Mangoes of memories...

How they linger like the scents of those mangoes

Hanging from the boughs of bright summer

Vivid are those yellows  

spruced in a delightful pulp.

Their shades never dim nor do they dull

With the long-gone sun

As the drop of those golden rays they remain

Lasting as long as its time is ripe

And, then they fall from those branches

To the earth, to where they belong

They never hold on to that tree

but leave behind the sweetness, the aroma

the reminiscence of what was set free

it lingers in those lanes of memory

giving me the shade, the shelter, the fruition

of those moments lived, and let gone

without a twinge of the parting pain!

Shopping till you drop off your mind?

The  glitz & glamour that dash

Blinding as the lightning flash

Poised, polished, how those floors mirror

The lights that refract and glimmer

It sprawls in vastness

It boasts of pride,  price and the prized

In storeys, that will make you crane up, enticed

but the charm does not hold long

nor do you remain awestruck or oblong

entrapped in those confines

its claustrophobia that outlines

the ‘synthetic’ that reflects from every corner

the ‘natural’ razed to the ground

for this makeover

yes, the brightness glares,

the  space that never spares

for the madding crowd,  hollowed out

is the joy of living, in a material world

that cares only to pout and flout?

Women or Wine? Young or Aged?

Women are like a glass of wine

They need to age,

To be the fulsome flavour

 Lest they fizz out, whining

When uncorked before time,

They are like the melancholy strains

Of a throttled nightingale

How they crib and chortle

Like the dammed river, they gurgle

How the grapes turn sour for women

When the other’s cup is fill to the brim

The sweetness  fades in a fever

The red rage explodes from that scarlet shimmer

A wine opened young,

Douses the man,  into muteness

So does a woman,

Who turns her man into a sage;

For years of meditative silence?

   

Books are my best friends!

It is like a whiff of freshness

The musty smell of a book

As each page flips in that breeze

So do these passing moments

That bounce along those words

Each running to tuck you into an embrace

A story to leave behind, a life to live up to

The warmth of the hearth

The mizzle of the first rains, refreshing

As a mind-to-soul friendship

A book offers, hand-in hand is this companion

 I would hold it close to my heart

For the love of a book, I would be the knight

To cross the seven seas, for his fair maiden

With an undying passion, no slight!

In the name of religion?

We tug at that invisible umbilical

That string of faith to fight our fears

We give it a name - Religion

A preacher to tow our beliefs-

The tenet to  raise itself as a monument

A mosque, a church,  or a temple

Its  sanctum to be the window of light-

to follow in harmony, the balance to sustain each living- the whole

the nature, the earth, the universe, that holds us sole

Yet in the name of Religion, we divide

You and I become fragments of that hate

To become  territories onto our own-

We pledge our being to a prophet of Faith

To wage a ‘holy’ war ,  

To kill 'religiously', without a bar?

What holiness would it propound 

When there is blood alone to defile 

The idol, the symbol that we worship 

to be vanquished into nothingness,

Just as the earth, we are born of, withers

It is you and I, in a desert storm,

Swayed by a 'universe' of Religion

It is the dying human spirit that wanders 

Woman, revealed!

the skin that shrivels

beneath that scorching glare

what is seen is not the lesser known

to be called the ‘immodest’

what could be provocative

but to the eyes of a ‘pervert’ alone?

 I am a woman, the nature,

To birth and bloom,  not in shame

But in openness,

the feminine that bursts forth from beneath

the skin that covers, but peers out

from under the fabric of society

that, which winds a woman, in a closet mind

to be under the veil ever

as a body but not a being,

‘the one which shows, is an object’

This male notion, will it change never?

Sunset Hues

The shimmer of gold remains

Even as the yellow sun dims

Nestling into slumber

Vibrant hues that spring from its yawn

The blush, the orange, the violets, the blues

the myriad shades of a day

painted in the twilight sky

before it recedes into the night

streaks of passion, the strokes of a master

the glow of life that sparkles,

yonder  in the horizon

I wield the brush to live that moment

And make my day as beautiful!

