Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Stroke of the brightest white!

I have five bright shining geese. White and shining. Wait. Is it five? Let me count again. Sometimes they look like four. Sometimes like six. I have no heart to count them, they are that beautiful. But I believe they are five.

 I had five curiously round pebbles which lived in my pocket through a long journey. But then when i came upon a river, the river gave me in exchange of the pebbles, one by one, nice and full 'plops'. Hearing an original and authentic plop can satisfy a thirst much deeper than what gallons of water can't. Plops enter through the ears and roll down all the way into the heart, where they float like soap bubbles reflecting all joys and sorrows into a weirdly merged and stretched images.

Bubbles don't live forever. One day i realized that they were not there anymore. Bubbles leave without a trace! They leave behind only a blank wonder. It is difficult to snap out of that blankness.

 So I wandered aimlessly reeling under its spell. That was the day these bright creatures walked in. They didn't fly in. They crossed the street, marching in a straight line, quacking loudly. They didn't stop even to look at me and walked right into my farm. We all roared with the most unstoppable laughter  which made the beautifully funny creatures quack with even more indignation.  They live here now as if they own this place and spend the long afternoon swimming and then cleaning and drying their wings.

I never asked them where they came from. But one day i picked up one of the feathers that drop in an occasional brawl. I moved it gently on the surface of the lake water till it rippled into an image revealing a lost memory.

The moon of a dark cloudy sky and the lotus of a silent lake swept the night. They stared at each other, drowning in each other's spell. Their intoxicated love trembled on the edge of an undiscovered orgasm for hours. And then as the growing tremble grew into a wave, it swept through the night, making the wind rise and roar. The wind swung around the tall trees tripping and falling and singing loudly like a drunkard on an empty street. When it came tumbling down into the silent lake he created not just ripples but a whirpool casting a blur over the entire night. Everyone closed their eyes. When silence returned it carried something alive and of the most heart aching beauty. When eyes opened once again ignoring a wordless excitement that terrorized the heart, there shining brighter than the moon  and more pristine than the lotus, the magic geese floated on the once again still water surface . The moon looked deeply content at the lotus with an exhausted smile and sank back lost in the clouds.

Buried

And so I sleep
The ground creeping on me
Like a thousand ants
A forsaken carcass
Being swallowed
In a hurry.

Grains of sand filling up
Erasing to find
Nothing more
Than a random mound
In the unmeasurably constant
Stretch of a desert land!

And sitting on that..

A dense cloud of emptiness
Where a thousand faced
particles of dust
Sparkle like stars
Neither moving nor still
But drowning
In sweet suspension!

Monday, January 9, 2017

Stop For Breakfast

The bus is slowing down. A stop for breakfast. Precious few moments to forget all about the destination!

Through the fumes that rise from a cup of the morning hot, the road swims at the distance, looking beautifully unreal. I sit opposite a man who has fallen silent and is yet to realize it. With an urgency of a one driven by an unstoppable lust, but with the stealth of a burglar, I enter and curl up in his pristine silence. Like a dog who sneaks into somebody’s blanket on a cold night. What I saw from a distance was just a mess of hair, rough unshaven face and tired eyes still sulking of a disturbed sleep. But all that was just the covering. Once inside, what I saw, was a slow, silent and a glorious sunrise. I had seen sun come up many times. But for the first time that I ever saw the phenomenon of a sunrise was in a stranger’s eyes.

Just a few moments before my heart broke once again as he reminded me of our estrangement by meeting me in the eyes with a warm smile saying ‘Hello!’.

The Roadside Tree

While the afternoon goes
and naps in your arms
We sit swatting
Random words and thoughts
Like flies!

In between
two wordless moments
A gentle breeze
Says ah!

A delicate quilt
of light and shade
Over the lone bicycle
that passes by..
My gaze follows like a dog,
Its rhythmic clinks!

Looking into your eyes
Waiting with infinite leisure to drop
And come swaying down
To rest in  your heart
Like a flower or a leaf!
On the edge of a cliff
Held up by the clouds
That hide the gaping mouth
Of oblivion

In the middle of a street
Run over
And buried
into a silence that looms over
all the noises
That run around like confused ants

Swaying on one leg
Hanging from a precarious branch
Risking life and truth..
I speak...

These words
that my breath carries
Sometimes from the depths of heart
Sometimes more immediate
Than a moment's sparkle in the eye

Though vapoury,
Like the tricks of a dream,
They are not like a mist
That never was

My lips only move
It is my heart that hopes
To relieve its ancient wound
 Through the ceaseless bleeding of words

Raining or trickling
A storm or a breeze
I uttered
only so that you hear

I uttered
only to breach
The unsurpassable walls
Of my body