1

Who is this hooded man?

The women are at their frivolous pursuitsAt lake, with a shameless crow on the tree.Soon the crow will be black in wistful airWith a princess’ jewel, to women’s shouts,Their delicate fingers pointing to the sky.There is a Krishna- flippancy to the crowThat flies away with a jewel hiding shame.The women walk on their hushed whispers.

The hooded man seems a crow running awayWith the princess’ beauty on rising bosomThat went up and down on the golden jewel.He is in fact a self-redeeming black soulA bored painter of languid women of myth.These women are figures from his canvasBored with pointing fingers at crows in sky.

(Raja Ravi Verma’s painting:

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2

Scraping the night

I have to be a cat scraping the nightConfusing between idea and thing.You may call me a soft landing catOn night’s tin roof with no hot feet.Its corrugations collect windy leavesHaving lost the previous day’s sun.The cat is missing and since gone .Rain snakes overflow corrugationsWith blowing yellow leaves to floor.

But the cat is messing and not goneWith a kitten held by a loose scruff.Mom cat is searching for other nightOn another hot roof, in scalded feet.Kitten turns small night’s scraping.The scraping of the night is a soundIn the inner lobe of an ear’s poems.Cats are poems on your hot tin roofThey sky-drop and flow as rain watersSnaking through night’s corrugations.

(A gentle recall of Raja Rao’s novel The Cat and Shakespeare)

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3

Money

Times we feel warm and upbeat in pantsWith money ,as with pebbles from beachNear a sand castle built on our child foot.We bring home pockets of cash to forgetHot flushes, our years hot with knowing.

We know oldies with their gleam in eyesAbout certain money schemes hatchingGold ducks , the gold from duck stomachsDropping as Sunday’s eggs in bare fundas.And later, on four shoulders towards dust,The gleam would go home to their sunsetsBeyond rocks, their children smiles gone.

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4

White clouds

In that sky, like preternatural birds ,Lay soft white clouds, full of rainDrops for red roses by the lakesideLying in wait for somebody ‘s carBoot to pick up so as to lie in waitWith the wet clothes on balconies.

The white clouds are wet clothesHung by the sky gods for drying.As they drip-drop they will turn rainDrops on lake roses lying in waitFor cars to pick up, to lie in waitOn balconies with drying clothes.Meanwhile , soft white clouds willTurn temporary cat’s eyes peeringDown in our camera’s pure viewTo lie in wait permanently in eyes.

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5

The god of the hills

All the machinery is there ,a siren’s blowA blade, a voice to the right, some words.The blade cuts through ice, mud and liesSaying it is words from the night, a sleep.It is bodies in their own words from spaceA chopper on its way down , men stoppingShort, other people living and some deadFor a hill visibility that is missing from life.

Silence is all ,a stone phallus in the hillsSnug in the cave ,a light from earth lampA blue and dusted god with a river in hairAnd a moon no longer super, far from us.Words are his dreams, a god in snow hills,A god submerged in the stream of his wife.

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6

Stages

It turned out their world was not a stageBut many stages as players looked downTheir eyes popping out in disbelief aboutThe growing years of mustache and gloryTurning to mud , in cloud dust and rumble.

A handful was the rat-slime about a templeThat turned eyes to pearls, passing stages.And nothing of them that doth change butDoth suffer a river change, a rat that cameCrawling from the trapped valley of a glacier.

(Thousands of pilgrims to the Himalayan shrines of Kedarnath andBadrinath have perished ,caught in a flash flood triggered by a cloudburst :

Those are pearls that were his eyesNothing of him that doth changeBut doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange

The tempest : William shakespeare

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7

The super-moon

My super-moon drifted away to its sleepBehind rain-clouds ,while a super-momDanced away blues on the small screen.Big bright orb was ghost on another sky.

My purest view had to be near a guessBehind rain – cloud, a dastardly destroyerOf men in folded prayers on the snow hills.

A moon ghost became far from my truthWith men and trees across its luminosity,Ghosts of men and dark trees in a breezeViolently disagreeing with its astral views.

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8

The jungle flower

Near the lazy rock and its green skyA jungle flower would bloom whitelyLike whirring wheel of a firecracker,A toothed wheel of tiny locomotion.The breeze stirred its shape into many,With false feet of anthers , disheveledHair of dancing to a morning breeze.

Near its heart is a dash of soft orangeSet in a white crystal of perfect view,With contrapuntal note by brown beeHovering to a hesitant landing awayFrom prying camera for macro views.

The rock rose grandly to a summer skyLooking down on a single jungle flowerA white pride in its green rock bottom.The bee landed briefly on bee outlines,Many shapes vaguely embracing bee.

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9

Well being

Like the old poet we had a well to look inWith a bucket lowered gently to touch itsPerturbed waters in their broken moons.Midnight was fearsome with green snakesLurking in ghostly hibiscus trees standing.

A boy in knickers could not bend too lowFor fear in belly, with no Narcissus -love.Fear perked up like a piece of balcony skyAnd crawled in half-pants to feet below.

The bucket fell to it with deep dull thudAs its rope had slithered down a pulleyLike a vague water snake searching frogs.The waters came up to sprinkle moonsIn tiny puddles on the stone saucer rim.

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10

Sleep

Sleep is not doing nothing with bodyBut a possibility of switching offLike for instance in sleeping with.You have to sleep with a possibility,A metaphor for love that kills sleep.

Just when you turn a blind cornerAt the corner tree in a windy danceYou sleep off your wind in the hair.The wind gone the hair still standsAs piece of avant garde reporting.

You only have to sleep once withAnd not do anything with the wind.What we mean sleep we mean with.Or if you please, we may agree to off,And not alone in a midnight pillow.

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11

Agape

While at the stand we keep wonderingWith mouths agape, forgetting to close.All the time we ask immortality forgettingTo desire eternal youth to fading bodies.

The cicada keeps its mighty mouth openIts sounds a never ending stream of youth.We open our drawers only to keep themWide and agape as our mouths wonder.Wonder never ceases while youth is gone.

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12

Own

My own thing is this very empty spaceSince nobody has claimed this as ownLike the dog on a leash claiming his ,Shouting at tree’s silences in corners.

The cricket claims his own in the bushAnd around a forgot house on the lake,Now a grand view of buzz- mosquitoes.

Poems are buzz- mosquitoes owning allThis piece of unreal estate at midnight.Their shrill cries are documents of title.

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13

Lines

A few red spots turn lines as a sun dies.They are on a body flying southwards.Birds are white spots under fingernails.Fingers flutter wings to call birds down.Tiny red spots disappear from a dusk skyAnd the body turns to sky at a soft duskAnd azure, beyond a brown rock of lake.

The lake swirls around the birdless rockAnd the rock swirls around a birdless skyAs the birds turn fingers fluttering wingsCalling other birds down from a dusk sky.Birds are now white spots, v’s on canvasMay be lines from white spots in fingers.Sky is a line joining white spots of birds.The rock is a line living in the lake’s line .Sky is a fine line living above a lake’s line.

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14

Smile

Just this happiness wish at the street cornerWith no birthday in cakes and songs on lips,As you coast along on a floating noise of feet.A smile curves at lips corner near silver hair.Today is not even your birthday but could be.Who knows somebody is smiling in your back.I for one smile behind my back at your corner.

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15

Inchoate

In the hours before a night crashesOur meanings are formed as wings.Wings are a shambles of flimsy artExquisite art of a silver filigree doneIn sleep and dreams between sleep,The mothwings left on a rainy night.

Marginal words are inchoate ideasA shambles of thought , a silver filgreeOf wings that pile up like fallen leavesTo be scooped up the next morningTo throw away behind a white wall.

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16

The wild elephant

The tribal guide would not not let us downInto the crunch of leaves and tiger pawprints.From such height you can see the mountains.

The secret is to hold on and not let it moveTo mountains over thorns , low-slung bushesWith blue clouds at the top presaging storm.

Witout ankush it takes us to the inner animalWth trees uprooted, mountains pulled nearerWithout the dusk shining from the rear flanks.

Muthu teaches us to wield ankush to it to goWhere we want to go, to the blue mountains.

(The mind is a rider on an elephant. ‘My own mind used to wanderwherever pleasure or desire or lust led it, but now I have it tamed, Iguide it, as the keeper guides the wild elephant-Buddha)

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17

Cats in the clouds

Rainless and cotton-white it had turnedA whiskered cat staring down from eyeOver the spiked antenna of the neighborA picture of a ghostly vision of a feline.

How can it disappear from my picture?It is as if cloud cats jump walls to disappearIn the bushes to the other side of tree.

The eye-hole stays but the rest of the catHas gone , cat-silent and rubber-footed .A cloud-eye is what remains of its ghost.Cats disappear from the virtual pictureThe same way as they do in the real sky.

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18

Closure

The dad’s absence hole is waiting closureOf a grief never felt, yet staying open inThe space between us and a body’s sleep.We live alongside a grief’s body staringAt the ceiling fan that has never buzzed.

The fan was never really meant to buzzFor the tiny blood flowing up and down,A bundle of baby flesh shrieking closure.The gaping mouth in its mother’s breastStays open for closure of grief never felt.

