illusions of reality

I wandered many years,
Deluded by illusions
That offered to me a world
warped in bizarre chimeras
of what is and what must be.
I sought answers and received
Maudlin cries of sympathy
I reasoned and argued
And found that i was already
Lost before conversations had
Begun.

Surely these mirages i saw
were real, I thought.
Seeking answers,
i met saints in saffron,
And those enrobed in white
Men of god who believed in
a boderless might
I still not knew the answers,
For everywhere i went,
The questions were the same,
The answers none.

I wandered until there came a time
When my humankind gave me up,
To an institution for insanity.
Locked up, i discovered new
Apparitions of the world.
Cloudless with doubt,
as blank as a starless sky.
Hallucinating was i,
Of beauty that limited
Vocabulary.
But no one saw what i did.

After years of looking up to men
For answers i no longer cared about
I chanced upon a look above
And then realised the enormity
Of the blunders of my mind.
How foolish was i to find the one above,
amidst dwarfed mankind!

Resigned to Fate Series: of goddesses and baby girls

She rocks her child
One last time
For it will soon be time
To bury her
In sacrifice
To the goddess
Who is the only one
That can grant that boon
Of bestowing lust
With a child
That will sire
But not hold within
A life.

This child now,
Will be sung
The final lullaby
And fed a potion
Of the sap
of poisoned cactus
that has willed its life
amidst desolate land
only to be culled to kill
a child whose
laughter the village cannot bear.
But who will carry the seeds
They desire?
When there is no more womb?
Will they beseech the goddess then,
To lie?


Published in Muse India Journal - Jan-Feb 2012

Midas Touch

Does humanity hear the Gods cry?
Listen then,
For They shed tears

Each time we dam those rivers
Fell a tree, slay an animal,
Plunder the soil

They weep
Each time we send up clouds of grey
In the name of civilisation

And yet
We move on,
Pretending the Gods are happy
Watching us play Their role
Ignoring Their plea to be heard
Just once

We wage war
Because we need to fuel material dreams
We kill with passion
So we may brew more heady concoctions of power

And in time, how rich we shall grow!

With each tamed river, we'll find more gold
With more species gone, we'll expand our empire

Until one day, we'll wake to find
We have been blessed with the Midas Touch
Gold will fill our coffers, our hearths and our beds
It will turn our fields to money and rivers to jewels

We will never stop
Until one day
Our children cry for food and water

But no God will listen
For we would have killed Them all


written sometime in 2009