Category: Poems
Mooning–Bring me Back
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT–NM
That First Glow
I’ll have to pull myself
In within me
Dig out again
Through the caverns of my being.
I’ve got lost in commercial ad-like dreams
I’ll have to reset my innocence
My childhood, my teenage years as it were
Which I new I would lose
When I was young and turn cynical
and codgy
How will I find a pebble?
Lost fifty years ago?
How will I become eternally optimistic? Again
Like a child
What is the trick?
Leaves of Grass–Revisited
LEAVES OF GRASS-REVISITED
We are but blades of grass
On our allotted graves
For a time we grow and
Re-grow
And then it is done.
We are dug up and thrown into
Our own patch of land.
Each dust particle a receptacle
Of our life’s memories.
We never die but grow
Up bright as little blooms
Swaying in the Sun
A pleasant breeze.
Some day they’ll
Sift the sands
And charge the grains
Perhaps some day we will live again.
White Paper
White Paper
Why do I need to speak?
People all around me are tripping over their tongues
Why needs must I speak?
People are just speaking to spit out some mud
On someone’s white clothes.
Why ever should I speak?
Their minds are always made up
They turn a blind ear to my speech.
God gave papyrus
God gave leaves
God gave walls and stone
The earth to write
My poems. I’ve sequestered them.
Why should I speak?
Crying doves and walking dogs—6 am
Crying doves and walking dogs—6 am
The Sun slows down on a dusty day
Tied by a string to the horizon.
As I pass by the forest land empty streets
a dove despairs
And wails ooh hoo hoo. A peacock soothes
And shrieks, ‘wait wait’ while
Tiny birds consternated in leafy trees
Chirp ‘yes, aye, that’s right, see see’
Some whistle in joy a passing gull
Agrees.
The mandir pandit as usual is singing
On the mike out of tune and dolefully
To a very patient sherawalli*
Three ladies march like cadets in the park
Breathing breathless home truths and esoteric
Recipes kids shout my turn my turn in street cricket
And the garden hose washing cars snipping hedges
And cooing babies a girl discusses her home
Work sitting on a gate step on her mobile phone
Panditji fades away blissfully into the distance
Whirring air conditioners tell me I’m home.
The title actually should be Crapping Dogs.
The opening line would/could/should be
Colonel Kaul takes his dog for its morning call.
*Sherawalli is Goddess Durga riding twelve armed on her sher (lion). Sherawalli is the one with the lion.
My mistake seems to be a tiger and eight arms. Here’s one with a lion and ten arms :-
Word Castles
Word Castles
Foolish man
Building sand castles
On speeding highways.
Foolish man
Dreaming dreams that sputter
And spittle down from
Soap bubble thoughts.
Foolish man
Daring to challenge the world
With mere
Words.
Spam of Pain
Ex-Glutton for pain
Younger
I said
Give me this
Give me this pain
Give me this feeling
I am a glutton for punishment
Experience
Now
I say ‘Please spare me!
There is enough of that stuff going around.
It will get to me anyway.’
Avast ! Fast Forward Now Things Might be Better
I did not do that
I missed that one
I should have continued with that
I made a mistake there
I made too many mistakes
What can I do then?
I can just write stuff that perhaps someone will read
If we survive till the next century.