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19

The hibiscus

We have never looked deep in its heartIt carries at the top waving in the breezeLoving a bee and the colors of butterfly.

Cognition names it hibiscus for poemsBut poems are no hibiscus, with anther,At summit sprinkling pollen on breeze.

Airy creatures will land on the summit.They will make it a hibiscus pure viewFor a stamen to nod in excited whispersFor the breeze to carry a floral message.

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20

Password

You say it and shall pass likeChange of guard in Elsinore fort.But the lockbar does not slideLike half-open toothless mouth .You shall remember who momHad been before her marriage.

You remember mom all the wayBefore she was dead and goneFurther back to silly giggling girlBefore she had worn that fineryTo her new life, your new birth.

Her own lockbar opened to enterThe half-open toothless mouthWith a password open sesame.One always forgets it to return.The captcha is hard to decipher.

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21

The silver mountain

The silver mountain disclosed answersTo a meditating saint in its deep recessNow sky blue with priests intercedingFor us on behalf of a phallic stone god.

Then were no blue – red painted pillarsEnclosing people bathing phallus godsWith smooth gluey banana milk paste,Just a saint and his god in banyan treesSprouting from silver recesses for wind.

The saint would look for beauty in jungleAnd in silver mountains, on his cross-legsBlinded by a gold of sun , a child’s doubtsA flicker in the mind like a child’s smile.

We search beauty in blue stone pillarsClimbing kitschy colors engulfing men.Their beauty flows in white guey pasteAround phallus gods in silver mountain.The mountain is no more silver but blueWith white clouds about it as gluey paste.

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23

Conversation

We did little to further the conversation.Our gestures would vanish in the wet air,Our gait formal and awkward in the sandAs cactii bloomed between legs of dogs.Stray dogs jumped and ran to other dogsBeyond the mound, to fishermen’s shacksThe shacks that sported colorful garmentsBefore the conversant sea of fishing nets.

The nets broke off ongoing converationBetween moluscs and hole drilling-crabsMaking drag-marks as if of formal nets,Nets broken like holes in mosquito netsLetting in mosquitoes to buzz near ears.The sky stretched like a drying garmentBroke in holes to let in sea-conversationWith a moon that would listen endlessly.

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24

Unread

I would better smell the unread growingTo a huge pile of golden straw at duskIn a read later’s vast continuum of sky.

The gold shall disappear at early dawnWhen a whole new pile appears to smellFresh dew-wet straw scraping the blue.

We always remain unread straw people.We are for demolishing our straw pilesTo wear their hats in our literary leisuresBut always put it off to tomorrow’s dusk.

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25

Enema

All this sadness is hers and not mineIt is her kneecap that is not workingTo climb the stairs powered by a liftNot working now , sadly, out of power.

This sadness is hers she refuses to ownAnd passes it to me nursing my own,My own sadness congealed in bloodAs the general sadness of humankind.Sadness is not hers but enema maker’sPain in the arse is mankind’s, not hers.

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26

Phone gossip

We call it the possibility of a happeningA language of thought, of a meditationA way of happening, not just an eventAs the phone unfurls on a pair of ears.

We construct life ,wall by wall ,corridorsIn empty spaces of language and speech.In the graybeards exist many possibilitiesTo hymns, God-invocations and silences.

The phone vibrates a silence of thoughtBy hand gestures, a pantomime on wall.The ears speak actions jumping on wall,As eyes remain screwed to their ghosts.

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27

The reluctant old man

In the beginning it would sound funnyLike the short squat cries of brown birdsThat have come back to a roost season.Any old man has got to look ridiculousAnd feel it so in short squat bird cries.

He did not feel that awkward before birthWhy now before a locomotive of a diseaseThat will carry him to the little black dotsOn starred skies’ map, like dots of townsOn a lazy map lying stretched to eternity.Disease takes him there chugging clacketyBut on foot the old man is rather reluctant.

(For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it. But tolook at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dreamover the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why,I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessibleas the black dots on the map of France? If we take the train to get toTarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. One thingundoubtedly true in this reasoning is this: that while we are alive wecannot get to a star, any more than when we are dead we can takethe train.

So it doesn’t seem impossible to me that cholera, gravel, pleurisy &cancer are the means of celestial locomotion, just as steam-boats,omnibuses and railways are the terrestrial means. To die quietly ofold age would be to go there on foot.”)

29

The driver’s mustache

A wide and long handlebar mustacheTrembled with life and a car smoothlyFlowed as life, driving its bloody heartBut one morning as the sun would riseIts blood trickled down to its last sand.

Two plastic tubes could smooth its flowBut tubes are the commerce of medicineThat flows smoothly, on warm pockets.And the mustache had to stop quiveringWith all emotion as pockets went cold.

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30

Derelict

On the upper story is telltale remainderOf a fine smile of yesteryears , a directMessage from Christ, a new shiny starIn plastic paper in light, gently swayingTo December wind’s Christmas carols

A fine celebration over christmas cupcakeBy rubber man now south with daughterGrown and graceful, a fine Maria of angelA lily fragrant from a monsoon breaking.

Our heads are derelict , carrying ruinedWalls from yesteryears flaked off by rainAccumulated rain of bitter experiencesBut the remnants still sport a life-givingA green plant shooting from derelict space.

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31

Grass lily

A bearded yankee sang of leaves of grassBut where were its flowers bursting in color?A bulb of ego can sprout in verse and skyAs water would hit India’s bottom of windIts hills shedding the tears of a virgin’s loss.

The grass lily’s color hits you in the navelAnd leaves you dazed , prostate and flailingJust woke from a sleep of temporary fugue.When in camera view , it is unearthly colorFar away from rainbow’s seven or comboA view where flowers are simply overstated.

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32

Waterfall

Nothing about it is permanent exceptGoing over edge in the gondwana plainA ninety feet drop in an abyss of sprayA fog of death ‘s hell, a brimstone frameSerrated like winter sky , a green bushHanging slowly, now here , now gone.

Go down to the hellish depths,in its fog.Look your eyesight up to a pure whiteStreak from an old sky, a permanent skyHolding no permanent water ,but a fallA fall dizzily impermanent, set in its blue.

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33

Full

Is there a thing that is full like a ripenessThat is all, of seasons , through the yearI ask in eyes full with factory made tears,As tears do not flow back in drain mesh.

The eyes are full of an optimism of night.Night is full with absence of sleep and wind.Wind is full with a rainy optimism from hills.Life is full with language and no currency.Currency is half-full with its hope and faith.

The night is full with a stick tapping sound.The earth makes sounds with a watchman.Night watchman’s mouth makes its soundsWith a blow whistle at a night of fullness.Life is full with words and sounds and linesAs fruit to be dropped any time in fulnessIn season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

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34

Tea

In afternoons we drank tea that roseIn mild hot vapors from our deep cupSweet to a severe tongue of scalding,Woken up from a sour belly’s dreamsOf a fearful afternoon of midsummer.

Tea would go into hiding behind bushesWaking in afternoons of female handsDeft for plucking, tongues busy crying.

Three leaves and bud go back, to basketsLike dreams plucked one by one in sleepFor tea- taste by expert tongue and finger.Only the best would pass the test leavingThe unselected crying in afternoon sleep.

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35

Chain

The words will go on as eternity chainLinking endless skies of watery nights,Words trickling down from dark nights .Words that have been stars shimmeringIn sleep’s crevices , in its secret places,Words not coming out wearing a meterBut a plain rhythm like water falling offThe leaking faucet at the midnight hour.I share their eternity in this being chainThe awful sounds of an alphabet’s musicLike graffiti on the city’s rocks in lakesAs birds whiten them with fevered flights.

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36

Bokeh

At least the finite will keep the breath intactIn the end , till the mountains in a blue hazeThe twin hills that seemed to climb the skyFor a telltale eagle to beat about the bush.

The bush does nothing except to sit prettyThe lizard is its home ,a destination comfortAn earth not moving away to a far off near.

Bushes do not move but think as if to moveBut not to a shocking loss of their finitenessTo indifferent infinity of hills not being there.

In a bokeh of a pure view I shall fix the focusRound the lizard to rescue bush and myselfFrom the infinity of a bare naked visual field.

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37

The library

With not much of a sugar in the eyeAnd nothing coated with sweetnessIt is a vestigial fear of rain and cloudsAs the books stack up to the infinityFrom a hyphenated to a seeing skyWhose stars turn sand grains of sea ,Each a microcosm writ from a night.Books can contain anything of lightThey take away your breath smartlyAs eyes adjust to their intense light.

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38

Bones

At times hard facts would touch our tiny feetAs they flipped charred bone pieces in the sandFrom freshly smoked men , in spirals of smoke.

The waters shimmered down skirting the hillThrough the upright palms on the other sideNodding their vigorous heads to newer bonesOn their way to the river bed to turn smoke.

They were fine clay , the shards of burnt earthOnly yesterday’s hard facts with their own feet.