'Parting is a sweet sorrow..."

It looks just like yesterday

When the gentle breeze blew

The scents of spring fresh and intoxicating

That I felt afloat;

The fantasy as good as real

The cheer, the chirping,  the churning of colours

The rainbow arching, 

to clasp those strings to the lasting

But they slip away…with the wild, wild wind

The wings of time that never set foot   

Nor does the shedding tree, tear in sorrow

but I feel the pain so intense,

Parting with the past

like the wilting rose that  lets go of its last  petal

with  the tear that drops in a free fall

nothing to hold back

it never is lost, it never could be

for what dies, births yet again

If only I could welcome this life with a breath anew?

A woman is a woman’s worst enemy!

You would see a woman turn into a tigress of ferocity

With just one sniff of another female in the vicinity

She surges as the green-eyed monster from folklore

To find hers’   its ever the rival,  to rip & tear in a battle gore

The earthy endurance that makes her so, shatters

To have the same sex in her orbit,  are worse matters

 Now, we know

why the lissom lass  turned into the conniving cat

Or the silken seductress turned into corny cacti

A word of praise about the other can prove to be fatal

Frothing, you would see the femme fatale

So, under one roof, if you keep two women together

Could you expect anything but a natural disaster?

Love, to break free!

 How big could that fortress rise

Its dark, dinghy insides that cage my love

It lies huddled in a corner

Banished from the outside world

It lays hidden from the sun

Behind the laden clouds

This pining that stills in the freezing stare

 The love that is seemingly dead

As if In a cocoon –

the pallor that squirms with dread

but how long could  those words remain hushed

or love’s wings   beneath that fortress, crushed?

 The spirit seeks to soar

to break free from that shell

to take wings on a rainbow of colours

its love alone that could break that spell

even as the world scorns or scorches, with burning embers

those chains, I let go of,

 it’s to this love I surrender 

The Pheonix will rise yet again...

The past is dead

It is just the ashes that remain

The ashen heaps like the little hillock of my life

To await the first blow of the wind

To mix with the ether

To never remember,

the bygone, the pain to burn into those ashes

every stumbling thought to crumble like paper

in those crackling flames…

 to annihilate every bit that stalls, staggers, stalks

then, I would don anew, the stoic

my new being, that would rise amidst the fire

to spread those wings,

in that fiery spirit, eager to capture the sun!

I wished my child would grow up...

Every moment that springs to life,

Like clay given a shape in playful hands;

It is the mould – a state of happiness;

Come what may, the moment never stays

It flows with gay, in might

Like the streams of a river frolicking forth

 The chirping chirrups of childhood

Soaring to the skies…

 But I see my child growing up;

Out growing every space;

The little one, with those little joys

No more a fledgling,

Coveting, competing, comparing,

Hankering, a pursuit unending

The tenacity, the ferocity, the veracity

The worry-Those marked lines on his brow,

He is an adult, an achiever-to-be

But the sparkle of his eyes lost in those shadows

To retreat to bliss, and shed those skins,

Would he, to the Himalayan ascetic, bow?

How I had wished my child would grow,

 And how I yearn now,

 that he could just be happy, the childlike

As one is meant to be!

To regret, and rust for the lost?

Need I bemoan the bygone

Or look behind those cobwebs of time

Trapped are those thoughts

Just like a fly caught in those webs

Lost and wandered,

In the rusty trails of its past

that,

which did not take to the wings of time, before

would it never look to the skies or soar?

I did tarry once,  far behind the tracks

Those sands of time, rose like the towering fortress

But I could not imprison myself there

I would not let the spider of my past 

Spin around me,  or those silken threads to drape a coffin

for someday, I will sculpt the castle of my dreams

I surmise; that till my spirit lasts,

  I will ride time on my sails

looking to the skies, the horizon,  the sun,

one day I will blaze those trails!

