The stillness of a Sunday

Slackened Sundays,

When time seems to sleep too

Laid on a cozy hammock, you hear its gentle snores

The buzz beneath a pillow;

The birds ‘n’ bees that nestle; the mating in the willow

The slightest of sounds that echoes

Sundays that stretch and space out

Like  the sozzled drunkard,  who fizzles out

Slumped, slouched, sluggard-

The hangover that hangs over like the laggard

The stillness that only senses the clock ticking…

Its slow, this Sunday is,  what streak of lightning

Would wake it up and get it kicking?

The Purple Petunia bloom

Its blush is not unseen

Even as it flutters in the wild wind

Those petals that hold on

Fighting the force; the rooting that reminds

Of where it belongs- the earth

Yet nature has its own ways, in no dearth

is love that binds and  that, which sets free

I sought the one with the wind

That would drift me away,

Like those blooms, tearing to the sky;

 The floating fragrance,  enrapturing

 Lasting it may never be,

But the blush of the bloom rubs off on me! 

Faraway Justice

When man turns a predator

There is none to rein in the beast

From the dark, the lone, the heinous

the outcries, the outrage unheard

What lays overpowered,

Makes its way to the grave

What or who could avenge the wrong

Even as the right drags itself in that throng

In faint footsteps,  to battle over the dead

would the living revive once shed?

The faraway,  the unseen, entrenched in its place

Is Justice just to be looked upto, for a face?

Unmoved, the wait, the drawl, the idling 

What would shake it awake,

to see the last trace of humanity dying?

I am what I believe in

I will not seek clarity in the midst of chaos

Nor to question the non-absolutes around

The entropy that pervades

Or the opposites that reign;

How they clash, conflict or turn the adverse

Could my premise , its boundaries go terse?

The firmament, would it turn the fluid in its hearse?

How these daunting doubts dare

That faith, sculpted from my soul

What’s my own rests in that shrine

I need not judge beyond,

or unsettle in that which is not mine

In the midst of darkness,  there is light within

To  follow that shaft, my eyes closed-

   To reach, to be,   

In that universe, what I am meant to be

….Pledged to chastity?

Chastity is not a noose around my neck

To pledge myself to the sole soul

In the vastness, the strange affinities , I meet

Do I withhold the intensity of my being and retreat?

The man-made manacles   of the mind

The chaos that churns in what is contained

How it brews like the storm

To let it break free or to subdue

Is it calmness or the conflict that will remain as a residue?

How unbecoming to battle the natural

As it surfs on the shores of the human mind;

Yet, I am a woman,  conditioned, attuned

my chastity that would be disputed, disparaged,  disgraced

for the wayward man, to wander unfazed.

 when I walk into the burning ambers, the fire-test

those desires that flamed with abandon, for once

Turning ashen, is the 'unchaste'

To be a woman, need the human annihilate?

When I sought perfection...

I sought perfection in everything I saw

They marred, in blurry images,  

It was the ugly alone in that draw

The structure, the symmetry, the sync

That had framed its works in my mind

All those contours that passed through me

they zigzagged in that frame

it was only the skewed that I got to see.

Then I sought rawness in what came by me

In those  layers deep beneath

There was more to what I thought beauty could be

 Beyond the myths, the mythical

There was the touch of purity

‘twas imperfections personified

Like the ascetic’s ascent to the deified

Yet it touched my mind, it was openness

The “crystalline ”  turning fluid

And nothing but bliss that settled 

The beauty of my universe!

If Love had known its constraint….

Had I let the streams of Love

 follow its course

they would have been a brook

along the hills, tumbling its way,

to merge with its destiny

But  I took to still those rapids

in the channels of constraint

seeking its origin, the destination;

the reason that dammed the river

 who could ever withhold the wild currents for long

Stifled yet swirling

I may have been bound, tethered to my fences

Yet,   none could stop

the gushing force, as it sweeps me away

It was the wild rhythm of the splashing waters

I had lost myself in this love, never to be found again!

Friendship for Sporting Spirit for shuttle!

If friendship starts with camaraderie,

A game of shuttle sports it best

It’s that rigour to keep the little birdie in air

As it flies to and fro

You serve , swing, smash;

To never let the birdie touch down

How you buckle up, to launch it yet again

To keep that spirit of Friendship soaring;

It is the game of shuttle- the birdie’s  calling!

…it’s the mothers’ duel

Challenge her cub, you will have a lioness spring up

How nature shapes up mothers, as “Protectors Plum”, to stir up

They birth, they cut the umbilical, but to release the offspring-tether

Is an idea as dismal as the rainy weather?

The fencing, the policing, the extra-sensing

The  territory for their offspring as stifling

They are the shielding armours for every childish dispute-

When ‘twixt kids,  the fights , a part of the growing-up  chute?

Do they realize the journey from the womb to the tomb

Is one’s own, even for a child, the ride to be learnt with aplomb?

Yet they constrict the childhood space,

To be as cramped as a mother’s mind-space

Like a puppeteer to pull strings to pre-empt

 Are they kids or puppets  in effect?