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39

Absurd

She asks death’s lord god to defer his visitUntil grandchild’s wedding and her wardrobe.Her travel plumes wait in night’s black-yard.You see his smirk, her admission of defeatAs uptight dress is getting ready for journeyAnd a slip is in hand with unknown number.

Who is admitting defeat in this waiting gameAnd who will blink first, as her eyes meet his ,In this absurd script , written afresh each timeWith a smirk alternating between him and her?

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40

Sleep in a train

These are my real things born of a sleepThe real objects existing out of my sleepOn disembodied walk with a lonely trainIn its tracks continuing to its gray gravelEndlessly as my own objects , that haveBorne the brunt of temporary existence.

My existence is temporary to the trainAnd the gravelly things hitting its bottom,Sparks that fly off its wheels as tangents,Temporary things but real sleep things ,Light sculptures in the night of the train.Sleep is light sculpture in a night of sky.The train’s light beam is sleep flying off,A temporary thing waking from the night.

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41

The broken world

In the night we collect pieces of a broken worldFor the after-life of a body promised, an illusionOf seeing, a rainbow now shimmering, now gone .The world’s whole remains shattered to this dayA sound broken in parts, a color diffused to sky.There is the body gone to the mountain breezeBroken from our world, away from our touching.Let us sing of this broken world, its shattered skyThe silhouette of a body disappearing to sunsetA song broken from breeze, a broken mountain .

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42

Breeze

The child wind is a spirit, like the fallen leafThat rolls along towards the earth’s infinityRiddled with false matter from its past sky.The mischief maker touches human cheeksProvoking them to endless fits of kiddy mirthWith the hair falling loosely about like grassUnfurled in the hours before a wind gets it .

Breeze is no laughing matter in a hand fan,Nor in trees shaking with excess sunshineOn the days when mercury rises in the glass.Shake trees , will you? asks nostalgic mom,Her sultry despair climbing hard nut treesLooking for child of the wind in neem trees.Actually it is found shaking a polythene bagIn a bedraggled bush, just outside of the city.

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43

Fairy tales

It looks you are through with the stockOf fairy tales told in the evening hourAs the night’s stars appear one by oneTo occupy their positions in the hall.A soft breeze will stir in jasmine bushFrom evening’s wetness of fresh leavesAnd come to far reaching conclusionsAs to the prince finally saving the dameSo everyone is duly happy at hall’s end.

The hall is empty with the stars comingOne by one, as your breeze gently stirsIn the flower bush and the garden lizardLooks at your waiting for the next move.The lizard is your own word in the offing.Your reasons are a grand abeyance showAs the lizard is waiting for the next moveAnd a prince moves ahead on horsebackToward everyone’s happiness of wedding.

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44

Interior

The softness of its textures is my possibilityA skilled assembly of corners in my space.Here I create space as time’s multiplication,In wind-blown doors and curtained windowsBrushing palpable wind, the colors of prism.

The colors are my ghostly existence outside,A sun dwelling in my senses, ruffling my hairCreating dark patches of my exfoliated skin.The sun lives in my interior as room partner ,An extension of space through several times.

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45

Faith

All that is wrong is righted in the body.Several things keep fighting in its liquid.A tiny new mess of creatures will triggerFisticuffs and liquid risings in red blood.They are not welcome to add to its heatAs the mercury is rising in a piece of glassAnd we are highly helpless in our blood.

A fierce lady comes over new neem leavesHer tongue sticking out, our own mother.She rules our tiny creatures who shall goAt her leafy touch, her tongue sticking out.She will right all that is wrong in the bodyIn smoke and incense, in a few body shakes.The creatures shall leave at her command.The mercury shall no more rise in our blood.

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46

Water

They say we are ninety percent of water.We are hydro-static about it naturally,In our grand ecstasy of a tongue touchingThe back of the throat shouting hoarsely.

The throat goes kaput as our ten percentTurns a notch up, to form a series of holesIn earth pot for throwing our ten percentIn streams flowing , as water to the earthAnd a part of ten per cent to fire and sky.

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47

Frame

The yellow leaf is not an autumn leafBefore falling to the pure view frame.When inside the frame it will not fallLike the painted leaf of the story one.Only outside will it fall and loosely off.

The gold of it arises from a sunriseOf the balcony, in shadows to form,Birds forming to wake on the house.And when they do they are little v’sPainted in the gold of a dawn’s sky.

Just juxtapose yellow leaf with paper,The paper of a pink flower tremblingAs in deep cold before a soft breeze.You now have pink plus yellow frameIn the slightly inebriated morning skyWithout its native hues of resolution.

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48

And you

All night these very ants are workingIn the computer on their white stuff,Data packets ,bits and bytes on backTheir back turns heavy , a leaden backOf sorrows in holes, a night left behind.

The day will begin with your magicalLine drawn round to keep them awayYou will take your little pesticide stickTo draw a round charmed inner lineAs your lips will tremble with words.

Your words shall disappear with antsAt dawn, as their holes are filled againWith new white stuff , sorrows broughtIn endless new lines on internet wiresTaking data parcels below their bodies.And you are left behind, your silly words.

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49

Balance

What have they done, these tiny ants,To her inner bone ear of many yearsOf waiting not to die and turn fossil?Ants too do not want to die but wait,As they crawl a mouse-pad and mindIn the smallness of our larger years.Wonder how they keep their balance.

The ears are used to determine yearsOf fish, that have their otoliths intact.Can we know the ants’ years by ears?Wonder if ants have ears as they walk.But one thing is clear in our own ear.They seem in collusion with maggots.

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50

Culture in dust

You bring up the great Gatsby in an old jacketIn layers of dust on hard backs writ in fingersSurprise flowers in dust, not fully gathered yetBut soon turning a sticky mess in earth’s crust.

A silent man of movie turns away from soundHe thinks is a mere fad that will go away to sky.You bring up the silent movie of people talkingIn slow eyes , exaggerated gestures and drawls.Culture is flowers in dust, a sticky mess indeed.

Old man Borges imagined rows of books to roof,And their content spread in his blind mind’s eye .No longer is rows of dusty books left to imagine.

Books are electrical worms crawling in handsets.Culture is no more flowers in dust but plastic stuffThat is immortal like a polythene bag that rustlesIn a morning breeze, for ever on a wayside bush.

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51

Mother’s day

Some times it pays to think without bonesThe arm crook of sleeping mom with her kidMy own head that is still bones nested in flesh.

A pot that had held her silence is my memory,A river of purification in a boat, from behindAs I would hurl her silence in revving waters ,To return to the shore with no looking back.

This night I look back to hear her lip silence,From up there in the wall looking down at me.

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52

Pure View

The pure view envelops the light withinWeaving darkness around core of being.Leaf around leaf promises a deep flowerNestled in contrast, a fierce independenceUntrammeled by a reality check of color.

The color is moss green away from pink.Pink is leaf around leaf, petal after petal.The pink reinforces a forced moss-greenOf leaves mimicking tiny ground leavesOf slippery earth surfaces , rained walls.

Men are daubed in pink, women in russet.Sun turns blushing red, a bleeding shame.The trees soar leaf after leaf, to a blue sky.The sky turns pure view, cloud after cloud.Pure view is nature brazenly imitating art.

( Taking pictures from Nokia Pure View 41 MP camera phone ispure joy , an act of willing suspension of disbelief)

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53

The music of flowers

The petals ranged against a centralityTo a pitch of thought, flowing sideways.While a song was perfect for their beesTheir fragrance was a rhythm of paper,A pink paper of written needles piercingAn invisible space,an early morning fog.

Pink -white petals fell one on the otherTo the earth of everyone’s muddy refuge.Their music was funeral in loud trumpet.Their color rustled against a broken sky.Their earthly sojourn will be a whimperA brief shout , to whoever it may concern.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: the music of flowers

54

Paper flower

A pink bougainvillea would spread outOn a dumb computer that is far fromExcited over its chromatic extravaganza.A crackling paper petal leaves you coldWith no scent of the neighbor jasmine.

The paper petal is surrogate for a poem,Especially after flower falls to the earthAnd is not a sticky mess in mud,valiantlyFighting your and its earthly ephemeralityFor days on end in the morning breeze.

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55

Ekphrasis- a quarry in ruins

This time we did not go to the twin sister hills.We changed our track to a clearing in the rocksTowards the long arms of a dead stone quarryAs gloomy machines poked an enormous sky.The quarry holes shimmered down somewhereAccumulating rain water that came and wentThrough monsoon and summer , rain and sun.

The machines fell silent like holes they had dugNow accumulating dead time in their emptiness.Their twisted arms now gather the rusts of time.The holes they made to the silence of the hillsHave vanished in the quarry’s bottomless history .A green mosque stood by a silver oak in prayer.Its walls whisper noon prayers , with lips gone.

(An ekphrasis is a verbal representation of a visual representation, asort of art on art, an effort to fuse together space and time. Thepoem is a verbal representation of an essentially spatial experienceof photography, a visual experience of a visit to a condemned stonequarry)

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: a quarry in ruins,ekphrasis

56

The daily routine

Your daily routine shall keep you aliveAnd not unusually dead on some daysWhen you are with cats play-acting sleep.All you do is stare and stare and stareFrom the whites of your opalescent eyesTheir tears fed by ophthalmic drops.

