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.

Samia - a kind of mediatation on cows and sheep that makes a lot of sense

Who am I to you?

Who

are we to you?


I see you everyday-

you walk the path I walk.

Turn away.


I wonder what you think of us

and I wonder how you think.


Your walk is steady

slow and

somber

We were like you once…

I don’t know if im correct in saying that

for you seem much more content

and graced.

I honour you,

for you walk amidst us

on this barren grey earth

that we have destructed,

yet you maintain

yourself

as you always have.

Roshan Ali - memories

How do memories come back?

They travel more than us, through lands lit only by a moon.

Through tunes that ride them till they reach one's tears.

Do we even see what they mean?

Are they only ours?

I can tear through my heart, combing out the ones that mean tears,

And ones that mean nothing.

Thoughts of long stretches of sand where the footprints follow no human pattern.

These long stretches follow no particular pattern.

They stretch across my forehead.

The morning that I fled was colour-coded,

With the bright being home, behind me, and the dark in front, being dark.

Fleeing the bright orange of home, into the dark.

Feet flowing like the sand, scalding the surface upon which they stood.

Home- with the bright orange and the scalding memories of intense times.

Times that have been branded into my life, only to be brought out, to be exposed,

To be shown at the time of judgement.

At times where I stand to be judged- but there are no judges, only I.

And to look at myself in the reflections in the sand, seeing no face,

Or recognizable form.

Only to see a little product of failed efforts.

They come back clear, branded into thought,

the smell and the talk and the

the shapes that mean so much, that define the shapes of your life.

They fly back, into the very air that you breathe, and swallow

like life-giving food.

You are your memories.

You are what we call thoughts from a distant past.

Prerna too still writes poetry - here's her latest - yay!

Dressed as a fairy

He stood on the pedestal

Composing another of his fairy-tales,


Ate alphabets from the air

Making words disappear

Melting the minds

Cementing the layers

With tunes of human despair.


Each soul sang the song, frozen in his throat,

This was my song.

The milk from his udders flowed through me

Trickling down, vertically

from my eyes to my knees.


Mimicking mirror, showed me a coward,

bedazzled in his prism of cries.

he asked me for some direction, saying he lacks conviction.


Haunted by Certainty, his beloved mistress.

He wondered why he always found Curiosity, her sister,

In his bed.