hypothesis

if i am in two minds,
one has me in my mind,
the other is my mind,
settled in a subset,
of agonizing similarities

and you say instant coffee tastes like mud...

In instant fame we drown,
And between instant love and hate,
Riotous thoughts tear this being apart,
Into a friend, a foe, a lover and a god,
(I wish I knew the others)
But conflicts are now harbingers,
Of this new consciousness,
Of the instant being,
Apparently in disguise
Of a crooked fate,
Predicting storms,
While others believe and seek,
This instant association,
With gods and the good.

Terse in verse

Jacques Andre Boiffard, Big Toe series, Untitled, 1929

Pride of the cartel,
Was a lost cause,
He swerved to his right,
Fell for the gloss.

Blank noise from the sun,
Blackened her hopes.
She stuck to the pole,
Like silhouettes of gods.

The bride loved her mother,
But She fell onto their arms,
The wolf and his other,
Half brother, the lover.

The prisoner smelt freedom,
Died an instant death,
Poisoned air, they say,
Is free and easy, these days.

Feral

Your brilliance will never cease
This unease in the equilibrium,
Your potent countenance, fiery,
Oblivious of the veils of myth,
Yearning to cover your face.

The spirit disowned you,
The day universe exploded
Like a sun starved by its own force,
You fell from grace,
Into a loop called time.

You, now on the threshold of light,
Traverse through this twilight,
Like an urgent nomad,
An impulsive streak,
A forgotten truth, a persistent lie.

autobiographia

Listless, but he survived the odds,
Eager and wanting to believe,
The line that blurs the fate,
Of a child lost in a storm.

Aspire, she said, and she
Walked out of the room,
To become an elusive mean,
for an amnesiac inside a maze.

Lament, but he fought them,
With a half hearted smile,
In defence of the weak,
Between the lines of print.

Shy, he wrote in bold,
Of his own death,
He punished himself,
With a tear and a poem.

Untitled

Rustic bliss I seek you,
Soil smeared on my palms,
Shrouded by the rough-uncut,
Face of the earth.

Trees, undergrowth, the misfit in me,
We are all one today.
One of the same,
For you it’s a naming game.

Linguistic cannibal

A cannibal called language,
Feasts on my tongue,
As I hang upside down
From the tree of life.

This drudgery of speech,
Should it exist, it
Will send me to the last dungeon
Of unfathomable feelings.

Now I am a thoughtless traveller
Lost in the last fold of knowledge,
And beyond it lays the bliss of death.

But If I eat your words before I die,
You can still smile at me.

For the Grapevine's trail

I am not a poet,
There are no verses,
No rhyme or reason,
For me to exist.

I do not have a heart,
To write and wail
all the good words,
For the grapevine’s trail.

Dragonfly

Her billion eyes burnt in rage,
She had died many deaths before,
When violence of her wingspan brewed a storm.

Somewhere in distant time, we were swimming in the air,
Kissing the floating anthers and sleepy fireflies,
As if they were fairies from our past.
Our union caused amazement,
Followed by shouts and murmurs,
Another poet died of his prophetic lust.

Freedom of spring followed,
While she was locked up in winter’s prison,
She raced down a stairway,
Her wings buried beneath her coat,
Made of her velvet dreams.
An open window had cast its spell,
She surrendered her wings,
To all the blue of my sky.

Heart of the matter

They shouted and screamed,
Arrested Causality from her bedroom,
Locked her behind the bars of reason,
Charged her for deviance and treason.

They poured boiling blood on her that night,
demanding the confession;
about the double murder of Space and Time.
But how would causality know?

She is a tool of Knowledge,
and Knowledge is absconding,
Driving a nail inside Causality’s fingers,
They asked: “What’s your modus operandi?”

The judge pronounced her as guilty,
No eyewitnesses, except Guilt himself,
Dressed in black and white, this time
In front of the blind Law.

“What a joke!” cried the beggar,
Displaying his wounds for alms.
Space and Time were alive.
While Causality was lost in pages of Crime.

Sculpture by Melodee Loyer

Falling in Love

So you came and conquered,
You saw what you wanted to see,
Invading me, keeping me awake,
Like how mothers stay up.

You named me the overbearing child,
Trusted me but for your plight.
Now that you are leaving with a smile,
Should I close my door?