Just imagine what it is like to be deadTo watch yourself alive as if a haystackRising from a brown earth to a blue sky.Near a shaved tree ,the eyes look dead,Shriveled up like autumn on the earth.

Morning of the poet awakens promptlyTo take his medicine and goes to sleepWithout loss to complete a daily routine.The poems would rise to a glassy skyBroken like eyes crinkled in a wan smile.

(…on a typical day in the last year of William Burroughs’s life hewould awaken in the early morning and take his methadone (hebecame re-addicted to narcotics in New York in 1980, and was on amaintenance program the rest of his life) and then return to bed…)

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/06/william-s-burroughs-daily-routine/

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

57

Space

The way a new space crowded in on usIt was time that it had stifled our throatsLeaving no chinks in our space for breath.Space will soon go out of breath in sky.The sky will go out of breath in a spoof.

We zoom into frontiers of space in hillsWhere they sit unmoved and breathing.A touch will bring them forward to mindsOverwhelming us to breath, like a womanThat stifles breath in a preternatural hug.

We now close space with the finger’s flick.Space will overfly us in Ganga over head.We hold our breath to experience its lack.Space flows over us in preternatural time.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

58

The pigeons

Their slow guter-gu dragged the day endlesslyOn mid-day’s napping children waiting vaguelyTo walk the hot sands of a dry river to the boat.They had made their family that season in twigsBrought from the guava tree of our neighbors.

They marked time to this old time of the yearsFilled with gray smoked memories of a womanWho had fed children with love in cashew nuts.Her nuts would leave fragrances of roasted loveMixed with an endless guter- gu of the pigeonsFrom their holed coop built on the barn’s wallAs it overflowed with a neighbor’s annual rice.

They flew in our faces from pictures of a river-seaIn the very space where they would live with cowsAnd monks donning ocher robes to sea temples.They flew in our faces from the tombs of sultansWhile they mapped their sleeping places in white.

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59

Mere

Past savannas, across the green horse-pasturesWith the snowed hills rising above them quietlyAnd in several landscapes, one is moon-struckBy a mere, just a mere semantic, the keyword.

The keyword is mere, from the poet’s struggleLike the artist who begins to paint with his words.Moon comes in just like that, like a pink IndianaOf cartographic need, the chosen color of map.Just and mere are freely interchangeable words.

A poem has to rise from somewhere in the word.Like words are , poems are mere chance eventsAbetted by mere absence of the definitive article.Poems are made from mere individuality of wordsEach of them carrying their unique life histories,Being rebels for cause, to beat the crap out of life.

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60

The grandchild’s marriage

The trees fall silent to the air-conditionerIn a silence of aliveness that is a pause to liveTo shriek out your existence of omnipotence.You scream and you exist beyond the bridge,With lung power to shout out death’s silence.

This silence drowns the awkward sounds of life.A grandchild’s marriage is the very pause in lifeTo re-validate your birth and fleshly continuationA shout from your lungs, a declaration of power.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: the grandchild'smarriage

61

The page

The page begins herein for me to take upWhere I left off in the middle of yesterdayA big day to the day’s before, the then page.The day is a page blank and cruelly mindfulImpelling a keyboard, the scroll of a night.

The page causes a sputter ,a sound in furyEnding up in a spoof, crossing sound barrier,In a dust of sound , a light sawdust of stars.The finite sky is a page left off in the middle.The infinite sky is an endless scroll of pages.

Mom is a page torn off from the book of sky,A page that sits on the wall of another pageStaring infinitely from endless pages of a sky.

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62

The Gir lion

The lion turns head back for a momentAs it walks into the shadows of a future.Kierkegard would look backwards to seeThe future endlessly tied up with the past.

You cross a lion’s tracks towards futureIn dark shadows of the Sasangir forestThat hold its vast tracts of past futures.The cowherds who live in the forest thereSpot a calm understanding in the lion’s eyesAs it looks back each time it walks past.

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63

Unusual

Unusual and from a bed slept in,Rises a shadow stretching to roofIn a light of memories flitting pastLike the elephants in the west hills.There is some poetry in the offing .

Rather unusual , a film of April heatEnvelopes us all like a layer of dustA rubble from an upright buildingOr earth deep in pain in its netherSpewing rock dust as puff smokeFrom underground fires of passion,Not yet doused by springs of water.

A smart phone aspires to be differentTo a dumb phone under warm touch.Game is how not to be dumb and oldBut how to be wise and old in fingers.All said , there is nothing unusual aboutFingers stopping to point these things.

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64

Metaphors

While trying to understand one thingAs another, I call, at night time of day,A picture I get of self loose on things,A body’s nerves taut with expectation ,An entire escape bid from plain truths.

Their wordy beauty haunts us ghostsAnd cultivates melancholy in our depthsA despair wrought by their othernessNot words, thought whole and round .Words are metaphors for reaching outFrom a body’s prison, its thought limit.

We propose land to buy and borderAnd let imagination set a fancy priceIn a far future , for gold it will bring.The metaphor of a six by four land plotComes to us so easily in our borders.Metaphors blur our borders so much.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: metaphors

65

Returning gifts

Gifts is what you have always thought ofIn cellophane and silk with a red cross-knotOf love in many a splendor or a see-throughCorruption stench, abuse of company money.

Not what your son had when first born then.A gift from mother nature turns dad proudA calculation backward or a rhythm of fingersOr a teenage guitar strumming excess notes.Gifts do not come free like company lunches.You give what you received the last season.

His life was a gift from nature like her flowersIn colors unsolicited, fragrances of memories.There are no free lunches in business or natureAnd now is the time to repay by return gifts.

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66

Going loose

Going loose was not just in your pantsAn old sartorial manner of speakingWhere the visual field goes on and onAnd a foot is loose and a mind is free.The mountains yonder are your otherThe otherness of you and of the cloudsPrecipitating to rain not duly falling.

The seams in your plates seem showingLike your unzipped pants in the societyA fly is open ,not the otherness of insect.In rabid humor fly’s fly is always open.

You wear your hell bottoms and hair loose,Singing loose songs to a sleeping society.Your foot is loose, your minds cut loose.You go loose from all and your freedom.The otherness of other is you of old space.

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67

Almost said

Transience of the word is almost saidFlashing away in the skull of memoryA skull transience, a word transience .A rain rumble is in sky with a mosqueA transient loud speaker to west god .

A bird transience is their intransigence.Their transience is dawn’s temporary airAnd likely death a transient fact of birds,A sun rising again with different birds,Different words from the dark of a sun.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

68

The sentence

Here the word is a sentence long enoughTo come to close with no end punctuation.The story will spring from a pad in wordsAs they hop -skip in unconnected spaces.Gregor Samsa ‘s fate is sealed by openingAs he turns to wake up on his feet of a bug.His bugness is complete ere story is born.

Words are stories of latent possibilitiesA random word screws up a perfect storyWith no room for the guy to use free will.Free will ,my bug foot, a determined mindSays ,turning its vermin body to the sideMuch before its story is born in the bed.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

69

The ritual

We love a gray time frame encirclingOur activities from sunrise to sunsetWith a day in between, for dreamingOur eyes closed with cows and things.A certain poetess watches cows untilThey drop away from her line of vision,She and her lady accompanist in hills.

An invisible frame encloses us alwaysA shell that drags along round a snailThe very shell that makes it feel warmWithin ,with its tiny feet duly drawn up .Do we leave drag marks on the beach?Only for the seas to wipe them away.

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70

The messenger

The messenger carries hardly any messages,Wearing a red sash across waist and a brass ,Only large-sheaved ledgers, with seams gone.The messenger is forbid to peer into a ledgerUnder instant amnesia but is duly authorizedTo imagine insects of figures across its pages.

A red slash traverses end to end of his torsoAnd a fine burnished plate softly glistens to it,A proud moment , albeit carrying no messagesOnly bulky ledgers with tiny figures crawlingAcross pages, with no meaning for the bearer.

Messengers carry no meaning , only ledgers.Ledgers have no meaning for the messengerExcept to earn a few annas for a daily breadThat have far more meaning than big figuresCrawling inside the red large-sheaved books.But the insects at times crawl into his pocketsTickling insides, a situation of some discomfort.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

71

Spring rain

Spring rain is just my suggestionAs the midnight dog’s barks balkAt an earthy smell of rain in turnsAnd bells chime in windy response

All our life is unending visual fieldAnd now hers as it closes, a spiritGoing over shopping and a failureOf body to stretch eyes beyond itAs the rain keeps falling and falling.

Rain is a mere sound around earsNot a silver splatter on our cheeks.May be it is not rain but a smoky hillAt the end of eyes as they close.Life goes on in flash and hers nowAs body thinks of rain in the springBeating unawares around the ears.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

72

Uproar

There is nothing stable in our old daysWith a television uproar, a sea that killsAnd rolls on as a child’s eyes turn pearlsSuffering sea-change as they run deep.But the noise outside is just an uproarThat will quieten like the sea out of moon.

