The Waves of Time

Floating in an engulfing ether
Drifting in a sea where
Yesterdays mingle with an ever present today
With waves helplessly dashing
Against tomorrows cliffs; spraying a mist
Of hopes that pervades long in the air
Like aftereffects of all this conundrum
Slowly the waves retreat, silently like past
And today’s waves throw them back
Like recollections remembered…..
A face, a moment of joy or pain
The souls just being tossed now and then
Here and there in this eternal confrontation
Of yesterdays and tomorrows
Here on the shores of today.

12th December 2007

The sun hasn’t stopped rising and setting
Stars twinkling, the moon waxing and waning
Ever since you left, Dad
Nothing has changed
Except everything.

Crimson Dusk

The dusk no more golden now
is coated with a crimson tinge
and a sanguine stink prevails.

The petals have withered away
and shriveled stalks remain
pointing in an accusing demeanor
towards the sky.

The hearts are cloistered in gloom
and tongues wrapped in silence
yet eyes in their lachrymose outbursts
write in saline crusts
memoirs of untold grief.

Oh sleeping ones! Blessed are you
here living ones little better than dead
die a thousand living deaths…..
…… should I pray for life
or crave for death?

The Plastic Petal

The crooked by lanes whereby
Contorted concrete jungles mingle
In an unbroken jigsaw along the skyline
Silhouetted in the dusky sun whose orange
Bathes, somewhere else,
The beautiful jungle
Where its gold fuses with the green
And a symphony of hues is born.
…here the cacophonous din clangors
in the screeches of machines which duplicate
Men in their actions
Unerringly yet unmanly.
The race long ago started
Hasn’t ended yet.
A bunch of plastic petals plants adorns
The flower pots while some blocks chopped….
Antiquity…….
The butterfly flapping wings beats its breast
Against a window pane
Trying to touch a plastic petal!

The Pheromone Trail

Whispers roam in the streets like bits of paper
In a breeze that sweeps across
The faces turn around at the sudden hush
Of an unsaid word, resuming their routine
With a questioning nod, and a brooding silence
Prevails like after effects of this unfamiliar silence
Which echoes and is echoed back.
The ants continue their toil
On a pheromone trail which guides them
On an invisible route and leads them to their destination
And we men are lead too by our fates
Like these unseen lines that are drawn across
Our lives and crisscrossing with others’
A familiar face is surrounded by strangers
In its home land where its own territories
Are out of bounds and marked by the piss
Of carnivores whose grins project their canines
And instill fear in the meek lambs who bleat fearfully
And the ants continue their journey
On that pheromone track
And the familiar faces continue to be surrounded
By all the more strange faces
And we men continue to be lead by our stars
And keep on crisscrossing the lines
The territories continue to be marked by the hot piss
And the lambs continue to bleat meekly
With their wooly skins waiting
To be torn down by the hungry hounds
But the bits of paper are sucked up into a whirlwind
And so do the whispers tear into screams
And the faces turn around again
To hear the said words, leaving their routine
With unquestioning statue-like heads
In this pandemonium where after it breaks
Into sobs absorbed into patience
And the ants run helter-skelter too
Some one erased the pheromone trail.

The Voice of Silence

There are moments when I hear
An inaudible silence in its aphonic tone
When someone speaks to me
And there is none around save me.
The words are harsh, sarcastic
Which purge me down to my soul
And lay me bare before some unseen mirror
Where I see my infirmities, naked,
Like scars scathing and raw
And my nostrils fill with a stench
As some secret scalpel dissects me
And I gasp for breath
And this asphyxiation pulls me out of the reverie
…….am I my own foe?

Deceiving Dreams

Of late some dreams haunt the sleep
As ruins by some obstinate ghosts
Through the cobwebbed crevices who peep
And flicker like shadows around lamp posts.

Of frail promises of future, they haunt
As past days relived in a better way
And attainment of an insatiable want
And change misery to a prosperous day.

Like the early spring blossoms of peach
Our dreams emerge from the dark and cold
Some eager eyes from beneath beseech
To pull off the dark and such like fold.

Alas! but these Morpheus’ creations
Are too frail are too weak
The ways that lead to no stations
Traveler, wherefore such things you seek?

Of course do our little dreams start
Like a little trickle of a little stream
That grows on with every beat of heart
And again ends, again in a dream.

The Addict's Lament

The piercing needle pricks
On pretence of providing joy
The fire rampages, tricks
Goes up the vein I enjoy
Visions unseen, hallucinations
And roam in my own creations

I kill myself for my joy
On a potent poison I thrive
Unlike men who others destroy
Spill blood, kill and burn alive
Why then am I kicked?
Just ‘cause I am an addict!

Thoughts in a Graveyard

Shrouded in some fear
Of a latent claustrophobia
Oh! The grave dark and deep
While some in some merriment
Think of having a long sleep
Yet Grim in his dreadful grin
Smiles…. may be!

The leaves fall with the autumn breeze
And petals drop one by one
Shriveled by the coming winter’s frost
Oh the times steps, slow, at ease
Yet with a pace always at a run
Unending and at what cost!

Slow and steady
Like in some eternal hourglass
The sand empties itself
Into some hillock of a past
To be there for ever.

Chaos

Like newspaper clippings pasted
Into a graffiti,
Silhouettes of past, dimmed
In the foreground of now-a-days
The cries for peace are muffled in the din,…
Pessimistically optimistic,
Yet the sighs go on.
The utopian dream is a nightmare
Snatching everybody’s sleep
In the middle of the night
Still I wake up late ….
The morning news tells
How many died yesterday!