Monday, March 11, 2024

Good morning

This could be the day when

Miracles unfold before us
Without our seeking them
All the birds in the tree have
Left looking for their first food
After waking us with their panic
Last night i saw a family shifting
With their ceiling fans and furniture
To an unseen home of uncertainties
I look at the sky and wish there were
Snowcapped mountains looking back
At us sending shivers down our way
We cannot stay here nor can we leave 
Though it is time or just about time to
Look back with love at all who have left.


Monday, March 4, 2024

Don't wake me

Dreams are not something to lose

Sleep over even when they are as
Strange as fiction that mines minds
A king put courtiers to death for
Not correctly interpreting a dream
Which apparently foretold a famine
Mine have not been as momentous
But I keep losing my way in a place
As familiar as a workplace or home
An exam I have not prepared for
Still wakes me up though I have
Now left that frightful world behind
Let no dream wake me up before dawn
Rather let me wake up from life itself.


Sunday, February 25, 2024

Disappearing

Let's not court silence

It's not outside us
When the desires subside
It appears quietly like the moon
We have diappeared from places
We have not been to again
The body vanishes little by little
Starting from hair to the ovaries
Death is a kind of disappearing
An absence where we have been
We will be found by those 
Who have lost us as we will those 
We have lost ourselves.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Dreams

Lost things are found in dreams

Then lost again when we wake up
Grandfather's pet dog that vanished
Into the sea when we went to immerse
His ashes I saw again following him
Along the beach not even stopping
To nose around, afraid to lose his master
Where is the one of hunting lineage
That fled the house on Deepavali
Unable to withstand the firecrackers
And never could find his way back?
Dreams are halfway worlds between
Life and death we keep on visiting
And we keep on coming back from,
Sometimes unhappy we cannot stay back.

Sunday, December 17, 2023

When it rains

Raindrops on cartops 

Catch a free city ride
Clouds cross puddles 
As the sky watches
It is difficult to tell 
If the rain or the child
Is happier to see the other 
When it rains
Mother is most remembered
For the fritters she conjured up
For her last wish
I did not fulfil
Because I was away.












Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Time

The evergreen song playing

On the television tells me
Time is running out for me
As well as for my peers,
An hourglass metaphor
Has survived the coming
Of watches and clocks
Once living near rail tracks
The passing trains marked
The express passage of time
But my train was yet to arrive;
This ancient tree is in no hurry
Its seasons arrive and leave leisurely
When the gentle breeze ruffles it 
It dances in quiet pleasure
When the monsoon wind seizes it
It fights with spirit, doesn't fall;
When we walk around the temple city
We do not know how many layers
Of time we walk on, what buried secrets
Lie under our feet, trapped like genies ----
It's time to say goodnight, not goodbye.







Thursday, August 10, 2023

A fearful harvest

Riots begin in the mind as fear
Planted by those who harvest it
It is turned into hatred of what
Is feared and goaded to obliterate
The other, lacking in numbers ---
When the minions of evil have
Had their fill of kills that would
Have horrified horror itself
Women willed men to violate
The women of the enemy
Shaming shame itself ----
When the fires have been doused
The dead buried and bemoaned
Cases filed against predator and prey -----
The survivors rendered refugees
Can still pray for the return
Of the mind which cries
For others and feels their sorrow
As no different from its own.