The child is violated in uproar of the veins.Her green bones ride tumult up and downAnd sea waves take them down in crowds.Eyes are unsaleable pearls after the uproar.

(A 5-year-old was raped and beaten for days before being rescued,police said on Friday)

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

73

Not knowing

Dawn is not knowing strident cuckooAnd its rain clouds failing to deliverWhen a wind chimes in from the skyIn a stillness that continues with a poetGloating over not knowing, a seedbedFrom which new sprouts shall emerge.

His darkness persists in not cascadingWriting sheets of the night’s thoughtsAs bird sounds brim to form a dawn.Not knowing is the unmixed blessingOf oversleeping its embedded dreams.

Not knowing is a straight face kept upBy a fidgeting body ,in a postured chairFrom which the world unfolds by itselfAnd dawn goes on in birds unmindful.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

74

Joint and several worlds

(Here we are all, by day; by night we’re hurl’dBy dreams, each one into a several world.Robert Herrick)

We shall now feel sleep in our tired bonesAnd smell its neutral flowers and colorsIn several worlds beyond the sea breeze.A dwarf god stamps his humongous footOn our bent heads that makes us dizzyWith the breathless air of several worlds.By day we are all but by night we are allHurled headlong into our several worlds.

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75

Random

I select the random word, a chaos wordIn a mass of confusion and poetry wordsThe most beautiful world out of a rubbleA heap of ideas hid in my random worlds.There is a random world somewhere thereFrom sundry poets of ancient mysticismA geometrical measuring by elegant faceA Greek face or a Roman or even a desertSphinx deep encrusted with history sand .

The random world is a real one out there,A heap of delightful chaos , a pile of earthA broken ancient stone, its letters missing.I was there somewhere in utter confusionA random man in the men of the bazaars,Their merchandise a white sugar figurineSold randomly to a kid’s extended fingers,Only random, merchant , child or figurineA re-assembly, a possible re-combinationOr a jumble pulled from ancient memory.

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76

Revenge

As they run a marathon they have grown oldTheir meat is faded and a revenge fed is deadThey have run to a finish, their boy duly deadRevenge fed is dead to the lost and living beard.

You have grown old, your meat is sooner deadThe viand flits too soon, your angel light a panicAttack of terror’s grip, a shrapnel flying in trees,A dead sun’s orange , a smoke beyond the grave.

(Remembering Emily Dickinson’s poem Mine enemy is growing old-after the Boston bomb blasts)

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: boston bomb blasts,revenge

77

Attention

There is a tiny flower curving at the wall cornerA cutesy fan head moving in stillness of shadowAn absence of drilling machine sound in windowAn absence of an insect struggling to come upOn all sixes, an insect flying by the flick of a toe.

I have to pay attention to syntax and grammarVerbalizing acts, grammar logic, thought breaksThe dark of silence, try to make bridges of wordsAnd fail to live many presences and their absences.

I have to connect insects with fans, sky and windThe presences of things, the sounds of my heartThe absence of many things, the words in syntaxWords that are flowers curving at the wall cornerInsects that are sent flying symmetrically by toe,Windows that have garnered sounds of presencesAnd absences showing up in a vast dark beyond.

Yet I have to collect sounds by words in their logic,Sights by their absences, smells by their night skyMove my attention around in a maze of presencesAnd their absences, and maintain my presence.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: attention

78

Notions

I have notions that all this will be goneMe gone , they gone and our words goneOnly the chimes will remain, their echoesA dust, an amulet for keeping , a residue.Notions are gone like nations , oblations,A water for pouring in rivers of sunrise.

Laughing is gone of man beast and birdOn a boat in the lone sea and a sky fallsIn the sea , a breath gone , a body gone.The sea turns dust of the remaining sky.

I have notions that all this is not thereWith the sun and the clouds and the skyFalling in the sea, in their fit of laughingThe wind sporadic from the mountains.Mountains are not there in the horizonThe horizon is a notion from our dreamsEmbedded in old mountains not there.Notions are not there when bodies gone.

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79

Apprehensions

At the day’s end there is slight twitch of bodyA contortion of the soul, a pre- occupied mindAs a white wall rises with the sun on its topAnd the trees have dis-appeared to overlook.A job is upgraded to nay-say of recession planNow a fear of not being there as the sun rises.

Hold on ,we have multiple reasons vibratingAs fears turn shaky like several thumbprintsOne on the other to reinforce a sleep- heavyNight’s ruin of dreaming sleep by mosquitoes.Use your hand to swat them flying on cheeks.Their blood is yours in the veins, full of flight.

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80

Zebras

We are just thinking about real zebrasIn the dark continent , in a thick forestAnd in the light , speckled by the dark.A predator sees zebras in a slow fuck,Pistons of loosely motioned shadowsThickening in an afternoon of the forestLike zebra stripes after the smiling act.

The zebras tend to smile after the actAnd some times before , in anticipation.Their camouflage acts fine when smilesAre mistaken for tiny shadows movingOn the floor of the forest in dry leaves.After the act no difference exists in smileBetween the zebra’s and its predator’s.

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81

Residue

Our ash and residue you may scoop up hereTo collect a bag of bones meant for your riverIn early mornings of sleep lost to a stomach.

Irony is what is felt in bone marrow in a bag,A supreme chill of Alaskan cold, as in a snowWith crystal ice streams,where it is so clearAnd so transparent below fishes swimmingAnd jumping over the waters of destruction.

The stories are tied up with all the anecdotesThe irony is too explicit for poems in words.Residue does not leave you longing for truth.

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83

Images

Images do not mean much ,only idle fancyA passing show sliding away by a trainWith hanging people as big busy blurs.The tracks people mean only squattersOff houses of tarpaulin sitting with crows.

These dark birds squat on the tracks to hitA train’s bottom, wanting to get at truth,A morning’s getting at sky’s orange truth.

Images do not get at truth ,only at blurs.They move slowly like squeaking train fansAs if to get at truth, unhindered by crowd.But nobody ever got at truth in a local train.

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84

Slide-show

A tiny red ant passed on the keyboardA figure on a slide show of a memoryA shadow that would never come backHowever much you point- clicked for it .

The ant will have to pass its funeralSlide-show once, a memory clusterIn my mind , in its mind , all-ants mind,In separate slide-shows of species antsThe atavistic ants of passed ant-lines.

A long ant-line is a funeral slide-showOf memory clusters of men about antsAnd of ants memories of passing men.The white stuff they carry at the headIs their memory clusters of our fingersOn a keyboard, kicking in a slide-show.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: slide show

85

Free will, my foot

All things are happening to this meThrough a night that encompassesChimes in a ringing piece of the skyWith white flowers embedded in it.The fan blows on like a sky rumble .Night is the very thing happening.

I have the free will to will it away,Not to drink water , write poems.Write about free will and deathsEmbraced ,under a building’s fallA trade-off done out of free willBy those who had courted deathBy debris of builder’s negligence.

Free will, my foot, I say in flowersAt the elephant corner where I thinkAnd explain determinism of death.Flowers are ten rupees by elbow.My foot took me to flowers whereI was determined to think of debris.At night I would pick on the wordTo write about, free will, my foot.

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86

Metaphors

Everything was everything elseThe white swans in a lotus pondWere of learning’s lotus goddessA metaphor for a child of beauty,A recall of imagined sweetness.

The child made a speech on stageOn a poet dead to a growing beardAmid claps for speaking his mind,A metaphor for a lauded virtuosity,All you remember now in bald age.

A screaming titya bird terror struckThen in a child is now a dead duckIn the lonely deserts of old despair.Fear is now metaphor for bellyacheA rumble in a nether world of belly.Metaphors rise from vague spaces.

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87

Disbelief

Inside a window is life and its poemsBehind a grille ,plants in their breezeAnd words straight under the night.A canvas stretches through the wiresBringing the world inside of peopleTyping away furiously after the seas.

Wonder what they are doing rubbingTheir eyes of disbelief, sending downStuff and thoughts to me, the obscureRecipient, typing away here in a hole.

The wires cut the trees in their smoke.A scrap of sky evaporates above themTill a sun will arrive to redden its face.The day noises wait till it fully reddensAnd disbelief ceases to be suspended.

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88

Monologues

In our betweens, we talk to us checkingNobody is around,in a high bass toneAnd metallic,fine drumbeats following.We are nobody’s clowns , just dessertsIn motley, just joking for living, splittingFor effect, duly obese and monologous.We wear words like tatters of our coats.

Hark ye ,this thing is coming on again.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are aliveAnd licking and times are not that bad .Polonius is waiting behind the curtainsNeither borrower nor lender be,says he.When we are keyed up in our behindsWe clap gleefully and beat our drumsWe are cold in our flesh and our fetishOur satire is not one of the airy things.

Our screams at the end of the bridgeAre monologues full of wind and sail.We hear our black speeches in betweenAs they disappear among other peopleWith monologues,uttered mouthfullyIn the privacy of their own boudoirs.

Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: monologues

89

Memes

A spring in the step is another memeTo hustlers of memes,internet freaksDescribed as peddlers of mellow words,Like a new spring in our street leaves.

