Mind

It flickers- 
Dissolves all the world into water 
And makes salt in the sun.


It flickers- 
Meets its aged spirit of understanding 
Long ago! abondoned or suspended in the vacuum.


It flickers-
Finds the king Fisher, still, fishing
and repenting over his loss of virility.


It flickers -
Makes all Philosophies its mistresses
And ravishes them one by one..


When it does not flicker 
It remains dissolved in myths and illusions ...

Excerpt From the poem " THE TOWER OF BABEL"

This thunder and contaminated sky-
Are we dying or left behind?
...Again clutch at the towerside
Like mulching leaves,Abusing
Vacuumed words- meaning denied.
              ****
Among us attack,
Among us die, Among us try to decode
And send proofs,Among us allege and deny.
Yet, We don't understand what we do
We are a game or a part of game
                    ...I don't know!
              ****
You know ! once I walked alone in the garden
Some Voice made me turn back
No one -
Certainly none was there.
But said my own self -
"It was I to befool you, fool!"
           ****

MODERN HAMLET -THE LAST PHASE

This evening longs to meet me.
In her dusky countenance,
Conceals a maelstrom of my own darkness.
And I, a docile child, spreading arms,
Hoping to survive or metamorphosed.


Hazardous journey now
Palpitates me not-
What havoc the roaring store in?
I've given no thought.


How many centuries have died undone?
My procrastination 
Even to take a barbiturate
-To have a wink; thinking,
This sixty - watt bulb or electric tube
May not get fused.
(I checked everything meticulously.)


How many centuries have died undone?
While listening to the music,
With tears in eyes -
Fighting some imaginative battles of life,
The pillow under the head
Gets wet..and a dream, after defeating me,
To other world of impossible, flies.


I was to lock the Pandora Box.
Only didn't know its place…
but every room and every corner had a sunlit sky
Then it opened my third eye
And you know !!!
'Every sun has to die !'
Why not to put out this light
And to see myself in centre of my own light…


Thus, I've reached the box.


It's therefore, I say -
Time always chased me
Barefeet and bareheaded
Only this time arrested… after a long strife.
To be ready and waiting with open arms
Hoping to survive or metamorphosed or de-armed.


For death ,I care not
It will die if I do
It will never die …if I'm undone.

The Red Deeps

(A grove where Philips and Maggie used to meet)

Mill on the Floss

Why men mummify their past ?

Build mausoleums in their minds and heart ?

Why they nurture the ashes of time?

And always breathe hard and fast ??

... I was yet to learn.

Your presence, always alone

Longing for Maggie's side

In Red Deeps,where limps

Had made a bed for autumn

Embarks a journey for tears ...

Your pure eyes, frustrated

By the loss of "single chance of happiness"

when rise to watch two birds singing

Just above the head-branch

I learnt -

the Power of the Moments

Their Might and before them

A meek, timid , and prone I.

Yeah philips! I can't see any deformity

In your poetic look

- In your unsaid words

Which always struggled,with palpitations

Victoriously asserted themselves

In the rudeness of Time.

I'm not shocked at all

To see myself in Red Deeps

Following an old philosophy -

Longings can never be brushed aside -

Which was some day, strangled, I found, Could never die

But became an Oasis of Life.

The Rock

Then, the dusk set in-

And the golden Disk disappeared

To the other side of the rock

And he, still hanging,

Kept on thinking about his existence

What had there been, which he might have lost ?

Here, many a sun wasted and many a moon spoilt

Until now, he never saw himself at things

Which made love die in the lover's very eyes.

This rock never held him in promise

But his heart said all otherwise.

Was that mere a passion-

Why was then his eyes wet and soul so bright?

Every jerk now and then,

Writing a new expression-

Garbled his sense of doing and being.

Questioning seeking, sometimes retiring -

Desperate for even a little niche.

And he recalled- a Battle field

A vast armada of tragic flaws and total black out

Reluctant Hamlet -Hesitant Arjuna

Both in need of a walking stick.

Then the call-"Arjuna! Don't live for the End."

"You can't live upto the End."

He found himself at peace

Perplexities- ruffles of the disturbed mind

Chinks and crumbles falling of rock on his being

Looked like Rain drops in the poor man's field.

Thus, he was hanging-

He dared not look below

(for it, he had lost the sense of belonging. )

He was not feeling like looking above

(for,he simply could not imagine.)

He was feeling the rock

Was it love? - the question lost its meaning

Now,his eyes were daubing every inch of the space in between...

