PERMANENT WAY

This poem was prompted by the news that the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the highest, and surely the most spectacular in the world, is nearing completion.

***

The centuries were less than kind to you.
But then, virginity's a tease for both bully
and suitor alike: you could hardly think your coy
rebuffs would keep either away, you knew fully
what history meant, that empires destroy
to thrive. And there was the odd flirtation too.

The suitors left but the ravisher, none too gentle,
gorged in heat and scourged you with his lust.
A cynical world watched your screams abate,
your flailing spirit ground to conquest's dust,
a desiccated carcass. And now the tourists wait
like vultures, for tickets to Lhasa Central.

***

On Letting Go

These years will soon go by a-blur.
In a lonely room somewhere,
I'll live the past, the times with her.

Voices trilling in song or cheer,
Frills and laces, ribbons in hair,
These years will soon go by a-blur.

I'll think of eyes of twinkled laughter,
Monsters in closets, dolls in her lair:
I'll live the past, those times with her.

Of a child's kisses that healed a mother,
Adolescent fears and misread care,
These years will soon go by a-blur.

Shadows will sweep a desolate shelter,
No more now than a threshold bare,
and walls that whisper of times of her.

For I must know she's not mine forever,
Or else the rest is round despair.
These years will soon go by a-blur,
I'll live the past, the times with her.

Soul satisfaction....

AD.
(double click on painting for higher resolution)

Requiem

Gently please, don’t mind the dust. For this was organic too,
and shared air and breath with him, as did the roach
and the rodent. Step lightly round those scribbled scraps
that lie like leaves on untended graves. Sounds encroach,
even footfalls desecrate the quiet which wraps
this home turned cenotaph. For here silence grew

like an anthill, a maze of byways, histories trapped in a womb,
the fluid conscious of ages. Those books once lived and talked,
chattered to him like squirrels, or spoke gravely like the owl
as he fed them or was fed smiling, or laughingly mocked
like a master by his wards: a benign terror on the prowl.
Tread softly. They lie like children, dead now, in this catacomb.

***

The thirst.....

A.

Lets paints this world

Lets paint this world
to rival the songs
on the lips of that raindrop
falling
or is it dancing
maybe a half twirl?


Lets paint this world
and turn the sky green.
An audience in your show
the sun, mixes blue to its yellow
when it blows hot and cold!


Lets paint this world
using lipstick brushes
even if its just the air
it connects you and me
and many-a-times is the space
you demanded vociferously!


Lets paints this world
I have to paint it today
I cannot, any longer contain
This smile, the irrepressible child!

Raindrops

is it rain
or you within,
dancing in drops
on my parched skin?

*
each drop brings
a piece of sky
each pore
becomes an eye

*
dance in rain
I still do
and the rain dances
around you...

*

Insane

Soft, long fingers of a gentle breeze caress my hair; its moist lips plant teasing kisses across my face. And I feel very high.

Standing atop a thirteen story high building, I size up an arrowhead of pigeons fast approaching me, contemplating a Keanu-Reeves-look-ma-I-can-fly jump straight into them. But I wouldn't make a difference, would I, if I did that? If I bent my knees and pushed myself off the ledge, straight at them, it wouldn't affect anyone, would it?

For just a brief but seemingly inordinately long moment, some primordial instinct would make me spread my arms and flap them around before I plunge straight down and stain a sidewalk for a couple of hours or so, barely missing a lower-middle class matric-pass government office clerk carrying a white plastic bag with his lunch in it. He would turn around and stare at my smashed remains for a moment.

Maybe he would walk away, maybe he would be the first of a crowd of people who wonder what happened and why I had jumped. They would formulate theories in their empty little heads and hypothesise among each other, the reasons for why I jumped. They would have something to talk about when they meet a friend in the bus, or with people at work. But their lives would not change, and my flight to freedom would only be my escape.

But their lives would not change, and my flight to freedom would only be my escape.

I look up and see this azure blue sky as a ocean of opportunities, an ethereal level of consciousness with ideas swimming about frantically like little fish in the sea, waiting for a tempting thought with implementation as bait to dangle tantalisingly and hook them and reel them in. Ideas of all shapes and sizes: some are small, probably affecting a small minority of living beings with meaningless implications of redemption or happiness. Others I see as large, probably having the potential to transform the world as I see it. It can be huge. I know it is. And there is this one large crazy white idea that I have seen swimming among all these small little gray opportunities. And I know that it is for real because it is distinct. I have seen it all these years, and have meditated unsuccessfully with unflagging resolve to reach out and trap it. Perhaps I want it too badly.

I have a desire, a lifelong want, an unsatisfied need to change this world- to impact every living being that exists. My efforts, sadly, have yielded no result. I have failed. Even now, when I look down, I see cages around people as they go about their mundane lives with planned daily routines. Cages that don't allow these people to think beyond their limitations, cages that prevent them from reaching out and plucking ideas from that orchard of opportunities; doubts and inertia that bind their thoughts. And all I wanted was to destroy these cages- to grab that big idea with both hands and expand the collective consciousness of all alive and dead, to zap their cages and their binds, and free their minds. I have tried, and I have failed. And nobody knows.

Their life has not changed, and my flight to freedom is only my escape.

This ledge that I stand on has grown on me. My bare feet rest comfortably on it, but all things, good or bad, must come to an end. And so, I must take my leave of you and all others who inhabit this realm of consciousness to make my way back home, my goal remaining unattained.

My goal. When I talk to people about it, they look at me strangely, and smile. They agree with me; they nod their heads, look at each other as if they understand what I am saying. Some say that they admire what I am trying to do, before bursting into laughter. That something still plagues my mind: a doubt still persists. So before I take leave of you, I have just one question.

POEM FOR N.A.

You wear your darkness like a cape,
comfort-clung with the ease of years,
trust requited in its drape:
perfect sanctuary for fears.

Each languid swish fans the air,
unsettles winking stars like dust:
sequined specks in a cloud of hair
that shimmer with each gentle gust.

But these are no fairy lights:
no friendly goblins’ tease and play,
nor merry dance of elves and sprites
to keep a wicked witch away.

For they are fires lit by shades
to cleanse the fearful night of dread,
and light a way through pain-hung glades
to take the living to the dead.

***