Words are newer algorithms vaguelyConnecting spaces of big time chunksHop- skip- jump over stones of wordsIn puddles formed around vague hutsTheir walls touched in midriff by risingWaters kissing knees tucked to below.

Frogs are memes of no kissing princesHeaving croaks in throats of memes.A spring in the step is one in the leaves,Not in the box of rising ,a nasty surprise.Frogs do not dance in true GangnamConstrained by absence of forearms.A spring in their step can sure go viral.

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90

Weather

At times the sun would beat us hardBehind clouds in their wet promisesOn the trees and in compound walls.The air-conditioner drones mournfullyAs sparks of violence fly relentlesslyFrom a body going in vibrating modeIn solo dance while audience sleeps.

Our words are infatuated with the sky.And our eyes turn upwards for water.Our words pour from eyes in streamsOf water ,reminiscent of last year rain.The air-conditioner is birds’ split homeWhen it doe not turn hot for our insides.The birds will come when they are hotEnough for a fresh parenting zeitgeist.

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91

Home

It is where you always got away fromTo the trees ,to a vast sheet of sea calm,Only to come back to its old bird chirpsAnd bats black to tamarinds at duskDivested of ghosts by autumn leaf-fallHouse corners purring like lolling cats,Deep wells in waters unreachable by eye.

Home is where you come back to dieTo lie on the earth, on hairy straw matA cotton swab in the nose-holes of lifeEyes closed in a final count of dreams,At the very space you had first comeFrom the vast sea green of a stomach.

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1

Child wind

The child wind is a spirit, like a fallen leafThat rolls along towards the earth’s infinityRiddled with false matter from its past sky.It is no laughing matter in mom’s hand fan,Nor in trees shaking with excess sunshine.Shake trees , will you? asks nostalgic mom,Her sultry despair climbing hard nut treesLooking for child of the wind in the leaves.Actually it is found shaking a polythene bagIn a bedraggled bush, just outside the city.

2

Window glass

I woke up to this window glass this morningAs the tree , a tiny branch , waves on the glassA moving shadow made by tree+wind +glassNot a sleep dream but a waking word dreamA beauty engendered by a tree+glass+wind

Beauty came from this very tree+glass+wind+IWho had woken up, me and words, from a bodyThat is a part, a string, a voice, an eye, a waterSloshing in it, in the eyes, raindrops of color,A fan whirring, a sound ,a beauty of mountainA rumbling, clouds wet touching, a silver riverJust like the tree waving -a- creaking at windBrown dog barking at dark, snout wet and dark.

But I say, cut out this “I’ from window glassThe body that woke up at dawn to the windowLet the dream continue on the window glass.

3

Cricket stories

We are looking for our storiesIn the park ,under a thin treeOn green bench or thereabouts.Cricket stories abound in there.Grass replicates the past wordsOn bare feet to earth, crackedLike mind in a nothing’s duress.The body re-thinks own storiesPhysical stories mired in words.Stories are just words of thingsBehind , wiggling worms foundUnder long lying stones in sun.They are crickets creaking underVague stones lying in the grass.

4

Just write

just write ,it would whisper , in blackand in white,when it is still dark night.one must take in the night,its two rosessleeping in the night ,in waking yellowand crimson, rising from a little earthto higher reaches, where wind strikesand the sun strikes a flower into being.

come to balcony opening to a street’s nightproject to a street, a stream of silent menshuffling feet in absence, in their futuresall the while a black increasing, to diffusebeyond the apartment, beyond a gnarled tree

now in the room, before a curtain of sounda sound of marriage strikes a stick of holesto a music of bodies , in a night of blackas it turns orange beyond a dead- standingtree, a wishful timber tree of old dreams,its old birds’ dreams,staring at its stumps.

5

Grass notes

On a morning of bedewed grassA bare walk hardly leaves notesOnly bird notes from park trees.The grass cowers in wet silence,But raises its heads once a whileIts wetness tingling the underfootA painful thorn peeps some timesFrom shadows hid in self-respect.

A noisy nose on the green benchDumps a breath of fresh dirty airBut takes much more of green air.A broken lawn-mower lies listlessThrowing up its hands in despairPowerless to cut grass pride to size.Winter-cold feet barely manageTo squish in its bleary-eyed upperSubmissiveness flying away beforeThe water sprinkler gets them.

6

Decline and fall

This is September and you mark the decline of the sunBehind the long rows of buildings and listless trees.From the train its decline is noticeable in arid wastesThat teem with straggling shepherds in grazing sheep.

The sun does not envelop their bodies in its silhouettes.The orange of light shall wait at the mountain’s mouthBeyond the spartan colors of the lake, less its shimmerAnd clouds pass without event, giving rain a sabbatical.The decline will surely be followed by an exciting fall.

7

Moon’s magic

Yesterday’s moon had slid behind the schoolTo surface today at midnight, behind the shed.It is a struggle for the cow to reflect on eventsOf the day, near the haystack, with tacky fliesNeedlessly bothering its tail, while the moonIs reflecting thoughtfully on its water trough.

The straw is all around its feet, stewed with urineAnd Bengal grams tastefully added to porridge.There at mountains all was peace and heaven.The grass was just fine, the flies less of bother.A red bull came with dishonorable intentionsBut was promptly ignored, as if he did not exist.

The moon is now directly above the asbestos roof.The night is quiet with the street dogs gone to sleepAnd the moonlight has become brighter and cooler.Somehow the cow is now less angry with the bull.

8

Whites in fingernails

When I was a child birds gave me ideas,In their flights of rows, towards lakesWhen they looked white and glisteningAgainst the autumn sky, my fingernailsClawing the air rhythmically and lipsCalling them to infuse whites in nails.Those days birds could drop their whitesDirectly into/behind of our fingernails.

9

Feathers in our books

Birds gave us their ideas, from their wingsAnd bones full of hollow air, silly feathersThat would at times be dropping in streetDancing down many layers of air playfully.We would catch and curate them in pagesOf books, afraid to lose them to homework.

10

Spider

We argued for a neat unified lifeIts spidery dreams just materialFor lyrical verse, its terms natureLike filigree works of spider circleHanging by roadside thorn treeHere and going but expectantlyPostponed to returning camera.The argument of a life steepedIn pearly lyrics was lost to spiderSnug in a silky wayside hexagonNot usual concurrent lyric circles.But geometry is not our concern.

We argued to retain it in returnA beauty to capture in the mindNot on the dew of camera lyric.The camera turns out its beautyIf put off , a fine lyric in making.We gestured acceptance in air.Our hands went up to a sunriseAnd we would turn a silhouetteStanding by the spider gettingBusy at its gathering dew pearls.Our arguments sound speciousAlways during our morning walks.

11

Rust

Can moss oxidate is our question hangingIn the cliff, as a hanger is mid-air and againstStreaks of water, dropping from higher rocksAnd a shirt color or two emerges at bottomAmong rising food carts for colored sweaters.

Seems we have lichen in oxide color of rockOr moss that gathers no green but brown.Imagine rocks rusting like our good old iron.Their ancient sun does not make chlorophyllBut brown tiny leaves, in pearl-drops of rainThe sun may be rusting of old age in the hills.

It is not the sun alone who is rusting , in case.The monks are doing the same thing in ocher.Their child presences are smoking in laughter.As white curls emerge from their rust brownClothes with Buddha peace prevailing in folds.As they run peace prevails in higher echelons.

12

Wet place

At night a white wet place would comeOut of nowhere, with high boots in mudAn earth falling off to white snow in teaA tepid tea to warm military stomachs.Further down would be a turquoise lakeLapping up against the enemy countryOn other side, with their military bootsStomping their ice, rising in icy silenceTheir men looking all of them the same.

The hills would rise in their brown mudStripped of ice drained out last summer.Their water rivers are bloody capillariesThat trailed off to lake’s turqoise history .But for now we are still in that wet placeWith military boots sinking in white ice.A temple is swathed in ice that must beHaving an oil lamp to light dark innards .Everything has to be wet , even a flame.

(Chang La is a high mountain pass (17000 ft) in the Himalayas onway to the beautiful Pangong lake)

13

The hibiscus

We have never looked deep in its heartIt carries at the top waving in the breezeLoving a bee and the colors of butterfly.

Cognition names it hibiscus for poemsBut poems are no hibiscus, with anther,At summit sprinkling pollen on breeze.

Airy creatures will land on the summit.They will make it a hibiscus pure viewFor a stamen to nod in excited whispersFor the breeze to carry a floral message.

14

The deaf crow

We raised our kid eyes to the leaf spacesTo glimpse its brownness in a sky of treesTracing its presence to staccato mating calls.Its brown body seemed moving like leavesIn the morning wind, touched by sun glints.All was soft brown music that froze tree timeSetting our boy time free, from home clocks.

A morning eight of clock, stood obliteratedBy the deaf bird , with a song that stretchedLuxuriously on our bodies, no schools barred.Its reddish little discs of eyes glowered at usDown to the earth where we stood on kneesCalling down in fingers that pretended to fly.Actually we were trying to test how deaf it was.