With the slightest skirmish , it’s the swords drawn

These mothers don the cape, protract their claws,  to defend their fawn

The little one, delicate as it may look  for a mother,

To fight & survive, is not it innate in every living wonder?

Yet, these mothers numb their child's instincts

To get even with the other mother is their battling precincts;

Where the kids would declare truce in no time

It’s a growling mother, fierce as a feline

The catfights amongst this fraternity

Could any ombudsman ever bring them to sign a peace-treaty?

….stars that wink at me!

How brow-beaten could the day get

the tirelessness that makes one forget

the flesh gives up soon

The restive needs to retire too

Somewhere in the recesses of the day

where every aching part of  me, would say

just long enough, the stretch, I will reach the end

 but it never ends,  my sagging spirits,

work out every turn,  twist and bend

till the light fades into the horizon

there is just the night sky, overseeing me

a winged devil of a bat that hovers over, to say

it is time, I know to drift away into the darkening

where,  I can hear alone the sound of my breathing

…and to  think of the stars winking at me

If I could look through the prism…

How easy it is to banish someone into the dark woods

Those overshadowing doubts that cloud your mind

The judgement that hangs between the black and white

How seldom is it realized

That, ‘twixt the “you” and “I”,  there is a bridge to cross

To see from the other end;

The overlapping zones of grey that never come to light

The erring  may have its own rhyme and reason

How often do I step into those grey shades

And shy away from the prying eyes,

Unsettling,   to be judged, on  a premise unknown

Need I still seek to weigh “you”

Through that one shaft of light  , to see

when there could be the many shades as much a part of me?

...and yes, I know his Achilles heel

Mid-air, underwater, outer-space

He was the “static” in place

Unshaken, unruffled, unperturbed

On a couch, that  could take the blissful snores, unheard

What could  spring  the sleeping anaconda  awake?

Or, was he some human-species ,  born out of the placid lake?

Everyone has a vulnerable point

So must he, figuring that out, took me to the tipping point

Then “Eureka!”  I realized, he was the number man;

If I could purloin  his credit,  swipe it with élan

Won’t it send him skywards like a rocketing  pheasant?

 To find the missing tally, he would be on the hunt

The amount however meagre, to which tantamounts 

I had discovered his Achilles heel

When they are no longer asleep ,

It is the accounting tenacity in every spiel!

...The Lily blooms, inspite of...

There would be a purpose for that filth

Proliferating, as the marsh oozing

So do the odours that envelope the ethos

Life chokes for a breath of freshness

Mired in those muddy waters.

But the mind that decides to break free

Is the Lily, rising from those gutters 

“I will ever be the fierce little girl”

I  am more than a body , a man’s roving eyes would see

To be  shamed or disparaged

When unseen hands would touch me;

I would shed my modesty then

Every strip of it,

I will not hold on to my chaste being-

To  drive  his craven lust

I would be not be the laid,  to crown his prowess or virility

Nor would I shrink or shy away, with that nudity 

There never could be a victim, when it’s a fierce little girl in me

To fight the fabric that straitjackets a woman

The clichés, the conventions, the conforming,

If this clothing were to be ripped

Will Rape still be  a dictum of his victory?

…it was mere foolery to trust

 It was mere foolery on my part

To go seeking  the pure

Where its only pretence that prevails

Even the gold that glitters can never be sure

Of its rarity or rawness;

After all its human, to change colours

But the camouflage sheds the last skein of trust

The pallor of the lost that remains

It was mere foolery on my part, to have trusted you!

9-yards of tradition - The 1008 incantations

I would bind myself to the nine yards of tradition

Be the pious, the paragon of virtues,

The religious, regimental and the ritualistic

To rest my faith;

In the midst of this humbug

The smoke from the altar that rises high in the air

If it could sanctify my being too

I would submit myself to the nine yards of tradition

That would help me surrender to the Oneness

 The humility that personifies a human

The incantations that would open me up to the universe

In those nine yards of tradition, do I see that light?

Yet, I am wound up in those layers,

Mystic but entangling like an ascetic’s matted hair

If my incantations of this verse could enlighten

Liberate the soulful song of bliss, into infinity

The Origin, is it from these nine yards of tradition?

Twittering from a tiny tree

That faint twittering from a tiny tree

Its leaves that bristle up to the fledgling life

How it catches the eye, makes itself heard

Above the cacophonic bustle of the madding herd

It brings my pace to a pause

Somewhere, that clutter too, recedes for this cause

This little tree fluttering with little birds

So full of life, the joy that chirps in their every breath

What nestles in the hidden dark is a ray of hope

For the dawn of the morrow,

The day that will see their wings unfurl

To the flight of Freedom!

The birds, the bees and the "private"!

