here, there, nowhere

Aimless chatter,
phlegmatic conversations,
purple prose,
cacophonous laughter,
mindless voices,
pierce the mind.

I wander away,
Neither here, nor there
A vacant smile,
A nod sometimes,
Mostly, a vacant stare
I don’t belong, quite evidently
And suddenly,
Everything becomes an effort
Even the smiles.

And then, i am pulled back
To mundane chores
Ah! But mundaneness does allow
Me to slip away once more.



The mind slips into listlessness,
Neither here nor there

desire (diamonte)

Fire
Sparkles, hot,
Igniting, searing, devouring,
Desire, love. Dampened beads,
Drowning, quenching, appeasing,
Divine thirst...
Water.


(diamonte is a kind of formed poetry:

one word
two adjectives describing first word
three words (ing words) describing the subject
two words describing subject; two words describing the opposite
three words (ing) describing the opposite
two adjectives describing the opposite
opposite word

soul, sold

Some time ago,
I don’t recall,
Was it summer, was it fall?
When I sold joy for melancholy,
For its frown, its sadness
Held new appeal

I bought tears for laughter
Lost the twinkle in my eye
and my smiles
It seemed inappropriate
To stay happy amidst the cries
that I saw the world to be

I gave my hopes away,
To traders and merchants
who stocked happiness
in their stores,
And gifted my dreams,
To the poor beings on the streets

I gladly sold the trivial joys
Of watching the sunrise,
and chocolate bars,
To a place on the couch.
I sought darkness
Instead of light,
and loneliness for gaiety

And when love rattled at my door,
My soul was empty,
I could never see, the clouds part,
For by then my eyes were blind.
I could not feel the warmth in my womb,
For I was not me,
Anymore.


written on 20 march 2010. watching my father in law slowly slip away into another world. just 20 days before he died. felt that i was numbed by emotion - the pettiness of life - it hit me like never before

the call

The unbearable weight of sorrow,
Wraps itself around
Muffled beats,
Lost amidst the silent cries
Of wanting to be freed

The child’s smile,
The loved one’s arms,
The sunrise,
The birds and flowers,
No beauty seems as appealing,
As that final call

Alas! Tucked beneath different layers,
She beats, resilient,
Every sound, a proclamation,
Of life that wills to live despite
That call

If the blinds were lifted just once,
If the layers that bind her so,
Drop their guard just once...

If she was allowed to see,
The farce called love, the lie called life,
She would agree
The futility of her being;
Her beating.

I wait that moment
To try to reveal
Only to be caught
Once more.

How long will I blind her
How long?

I wait.
In desperation.
Deprived of the one thing that will
Still
My yearning



written sometime in 2010

beating, bleating

Sometimes, many times,
The heart stops, albeit, a moment,
At times,
Struck by the beauty of nothingness
Shocked at the bizarre mind of humanity,
At others,
And then, when it resumes its beat,
It’s no more the same,
For a while

With beauty, it flutters
Like a butterfly in happy abandon,
At the quirks that define humanity,
It sighs,
a mute spectator, to the mind’s whims,
It beats against the chest as though
its silent screams will be heard,
Alas! How little does it know,
It must listen to the master above,
Until its time.

It beats
Forever in hope that its relentless
Plea will prove its master
Worthy one day.

Blind eyes

My eyes close
The journey begins
Dark alleyways, drunken slobs,
Homeless children,
Hungry eyes,
Beaten mothers
Soundless cries.

I flee,
Take another path,
Only to see
Masked invaders
Raping fields,
Killing life,
Martyring death,
All with smiles

I run in fear,
To another door
A world of beauty,
Rose-cheeked children,
Food aplenty,
The warmth of the hearth,
The laughter of love

Here is where
I long to be
I open my eyes
Only to see
The alleys and fields
Come rushing at me,
I turn blind,
Yes, I'd rather be
For this is a world
I will not see.


written on 24 jan 2010. it was becoming unbearable to see my father in law in comatose. it became clear that he would soon be gone.

...just passed me by

Life just passed me by;
As I lay asleep, my mind wandering,
Meandering aimlessly; clutching
The seams of elusive dreams

Life just passed me by;
As I lay repenting, my mind doing,
Undoing wrongs, repenting deeds
Left undone in haste; of words misplaced

Life just passed me by;
As I lay crying, my mind emptying,
Erasing traces of a broken heart
Mending its patches; finding no matches

Life just passed me by;
As I lay warped in the world of my mind;
Blind to the beauties that lay before me
Clouded by fantasy; until I was left behind
With reality. Harsh reality.


written sometime in 2006