(The crow pheasant is a fascinating brown beauty of the crowspecies, called jemudu kaki the Deaf Crow in Telugu)

16

Watercolor

We came upon the waters, in themselves,That ran deep, under rain drops on rocksTheir music falling softly on the morningAs birds ran counter to embedded trees.

It was the music of the bodies from a mind.The leaves fell gently from rain and clouds,Their textures collected most of the ecstacyFrom a sound of meaning, their sensationsOn the skin perking up as if to a first rain .

The textures of the rocks broke their skies.The hues in them wavered as cotton- whiteCorrugations ,with birds caught in the foldsLike tiny v’s from God’s free hand drawings .Rocks merged in the sky and water flowedLike the music of the birds caught in cloudsThat were birds not yet caught in the trees.

17

The blue cyclone

The morning rain continues from a nightCold coming through bird chick’s criesAnd now light gently falls on wet plantsTheir personalities glowing by the hour.

Our dying rose may yet wake up and goFrom the company of hibiscus partyingIn its wet splendor, a late night partyingAfter the night’s thoughts went berserkLike a sea urchin ,in violent wind – water.

The urchin may not come this way of sky.But his looks killed many an upright treeLike its distant American cousin ,in coastAnd brought a ship or two to sandy knees.

(Cyclone Neelam (blue), struck the Southern coast yesterdaybringing about large scale devastation to the coastal areas)

Related articles

• Cyclone Nilam makes landfall near Mamallapuram; rain claimsfour lives in Tamil Nadu

18

Texture

This the morning has the texture of plasticIn a world of hues, of longevity, of a breathA corrugation, a tilt to a side, a new soundOf a world upside down, a feel of thinginess.

Shapes are chairs in their silence of sitting,A sound of looking, a skin feel of winter airA palm occupying wind with water in throatA form in formlessness, a door shutting outWinter, a butterfly failing to land on flower.

Morning is rain in its falling softly into light.It is rain mired in the half light of open sky,Plants in earth pots dreaming spring leavesOn branches scraping the blue off a new sky.

19

Scenery

We continue to pit two tiny hillocksAgainst the infinity of a sky bendingDangerously on the brown bushesWith loud explosions in their rearAnd a gray smoke in the elevation.

We have a man and a woman near,Two faceless figures for a scenery.They have no faces but cheekbones.A rock gets angry with a loud bangWith machines making it look smallIn the bigness of the blue scenery.

Woman bathes in emptiness of rock.Rock falls into emptiness of morning.As smaller holes bath in bigger holes.Brown bushes bath in their shadows.Holes have shadows in themselves.Shadows have no holes in a scenery.

There are tiny eruptions in shadowsLike lizards in holes quickly catchingTiny eruptions to eat their emptiness.We are in a hurry to pit two tiny hillsAgainst the infinity of a breathless skyBefore it eats them into its emptiness.

20

Light and camera

Lake’s brown is mush and green algae,The shadows a high point near the boats,With men rowing time, a noon in cloudsPlain white stuff lolling in a blue sky.

Those algae lie peacefully with an ibisIts one leg on a rock, its white doubleIn waters, doing penance for the day.The boatman scoops up algae into boatFrom a ripple breaking him in pieces.

A dappled lake is all we are looking for.Smoke curls beyond shore are not our thingNot a high point when the sun plays hooky.Shore trees look inward, their eyes closed.

21

Tea

There was a general vagueness to our cameraA fog of the rain, a fuzzy smoke in the valleysWhere woman and mountain merged in each other.We had tea on the slopes, where women hungAt the sky’s edge , about two leaves and a budA basket where they hurled their green pickings.Our tea was spread in plastic bag,in green lightNot a tea in cup that warmed stomachs in smoke.

( A visit to the tea gardens of Darjeeling)

1

The act

The zebras tend to smile after the actAnd some times before , in anticipation.Their camouflage acts fine when smilesAre mistaken for tiny shadows movingOn the floor of the forest in dry leaves.After the act no difference exists in smileBetween the zebra’s and its predator’s

2

Notions

I have notions that all this is not thereWith the sun and the clouds and the skyFalling in the sea, in their fit of laughingThe wind sporadic from the mountains.Mountains are not there in the horizonThe horizon is a notion from our dreamsEmbedded in old mountains not there.Notions are not there when bodies gone.

3

Plaster of Paris

The artist has sullied his dark handsAs they shine on mother’s whiteness.Her many arms are stubs in reverseWith weapons yet to be put in them.Her fierce tiger is making in a corner.But a demon is yet to be conceived.

In plaster of paris, good takes shapeEarlier to mould and shape than evilWith its several shades and tonalitiesSo difficult to create in white purity.

4

The mosquito killer bat seller

The China bats she sells make some sputtersAs they go about electrifying flying creaturesBurning them to zero entities, in tiny air fires.Her dress colors captivate with small mirrorsOn the woman’s dress, narrating life’s snippetsIn a moment of your life at the traffic junction.They are the mosquitoes that will burn to cipherWhen the bat plays with life in a fireworks show.

5

Bumblebee

We have dropped a bumblebee from our fly.Women’s faces were flushed with our shame.Their songs went bone-dry in private blush,As our tigers growled in our private pants.See the buses bloated with men and parts.

(concerning the recent gang rape of a woman in a Delhi bus)

Bumblebee :( Definition):

A large hairy bee with a loud hum, living in small colonies in holesunderground.

6

Contorted

The sights were contorted in smellsOf rotting arms, sweating shirt backs.A whole world sprang under elbows.The crooks of arms went contortedWith framed faces going up and down.Some went contorted with laughter.Words were contorted in their meaning.

7

Teals among cranes

Four in the afternoon is brilliant lake in tealsFrom an alien land come flying a long way,Co-existing in crowded bazaar of local cranes.Together we shop, say teals among cranes.

Lake is everyone’s shopping for stomach fish.Some fish dance in the empty air of basketsBy the lake ,for women to decide their prices.Soon they are on way to hungry stomachs.

8

Matter

All the time we are making matter in thisFactory of the old matter merging to formNew matter which will do the same thing.This matter wants to control other matterAnd at times hastens the process of matterDecomposing ahead of time like the monk,In a compulsive urge to decompose matter.The matter is the same, monk or murderer.The urchin who broke dog’s leg with stoneWas breaking down matter to its essentials

9

Houses of dusk

Muted conversations are heard in the streetIn the gray shadows of the houses of dusk.The incense smoke from their four-armed godsEnters the streets, reaches up to the treesAnd electric wires, going up in silky swirls.As darkness sets, tiny white flowers break outFrom mother creepers on the houses like starsWe often see burst on our roof after nightfall.

10

Sleep

Sleep is when a red of white forms in our glassy eyesInto a mess of capillaries supplying blood to seeing,To dreaming in a sleep of time, in a sleep of thought.

Sleeping is body in a merger in the blue of the skyInto a sky of nothing that rises above the apartment,On the roof , by the water tank, listening to its water

11

Polka dots

The rock was green and mossy in the overallTurquoise of sea with diamonds of molluscsStuck in body like polka dots on sunny holidays.A fish jumping man would point a rock cornerFor squatting to catch the essence of the sea.The sea continues its tirade against the rocks.

12

Silver eyes

We then go forward to the sun in silver,The sun god on chariot of seven horsesBehind temple tank of immersed bodiesTorsos in prayerful baths, eyes closed.We offer prayers to the sun in whiskersLighting our eyes with camphor flames.Our silver eyes are for his safe keeping.

13

Dimsa

The women were waiting to turn red wavesOf dancing with hands locked in each others’,Their songs reaching the blue end of the sky.Their dancing hands waited to inter-weaveIn fragmentary beauty under trees, with boysWaiting on tree top ladder nets like monkeys.

(dimsa is a dance performed by tribal women in some parts of India)

14

Temporary

Our permanence is temporary thing of the dayThe day being temporary in the east of windowIts curtains effectively blocking permanence.

Light spots are spot on after a violet light is castAs if they were temporary once but now and hereSemi-permanent in an overall temporary scheme.

What if they swim now ,as they had swum onceIn a purely temporary sea-scheme of years agoAnd the temporary sea turns a permanent sky.

15

Brittle gods

Eyes are cracked being brittle, out of sockets.Eyes crinkle out of their shape, from socketsEmpty with air, like mouths, like sooty hands.

Hands god loves are separated from bodiesAnd later from gestures of finger- pointings.Gods the broken hands worshiped are brittle.

16

Red bangles

The soft pink of the wind palaceDoes not jell with her poverty’sBlazing red tie-and-dye sareeToo kitschy for our proud art,Too sentimental for our souls.Let us have bright red banglesThey contrast better with the pink-There is still poverty left in them.

17

Lens error

Just before morning it seemed nightAnd birds in darkness and absence.All the while there is truth, unrealityAnd rain and the sun behind cloudsExquisite in the camera but a fatalFailure to retract just when needed.It is lens error, dear, just like my lifeWhich I had chanced upon in errorOn the bleak shores of fetal nothing.All our pictures remain in our mindsOur river valleys and ancient stupasStay deep in gorges of brown history.

