Enough

Maybe it’s no longer about

watching coloured buntings flutter on

buildings, no more rushing out

and coming back to youthful haunts

speckled with scents of night jasmine,

fallen in the dark hours before dawn;

no more about where the trips begin

and where they end, which lines are drawn

and which left broken and blurred;

It’s enough that you are upon

this pebble-strewn path, anchored

by wind and earth and these watersongs.

Enough that it’s your hand just above

me, stretched out in silence and in love.



Back to being my usual mouse- and couch-  potato self and happy to be back :-) 

Write...Edit...Publish...August 2015 : Spectacular Settings

Happy to report that one of my favourite bloghops Write…Edit…Publish... is back again, hosted by Denise Covey and Yolanda Renee. Thank you, ladies, can't stop smiling! I am rather partial  – the prompts are thought-provoking, meaty, delightful, and stretch one's writing muscles in undreamt of ways. Oh, there are a million more reasons to love it :) This month’s comeback prompt is on Spectacular Settings, click the link to read the rules and join in. 

Shells

The laughter’s gone from this heart.

the lamplight’s gone from this home;

the threshold, the corners are dark,

the ones who’d lit it up depart

for cities from where no letters come;

for cities that no one returns from.

The water’s as tall as the crops -

the river’s too full of herself,

ear by ear the grain starts to rot,

the young scatter in search of jobs,

the old watch unable to help;

the lamp stands unlit on its shelf.

The fathers can keep their eyes dry

and keep their words clipped and brief;

but they pause far too much, they sigh,

and their lips suddenly pull awry;

the mothers are too bowed to weep

gone to places even beyond grief.

The water stands as high as the rice

the harvest has stopped in its tracks;

the lamp flickers once before it dies -

the light lays its head on the thighs

of the dark and the young men pack

for cities, and they don’t come back.

We’re become the shell of a house.

We’re become the shell of a loving.

See how our garments fall loose.

See how our proud heads are bowed.

Once here the bulbul used to sing,

she’s now fallen quiet, there’s nothing.

You knew, didn't you?

You know, it’s not the distance or time,

tides of water and wind that made you drift

apart, the river’s the same, the skyline

a little changed, the nightfall is as swift,

the newspaper man calls round like before

everything as it was, untouched.  You stepped

away, one step and two, a thousand more

and a hazy mist of gold and green swept

you up on eagle wings into its heights.

Startled you, didn’t it? when you gripped

it? did thin and hazy have the right

to feel that solid? didn’t fit the script.

Even back then you knew, it wasn’t the tide

or the distance; the change’s always inside.

I wanted to tell you (again!) about this multi-author anthology available now at Amazon and Flipcart and Sapna and Indistore.  In case you don't have the foggiest, it happened sometime ago - this is the result of the Get Published contest by Indiblogger and Harper Collins India.  Two story ideas were submitted by me through this very blog, and one of them - At the End of the Parade - made the final cut, and is now part of this book. Nine stories from nine vibrant young Indian writers and one from yours truly! :)

Never mind the steps

You step through my life

more light of foot, yet sure,

when the fields are wide,

no latches to the doors.

Tracking prints is not

my thing, I never tried

to sift the sands, look for

exact trails and roads;

I know if I look hard,

the flattened undergrowth

will give me a sign, a mark

to show where you trod,

but I don’t need that now

because I know. I know.

On a borrowed net connection because I wanted to tell you about this multi-author anthology which is available now at Amazon and Flipcart and Sapna and Indistore.  In case you don't have the foggiest, it happened sometime ago - this is the result of the Get Published contest by Indiblogger and Harper Collins India.  Two story ideas were submitted by me on this very blog, and one of them - At the End of the Parade - made the final cut, and is now part of this book. Nine stories from nine vibrant young Indian writers and one from yours truly! :)

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!

Volta in your face

Well, I can’t do the volta to a turn -

it turns up by itself, twirls in at the start;

it won’t sit in its place, it will not learn

that timing is the pinnacle of this art.

It fidgets when I fit it for an octave

and it won’t agree to wait for the twelfth;

it will dance when it pleases, I must waive

all rules, it must decide things for itself.

I must be submissive, it must control

the style and metre of stanza and line.

It’s brash and pushy, grabs the writer’s role

thrusts me aside, writes out this life of mine.

Life can’t be a perfect sonnet for those

whose voltas come in at the start, or close.











I am travelling and will probably 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!

In the moment

What’s happening now, is this a life event

I’m supposed to take meaningful note of?

ignore the bunched up plastics, everyday stuff -

the radio chat on women and consent,

the eerie empty roads, the small sounds made

by a metal bubble as it skims along;

your hands on the wheel, understated strength

of man and machine at one; paltry shade

offered by palms, that the windshield fails to hold

like passing hands unable to get a grip

on glass, inscrutably smooth. Instinct’s fit

just to claw the trivial till it’s further palled.

The turn comes and passes, should it merit

a song and dance? well, I haven’t marked it.

This is the last write-it-as-it-comes post for sometime.  I am travelling and will be offline more often than I like :)  There are posts scheduled of course, and I will catch up with you as and when I can beg/borrow/organise a connection. Enjoy the poetry here and in the season/world wherever you are.  Stay well!

That's all I get to write

I keep thinking - I’ll write this or that

about your lashes, the way your knuckles fold;

how your voice sounds at the digital chat.

But I don’t; all things cannot be told

in neat verses, iamb by iamb, in slow lines

of pentametric perfection, rolled

and wrapped snugly in straight/slanting rhymes,

the syllable counts precisely controlled,

rising and falling even as your breath;

but maybe it’s ragged now, maybe you hold

your words and life back, their length and breadth

concealed. Maybe you too have grown old.

And that is all I get to write for verse:

your lashes; and how our worlds diverge.

Afterwards

It feels like a slight; unbearable snub

that everything’s the same, not one bloom

from the vases has drooped, the garden shrub

you had planted is still upright, the room

just as it was before, the cushions rubbed

threadbare where you had sat.  The planet zooms

on its exact track, no change in pace or hub.

Only you are gone, even your perfumes

linger still in wardrobes and empty gloves.

Ashes to ashes. A deadpan earth subsumes

every flake till nothing is left above.

The house’s strangely unchanged. I resume,

but with shifts in meanings of loss and love.

For a grieving friend, with love, respect and wishes for strength and peace as she copes with her loss.

Advice to a son

Image

If I’d known how, I’d have iced your cakes

with princesses in pink, and unicorns;

Plain speak

I want to speak to you so simply

so gently, just a tremor of air and silence,

a caress against the shell of your ear

without explanations of context

just the heel of one word followed by the next

just their bare feet touching down lightly

leaving no footprints, no tracks, not even a trace;

a breath of air mussing the hair

of palm trees in the sunset;

a finger brushing your cheekbones, your temples

so slight the movement that when

you look you feel nothing there. 

City walls and step-wells and piled up peels

Somewhere the lamps shine brighter, but here dim.

I balance on my lashes coloured lanterns

from an entire city lit up, the trembling glint

of glass-fire on water, the night’s darkness burns

with a sandpaper-sadness under my lids,

points out again how fruitless the returns,

the yearnings for things now lowered and closed.

The weight always hangs heavy on restless eyes -

motifs of calligraphies made into mosques

the architectures of reverence, and sighs,

inlays of centuries sketched and now lost,

and sleepless owl moons winging across skies.

Still carry within - the small-writhing husks,

the peels of years which vanished at the bend,

the slithery skins and scales of time piled up

into mountains of sharpness, stone-stiffened,

the city walls and step-wells untidily tucked

behind arches still standing though weakened.