The Kite

In swirls of currents, the kite glides

It never goes adrift, in the turbulence

Even as it soars to the skies

Its tether tugs at the earth-

The bird’s eye view of the terra firma

To see everything shrink in size

When you rise above your own plane

What embodies this earth,

The mountains, the rivers, the living

They merge to diffuse into the ether-

In that ascent, is an awakening  

Of the ethereal, the ephemeral of nature

That has to go through the earth

It has to bind before it breaks free

Just like the kite,

With its unblinking focus

to swoop down, to live its life, to fulfil,

before it takes to the realmin the skies,

to become a speck of being

And, then the vastness itself!

Touch screens or touchy ladies?

Touch screens are like touchy ladies

Dainty but devilish, with numerous anomalies

The tiniest trigger is enough

And you will be battling the smooth with the rough

 How they take chagrin with no provocation

You would have meant a simple touch

And it rubs in, the temper flies off in a different direction

You need to swipe or pinch with pin-point precision

Lest you send your ‘lady' for a wrong mission

For instance, her puckered lips, may showcase a kiss

But would you imagine it could  suck-out  your soul

Into the nightly abyss?

 how touchy can they be;

They swoon at the slightest sight of the disorderly

They cannot reign in the chaos

Nor can they battle life’s roguish  toss;

They know not to endure

And with them around,

 you would be safe less, and sorry more, for sure

these touchy ladies lack the sporting spirit

you cannot take it light & easy while in their gambit

Where the touch  should have been a sensuous pleasure

to lure one afar,  you wake up too late

to the pinch and the pressure? 

the trail of terror!

the squirts of blood

or the shrill screams

palpable is the hate

engulfing like a river in spate

yet there is no one to hear

none to see,

in the masquerade of Religion

the zealots pledged, to a demonic legion?

the  war that turns ugly

 blind, as the sword strikes its enemy

Could it be victory that marches on the dead-

Of the young, the old, the birthing:

the life, the hope, the dawn; sinking instead

its just terror that reigns,

the land of the inhuman, the holiness feigns?

as a child peeks out, from behind those shutters

the broken shafts of light that shudder

what seed can grow in those dark shadows

what faith can tow its fate away from the deathly gallows?

As long as i can see the sky blue...

To catch a glimpse of the sky blue

As the summer sun burns bright

With chirruping parrots flying across;

In  vivid shades of green and the glowing red

The tiny twig held in its beak;

Vibrant is the burst of energy

To wake up in the midst of those vivacious blooms

Towering trees, their fulsome boughs bristle

The sky azure, crystal clear,  

As the wisps of winter that fizzle

That breath of the blue to behold

Even in the midst of concrete shadows

the dusty gallows, as they unfold

I get that glimpse of the morning,

  The nature, the living,  

And, the man-made, closing in, on her threshold!

Remitting $‘love’ $ home?

A wistful wife’s woes

As the overseas husband tows

the dicey dollars, as they crinkle

 cushioning, the comfort without a wrinkle

to count the days or the coins;

as  each rolls by, the wait to rejoin

 endlessly empty, the bought-out luxury

lavishing on every whim, without parsimony

yes, the bundles fatten, during every incoming

the whimpering wife puffs up, her pride notwithstanding

to flout the riches, the money that flatters

the  twinge of loneliness, tucked in her tiers,

who would know of her irking ire

 far away like the island under the summer fire!

I like those morning rush hours...

I like those morning rush hours

When time whizzes past like those motors

Streaks of moments that never stay

Perfectly clad they are, for the work-bound day

Yes, it may be a breadwinner’s daily chore

To hear out the buzz and buckle up;

With no  hang over, no blues to show up

There is a goal at end, a duty to fulfil,

A day to work towards, a moment never to kill

The forerunner of his duties, as he mounts for the ride

He never stops by, ever astride

The rush it may seem in the  morning saunter

But I see the clearing mists, the rising sun,

The rigour in that run,  would anyone then stall or wander?