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.

Yet more Roshan

One evening the sun set with rotund orange,

And orange such that will form only with a setting sun,

Deep and smooth, fiery and fire-like.

A sun-made plastic orange.

And to turn and see on the other side of their sea,

The moon so white and glossy, and salt-white,

With pockmarks and not a shred of finesse,

But set out like no man’s creation,

Softly gaining in strength, with embossed edges of silver light,

It floated not far from the arm, but closer to the head.

Being orange with such quality, the gray crept into the sides of the sun,

Slowly tugging at it, to hide beneath what was one’s world, and away!

Away, below our world, below what one will see.

Glancing one last time at the subjects of it’s immortal glory,

Surrendering us to the craft of the night,

And the gloss of the moon.

To ask, “What do you see in the setting sun?”

And to hear the quiet pause such as in a forgotten line,

With small gasps of nervous hesitation,

And the small hands grabbing at the edges of our shirts.

Listen to the quiet sounds of thought, as their nervous fingers,

Do nothing but twist.

To pace gently, softly rolling your heel on the ground,

To not appear more nervous than them,

We wait.

Wait for thirty years or more, and wait for leaves to fall,

And the call of the regular bird to end.

And finally hear, like the quiet whisper of mouse feet,

A voice say, “orange.”

Standing beneath the still eucalyptus,

Watching nothing move, but the stillness of the limp leaves.

The fading sky beneath resting its tired eyes, closing them gently.

Gently enough to let the tree watch the changing light

And to form its own conclusions on the nature of night.

Leaves stir a little, like the anticipatory fingers of a pianist.

The beetle climbs slowly, after its nap, to the highest point,

On the mound of sand at the base of the tree.

Yet it cannot see what breathes in it.

Oblivious to all but conscious of the expanding dark.

Roshan -

Below the quiet evening air,

A layer of talk grew into a conversation,

That spurned the entire world, and then the universe,

Shredding in its path all that it laid its convoluted words upon.

And after that, it continued down the soft asbestos path,

Treading quietly on previous versions which begged to be restored.

They lay broken and enchanted by the present,

While their unfinished selves withdrew into the basking glory

Of the past- hard and chaffed, yet more gentle than skin.

Words of the previous times rode on their backs,

Humming and hovering around their eager ears,

Satisfying what they liked - for they were satisfied when they heard what they desired.

And cruelly they spoke among themselves,

As-if all of time had bundled itself up for this one moment,

Where it could explode into stillness and bring change.

Yes, time is our hero - our only hero,

Among mortals and peevish newspaper men,

Who walk from their homes thinking of desire,

And go home to compulsion.

Time is our only prophet- who changes the world endlessly.

Every movement and there is infinite change.

Change, change and everything in between,

Simply another movement of time.

We must bow before time, for without it,

We will be stuck in a bland moment in history.