Burdened, I am with your pithy little messages,
Shall I keep them close to me?
I won’t bury them in my backyard,
What will I do with my demons then?

So love is a sign,
For a fortune teller,
For a fool, it’s wine.
I am such a fool.

Warning

This house is jinxed,
Don't come around here no more.

The Swell

A river runs through me,
She caresses me, and takes me in her arms,
She keeps me afloat, awake, cleansing me like a mother,
Caring yet oblivious to my presence,

The days when dark clouds surround her,
She twists and turns,
And finally she smiles as she swells,
Breaking a million hearts.

My misery, my love

A piecemeal solution to my misery,
Will burn my skin,
I rush to make amends,
She gathers but scatters like the sparrows,

Helpless yet odious,
I rue over her loss.
These distances are witnesses,
To my misery, to my love.

Ancient reminders

My new shoe served to the dog on a platter.
Mirrors the clouds hanging above the sea.
(As it poured) Your storm water drainage its lost relevance,
He fled with his borrowed pedigree.

O tiller! the lord of margins,
Why don’t you harvest quick? They are all ripe!
And you must die tonight,

O Flatterer of the earth,
O son of the soil,
Leave the green fields,
And the poppies will be yours.

Let the song of the dawn
Echo across the mountain peaks.
The peace of the valley
May rise like the warm breeze.

There were just ancient reminders,
And pounding of the grandfather clock.

Post-oblivion

Stranded in the island of nothingness,
There is no unity of thought,
Just a random blob,
As if my existence is a fraught.

There were ample hands but not one finger raised,
Passions rise, but in a trivial haste.
“Let the light decide your fate!”
said God, waking up again.

“I now rise above oblivion”, said the mendicant friar,
“How much can one bear to bear?” said he,
The friar fought his own,
Your sins, he said, are mine.

Organise

(Courtesy: Barbelith Underground, The Adventures of the Little People)

Let’s organise ourselves,
Slash and burn,
Tease and turn,
No one can cause us harm.

Let’s organise ourselves,
Attack the stranger,
The lonely lion,
And march in one single file.

Let’s organise ourselves,
Be it my craft or your God,
Commonness shall dictate,
We won’t live and let you die.

Let’s organise ourselves,
No two thoughts for one,
That I have died eons ago,
So now we live and fight.

a poem written in the first hospital stay

i die a thousand deaths,
pierced by million needles,
i bleed death.

shivers in the nighttime,
showers of sweat in the day,
sickness sounds like summer days,

teeming with life and longing.

i shall survive,

to bleed more and cry,
become even weaker.

facing pain,
twisting my nerves, numbness sets it,
bringing freedom from existence.

666

a friend of mine tagged me for this little game:

The rules:
1. pick the 6th picture from your 6th photos folder
2. tell the story around it.
3. pass it on to 6 people

it is indeed a weird coincidence that the sixth picture of my sixth photos folder happens to be, ladies ... hold your breaths ... Lord Ganesha.
this is september 2007, ganesh chaturthi. people in Baroda going mad over the designs of Ganesha. this one's designed like how Odissi craftsmen portray Jagannath. I was a little apprenhensive about taking pictures about these idols. Infact, I am scared of idols as I am an agnostic. Such a blatant assertion of reverence towards a mythical being sometimes make me a little worried about the representations of anti-christ in the Bible. If i dissolve the religiousity of these idols and take them as mere works of art, then i am slightly comfortable. the sixth folder is full of ganesha's pix in my computer, some collected and some i captured while visiting various mandaps in Vadodara. i was disturbed because a week before i got this pictures mobs clashed in the city in the name of this god so that they get their share of 'blessings' . one person was killed in police firing -- all in the name of this idol.

People:
apurva
ridhi
priyanka
barun
tiki
ankita

Non-State Actor

You owned me for all these years,
Counted me all this while,
Trashed me when I chose to speak.

You addressed my parents, my hopes
Helped me cry, while I born.
Tossed me up in the sky, when I held my hand high.

“Count me in”, I said,
But I was being mocked,
Conspiring with the shadows, you called me the non-state actor.

There is more blood than all the reds,
While she hides me like that protective hen,
I was being called that hideous egg.

“Own up!” I begged,
“Shoot him”, the state growled.