He knew not what if conquered

As he could die too with a gust of wind

All expectations pruned - all questions dropped

He was in delirium or simply feeling at home.

Breeze

It blowed once in life time

over the oases

over the crumbling walls once built by the heart-

over the iron roofs of the long cherished dream-

over the charred pages and sorrows just impaled...

It outwitted the squalls

Blessed to blow over as long as to sail-

And I was left-

Dumb struck

With a bleak hope to see it blowing again...

An Expression

I don't like suddenness

The awakening of a latent fire-

I fear to burn from.

When lava erupts-

(don't look at me standing aghast)

Below the volcano, I always bear it

As i can't move- being paralysed.

Haven't I said?

I have seen my own death-

Like Phoenix, always been reduced to ashes

Somehow recreate from devastedness

- A new way of life.

oh change! now welcome

To my igneous self.

Quartets

How difficult is the word "Acceptance"
And let a long cherished dream whiz past you
when the things we suppose,define us
Those things the same,we have to throw...

Smashed into pieces,my looking pane
Showed the thousand aspects of
My countenance,Had it been a whole lot
The same side would have been shown again...

Loving eyes and the touch of the warmth 
Mesmerized mind when lost that state
Nothing could she utter when in dream
When she woke, she had nothing to say...


Loss gain, separation and pain-
Names of tychoons and dusty winds here
when they blow, they hurt; when they go, they hurt
But create beautiful ripples in the bay... 

NEUROTIC CITY

The city dwells in extremes
No thoroughfare-everything is in neurosis,
Lying flat with the burden
Of past glorious dreams on the back.

My Imagination
tries to ascent-
Rocks of horrible ugliness,deformed present
Above the slums and dark hearts.
No Star,Moon,or Aura of Divinity
Inspires;but only satellites
Launched by my own conscience...

Keats's Nightingale might have died issueless
You know! here 's problem of upbringing.
Small lives with big mouths
Never let the city sleep and -
At one corner of bus stand or railway station
The abandoned cries-Good feast for the city hounds.

Thousand eyes of the city but never twinkle at night
'Shaking legs' at a club...red chums
Creep and crawl in the dark.
(matchless! white collar!! cool! Reputed men in the morning )

And fatigued -
My Imagination screams and falls
Into my own hands...Unconscious.

SACRIFICE

Lo Alexander! Destiny is so near.
Single step of valor when put
A thousand unborn epochs will scatter your fear.
These pearly mountains of wondrous hazard
-Obdurate time all over the earth
-Unfailing prudence of an eagle and
-humbleness of hay-born deities,
-The roaring mouth of the thunder
And silvery lines throughout the sky
Will oblige you to take the seat
In the hearts of Generations-
Wombed or still unwombed!

so…
Be ready Bucephalus* !...for the sacrifice.

*Bucephalus was Alexander's favorite horse

MISJUDGED

In the enveloping fire of vengeance
We often torture ourselves, when
Blood shows an ugly face masked,
In the worst time of an year.

With this nostalgic face-
While walking alone, with thousand debates
-Glimpses of the suffered past,
-Ramifications of this undesirably wombed Present;
or all this ‘heavy chamber’ pines for...
He feels shattered and then entrapped
by palpitations and high blood pressure.

Then-in the morphemed night
or at the demise of a dream or something past-
Recalls- Who said what? When? and Why?
A drop silently flows through the edges of eyes,
And something grabs by the throat from Inside.

Fixing sight in the dark-
(With low pump at the heart)
He passes the other Half-
. ..In thoughts and strife.

SWAMP

After thousand years since my flight
one day
When roaring waves hit some land
In moonlight
I fell down to rest.
Now worried
How to fly?
My thoughts are infected
…My wings are wet.

MOTHER

Mother
Engrossed - while rocking the cradle
Soaked in heavy sobs
In haziness - searching further...further...

Mother
Singing lullaby to this 'Silent Listener'
Plucks dreams from amongst piercing thorns
Bleeding words of Love, dipped in droplets-
…And the ‘sleeping Tragedy’ spreads its feathers.

Mother
Feels the first pinch of this vulnerable.
Wonders at the first steps of this little devil
Towards...its destiny
towards... the door.
...Now hides itself behind the gate.
Chuckles - Blinks - and Gone.

And Mother
Spreading arms of desolation,
Bearing this Ordeal…
Still waits for this "Adherent" soul.