Breathless

Credit

I’ve read somewhere – a prophet spent

forty days in the wilderness.

A pair of brothers were absent

for fourteen years more or less.

In strange, nested mythologies,

passages marked in sands and wars.

And in here-n-now territories

time buckles under tormentors.

I heard the empty vessels wreck

my world, too close their keels and teeth.

Saw too, a knee pressed on a neck

and shut my eyes, forgot to breathe.

The mills, I’ve heard, grind small but slow –

how many more aeons to go?

Just one face

Time wrings the beauty out of everything -

the morning now just shattered shards of light,

the depth of darkness sucked off from the night,

the moon crushed, forlorn, like a crumpled mothwing.

The road’s shell shocked, the world’s a drunken camp,

the heart of workdays stifling, oppressive,

the weekends frazzled with no rest to give,

the days hamster wheels, the sun a rubber stamp.

Just one face in the crowd means breathe and dream;

just one glance, one word can forge a connect.

Just one face missing and decades are wrecked

and years become an angsty high-pitched scream.

We either speak too soon or speak too late;

the chance knocks once and does not know to wait.

Time-warp

It often seems a warp, that time exists

only to be bound up around your wrists

only to be measured by your pulse

the sole time-keeper, everything else’s false.

Did I love you yesterday, before I knew

that I was I?  and that you were you?

I only know I love you endlessly

today and tomorrow, all that’s to be.

I feel that now, but then I also know

a line divides now and all tomorrows;

we each leap over without being aware

and some things come; some don’t make it there.

What stands the test and comes through pure and true

who knows? But for now your wrists, veined in blue.

This one's a response to a comment-poem a reader left here couple Sundays ago.  A question in the final stanza that is quite mind blowing if one stops to think on it. Thank you desk49.

I am travelling and will be offline more often than I like.  Enjoy the poetry here and in the season/world wherever you are.  I will catch up with you as and when I can beg/borrow/get a net connection.  :) Stay well!

Smoke shadow

There’s no movement, except a thread

of smoke throws a feathered shadow

on the far wall, electric’s gone dead,

the candle stands stock still, only its burning head

trembles a little within its diffuse halo.

The props for small talk, tables, chairs, party hats;

elbows off please, smiles on, preoccupied -

even smoke has shadows! how to trump that?

entire months fallen domino-flat

as the years windmill from side to side.

The anniversary post that isn't

The time when unknown trees

muscle their way into  top-of-mind
I dream of chinars*
flaming in the high winds
and a fast narrow stream somewhere
slowing down inch by cooling inch
it’s a separate matter that I’ve
never been to Kashmir
or anywhere in the high
latitudes during
the leaf-loss season.

 

I forget anniversaries

of minor events
each event flames once
and drops
red trajectories cut and dried
sun-crinkled on the grey sidewalk.
Time runs out a little faster than before.

 

 

*Oriental plane, maple like leaves.