They are abuzz amongst little ones

The birds and the bees, that nestle in their curiosity in-tense

How they figure out to how babies are made

Is it how the bee stings the bird and the foundation laid?

how they do the rounds like a Chinese whisper

if the little bird bursting with news could twitter

when the mother finds it a wee-bit embarrassing

answering the questions of the tiny, a tad taxing

how can the little one know the little secret

like a cat on the wall,  it’s a game on an edgy parapet

Is it to so sacred to be kept in the shrine

Or way too dirty, to be dusted away as grime?

The birds, the bees,  the buzz about the mating game

How a child wonders about its birth, is it such a shame?

Yet  we shy away, shirk from owning

And instead pull the stork in, as the divine doing  

So what goes loud and around their world

Is   S*x being the F-word,

They grow up, ever daring to venture into the forbidden

Like a growing malaise, they erupt from the hidden

if only SEX had not been about birds ‘n’ bees;

the truth in the open to share

the evil of the other-half knowledge,

would it have been the darkest to scare?

The wishful night

If the day’s twining could wind up

in the vast spread of the night

the pain that will drift away into the hollows

only the blissful that will remain

as every tear drop that glistens

reflects the starlight afar!

If I could tame this wind…

If I could tame this wind,

And hold it in my locks;

I would not hear it howl

Or see it sprawl;

O’ its wild spirit,

What vastness can contain it

yet I try to hold it in my locks

and here I am, like the abashed maiden

with those tussled locks;

Wandered, my modesty that never docked!

When I am truly free…

The day, I let go of myself

Without holding on to those strings of Fear

When uncertainty no longer envelopes like darkness

When my hands are not tied to reach out

Or the voice that falters not to speak the truth  

The day, when I step into the vastness

To be just a drop and yet be the conscious

I am the ripple, the wave, the ocean

The love, if I could let it flow into that infinite

That day, I will be truly free, as me

 as my country would one day be!

The Solitude of Walking

It is like that cobbled pavement sighing

To the squelch of my shoes, while walking

Each step ahead just in rhythm

With the moving, how everything else falls in place

What I pass by, those hanging branches brushing past

The streaks of those caresses that tug at me

But I don’t stop by

The rhythm has to go on

I need to feel the earth live, with every spring in my step

I need to feel I am alive in every breath!

I grew up to love an ascetic

I sought the finesse of love

Its fineries that framed the picture perfect

Without a crease, the silken smooth fabric,

I sought the perfection in Love

Like the face chiselled out from  alabaster

The charms of its beauty  luring me to different shores

I sought the sensuality of Love

For satiating those senses, 

the wild fire of rapture that would leave a warm glow

I sought the Love in surreal

To transcend the matter,

the feeling from earth to ethereal

I sought the rawness in Love

The lasting, the wisdom, the light

What I saw in that ascetic

Unruffled in that garb of wilderness

the ocean deep, I find

the bliss of my being flow into him

I was one with his Love

The feminine guile or a beautiful mind?

What a trap, men fall into

Just by one twitch of a smile

or a twinkle of the eye

They fall head over heels  

Those feminine niceties that charm them so

That  turn them into the Quixotic hero

Straddling between poems on love

and bouquets that avow

to woo the lady-

who would bow to their bravado

Which woman with a beautiful mind

would  resort to the guiles or make over

if she could look straight into the eyes of her man

to reveal her fiery spirit-

Then there is adventure between the equals

How the minds would then look into the infinite

How they would resonate to seek that infinity!

If my mind were to park in space

How the parking space wrestles out of the morning gloom -

From the dinghy interiors that stare in silence

They await the morning rush hour

With the stomping of a rushed-up man

The clicking sound, that reverberates

The Whirring noise that kickstarts its day

To cross past the bays, those channels, the constricted

To get out into the open, to blast, to puff

And return to the silence yet again

If my mind too would turn

To marshal those thoughts, to let their train out

To space out from this clutter,

And, when they would come homing back, by eventide

They would nestle in my mind-space

Like the tired birds of flight

Who had sought the horizon and, seen it trace!

Sheets of Rain

Sheets of rain lashing out,

Falling over the caked earth

Seeping, flowing into the deep cracks

In time, the earthen hardness will become the clay

For me to mould, my way;

If I could submit to these torrents

To let that crystalline past melt in the flow

I would be one with this living moment, now! 

"Trespassers not Allowed!"

Noses poke and tongues wag

They have not the sense

Where to see that fence

They sniff, they graze across

Over the patch  that they do not own

They overlook the “restricted entry” ,

where the  “respected privacy” is grown

In the “other’s” space, they raise to a pedestal

To preach sermons,  like experts they drawl to the infinitesimal

They are the least conscious of their encroachments

Their last word, to rule over, for every predicament?

If only they realize, how their intrusion

Gets near the line-of-control

The storm brewing,

the animosity that surges like a troll

How their "buttonholed listener"

Is ever on the hunt of a plastic surgeon

To snip those protrusions or subject them to a bludgeon?

But would they fall back in their rightful positions?

Despite these treatments, they would remain the askew

To raise these questions in a slew

Shouldn’t have I better known

That, trespassers are bound by habit

To allow them to infiltrate into my thoughts

Would be but my own chosen ambit?