anymore… for fear of hypocrisy...so thus go my last words.


I will sit here,


Not reminiscing,

nor waiting

As I have now exhausted,

All patience,

only for it to be replaced

by an angst, which needs no vengeance.


Thus, I sit.

Silently still,

with a blunted axe in hand..

and a warm blanked in another.


I do this for you.


The world is burning.

Roshan - a new beginning/ an incomplete poem

This is an interesting development - where will it lead you, Roshan?

Sitting,

Shirt dull with dirt,

Watching the whipping by,

of barren lands- with budding life,

underneath the brown dirt.

Watching,

Convergence and practise,

Rails intertwining to form the thread,

the path which we so automatically tread.

Bright eyed and cavalrous young,

and one who lies there with silent eyes,

in the darker corner,

where the harsh light of a still dead land,

cannot reach with it it's twining fingers.

I cannot see.

Chugging along the metal lines of exploratory man.

I have tried to see the stones-

the subtly exposed skin beneath the neck,

so white and untouched,

under the carefully crafted bulge of an adolescent breast.

Careful, calculated smiles that hide their arithmetics.

I cannot see the origin- the heap of it all.

I have heard many times,

standing in the musty bookshelf,

the sound of silent footsteps that scatter around,

before finding each other in the middle.

I have heard many times, the cajoling voice of God's best creations,

urging the young to sit down- and when they are gone and the dust gets heavy,

and they cannot keep inside their explosive selves- they ask softly,

to the things around them- why do they speak as-if he speaks to them?

for if there was one who Watches and is Wise,

the purest would be the things that cannot think.

Samia - for my granddad/ finding one's own voice - it's such a mature one

I fly

I fly to you

I fly straight

in a calm line.

Little beauties

change my line.

This big cloud-

this soft-hard cloud,

I touch

its boundaries

its edge

I touch.

My only curve

in this straight

journey to you I fly.

The meandering silver

glistens below,

moves so slow.

The meandering lights

on those

clover shaped cement strings

the lights

they move so slow.

The stars above look at these stars below.

I fly to you

I am here now

Your love by my side

She looks at you

and tinkling years

in her tears

pass by.

Your kids

look at you

and their thoughts

about you-

float in sad clouds;

to you they fly.

Your friends touch you,

they talk of you-

when you were young

my age

they talk of your spirit

of gentleness

and humour

of love

and communism.

The red flags fly.

They talk of your bravado-

of will and grounding.

Your poems,

your seekings-

my dispirited heart flies.

I touch you,

ice cold

eyes half open.

I talk to you

my words to you

Yes, they fly.

They take you

with tears,

they set alight

these years

of memories

their last physical

contact with History.

Fireflies,

Ashes fly.

Up and up these

mountains which you so adore

adored

adore

We touch the ice cold water

flowers and ash

ash and water

ashes to ashes

dust to dust

you ethereal

you fly.