18

The hole of forgetfulness

Sometimes we light sticks of matchesAt the upper end to hear their soundTravel across the bushes ,to the gate.We then laugh to remember to forget,To forget other times, other spaces.In this you and I shall jointly forget.Forgetting jointly is more meaningful-Above all, the hole of forgetfulnessWe will make, shall be the biggest ever.

19

On my mother’s first death anniversary

At four the morning was night.A bird landed on a plastic sheetWaking up too early for the wormsFor other birds’ comfort on trees.The tube light whined sorrowfullyAgainst Octavio Paz and certain poetIn the inner tube of my computer.Mother would come with rice ballsIn Sanskrit incantations and dhotiTied across my waist and thread.All we lay stretched on the floorRemembering her dead a year ago.Night will soon be morning birdsTheir noisy calls were like that timeWhen she laughed the last time.

20

The lake

The night was deep and dark and tongues of fireCast shadows that quickly climbed the mango trees.There are many crocodiles under our feet,he says,As the rain lashes the lake in a rising shrapnelThere it was place where a girl had met watery end.The lake sat there brooding all the while, benignAnd blameless,the crocodiles in its belly harmless .The mountains pour in the lake more and more waterBorrowed from the sky and but the lake repays it all,In summer, when dark clouds go up from its bosom.

21

Time again

I was just asking timeOnce again.Because my words had fallenInto night.They were not luminous.When Rilke dropped themThey were.But they fell into the sameAggregate of darkness.

22

Rain in the morning

I and birds slept little, a few bird winksInterspersed with dreams and fears in sleepIn fat shirts and funny, transience remindersEarth pots of bones, that left a belly pain.Beauty tokens emerged in luminous leaves,Some praises of beauty, some let-me-downs.The rain is now here, prohibiting my walksDeliciously key-board happy at sunless six.The train hoots did not pierce the morning.The snails slow-walked my garden up and downQuietly like nobody’s business and I am backAt the key-board amid faint heart-murmurs.

23

Incense

We had thought of transience and rainRivers overflowing on to the highwaysDismal failures, temporary successesThen finally some beauty-talk in artLiterature, deep thoughts,body mysteryEverything that was coming to an endAs though there was not any beginning.Yet the colors went on all the whileAnd they would smell nice like incense.

24

Paininthebuttness

Now that they are here no more,No gentlemen while they lasted,The essential nomoreness makes itMore difficult to hold the pastPaininthebuttness against them.

Because when they lay stretchedIn white cloth under a blue skyTheir gaze told our future story.

25

Year-end

The year-end is not inside nor there in spaceBut just hanging on time, as we hop and skipHolding our hems from paint sticking to them.The year-end is a doorway that will disappearin the dusty lane and in the dust we can’t recallWhat ghosts we were in the room left behind

26

Thumbnail

He stares there in face bookWho went last year’s this time .His ghost is efficiently mannedBy sons behind his thumbnail.He now plays farm ville by sonsAnd you may poke him gentlySo as not to hurt him too muchIn a rib cage with the bird gone.

27

Textures

Shapes are chairs in their silence of sitting,A sound of looking, a skin feel of winter airA palm occupying wind with water in throatA form in formlessness, a door shutting outWinter, a butterfly failing to land on flower.

Morning is rain in its falling softly into light.It is rain mired in the half light of open sky,Plants in earth pots dreaming spring leavesOn branches scraping the blue off a new sky.

28

The glass wall

In a vast glass wall a young woman opensThe door inward, that should really open out,A blonde, her thoughts open out, in a state.The color of hair is not a state of affairs.But no, she is not a blonde, nor do blondesOpen their outward opening doors inside.

The glass wall shuts out most of her lightWith a door that has no doorman in mustachesOpening a door to a cold night of reason.A body is embroiled in a state of affairs,A body that will one day be behind the glassSaying not much in its pantomimic gestures.

29

Watercolor

The textures of the rocks broke their skies.The hues in them wavered as cotton- whiteCorrugations ,with birds caught in the foldsLike tiny v’s from God’s free hand drawings .Rocks merged in the sky and water flowedLike the music of the birds caught in cloudsThat were birds not yet caught in the trees.

30

Cricket

The cricket has just opened its window,In my ears, to darkness on the other side.Crickets open their sounds to our earsAnd are sole windows to all night sounds.Darkness is sound from a cricket’s throatAnd vanishes as its throat is vanquishedBy the soft light sound of the morning crow.

31

We love our sun

In the seven colors that make lightThe sun’s fiery chariot swiftly movesTowards the equinox, our own thingIn backyard, a cross-square of twigsThat turns a chariot on a bean leaf .Our rice and milk ,stewed in smokeTastes exquisite, like his warm goldOf morning rays on weathered bodies.We love our sun but cannot see himWith our naked eyes ,except in smokeOr as he is fully eaten up by our earth.

32

Letting miracles not happen

Free will is power to refuse miracleAway from the night and time tickingNearer the hot sun and a broken moonFlickering close to a new Jupiter star.It is power to let miracles not happenFree will is power to stave off wordsFalling as asteroids on a dark night.

33

A sonnet for Eighty and Five

Eighty and five springs in leaf-ends laterShe still finds her life a song , a numberNot numeric, but mere music and matter.She can hear crickets’ music in lumberFrog-lets croaking in night’s rain-puddle.In autumn years perhaps you imagineHer steeped in mixed aural sounds, in muddleA vague spectacle of death in a life’s din.In such music one hears yellow leaves crunchAs if they are the dress one wears for lunch.

34

We have no interest in redemption

The banyan spreads dark hair on the muddy riverAnd its red fruits are dropping on it like rain drops.Come to its folds to experience our sleep and deathIn an extorting sleep, interest for our light’s capital.The fruits mark time for periodic interest paymentsAnd interest shall cease only on the final redemption.In the meantime we sleep off our interest paymentsAnd each time ,hope that interest is not redemption.

(Schopenhaur’s famous financial metaphor in which he calls sleeplittle interest payments for the capital of life we had borrowed at birththat will cease only on death,the final redemption)

35

Burial of the fruit

We now live cozily in the thatch rememberingThe cashew-fruits that lay in temptation’s way.Their taste is shriveled up on our sand bodies .Our knowledge is but a sensation , a sand fruitThat has cozied up to the beat of a summer sun.We are waiting to bury our fruit in the sands.

36

The dancing nuts

In her kitchen she had the earth-stoveWith a fire licking the dark sky of iron pan.She roasted nuts on it for our kid stomachs.The smoke from her logs climbed the wallAnd the thatch of the roof blackening itTo the color of the pan that had the nutsDancing in pain on it like black deeds.

37

Undertow

The sea has an undertow like what I rememberOf years ago , a fit of passion, at the full moonWhen the pearl-white surf became almost blue.The skin blushes for nothing, no errors by bones.It is much like the sea, with a large undertow.You never know the sins lying unpunished inside.

38

Catching breath

We have tried to make sense of our soundsUnder the breath, our old lips tremblingWith light words , in running commentaryOn the world, reasoned out and heuristic,A verbal diarrhea they called, in laughter,Words that will define our silence aheadAs we catch our breath, trying to hold it.

39

Daily poems

We begin from beginnings, from a chaosOf darkness where you had not even onceSuspected existences, that flimsy matter.In the dark night it would end up roundlyAs the east reddens it would begin againAnd several beginnings form in amoeba –likeExistences and word-shapes of free volitionTheir false feet, like lies spoken in the day,Wiggle to make our existences daily poems.We write without thinking, do not even write.When we think, our writing stops at our lips

40

Buddha in piece

In the undulating hills a fallen leaflessnessPervades a monk-less silence, perfect in sky,An ancient absence of silently scurrying monksOf ocher robes in pursuit of white Buddha-peace.Buddha sits there, broken in pieces, his eyesFixed at the gnarled tree-back bursting withRough brown skin eruptions of painful knowledge.

(Sanchi Buddhist site ruins)

41

Your crows,our crows

There shall be snakes of rain between our houses.Our crows shall shake their feathers off the whiteBodies under them and wait for the rain to stop.Your crows shall look across sheets of fuzzy rainAt the outlines of their friends visible on our roofWondering when the wet trees will stop shakingTo let them have their usual evening get-together.

42

History words

Interrogate and discover is one such footprintIn the wooded depths of your poetry’s history.Ask searchingly and history’s mind must confess.It is so full of words that lead you to sand-dunesThat have strange history-words buried in themBelonging to lives that were either sad or funny.

43

Cow dust

I am overwhelmed by this golden eveningAs it comes with the sounds of the cattle,In the distance, of dust of angular hoofsOverwhelming the mud-tracks up to the sky.The cattle are overwhelmed by their timeBy milk overflowing from their red uddersIn thin jet-streams that will overwhelm usIn our faces behind a morning’s hind legs.The fleas overwhelm them in their hind legsFrom a tail that seems the end of the world.

44

Beauty is wet

The carpenter wants keenly to realize beautyFrom his bearded face wearing drops of liquorOn the corners of lips, with a buddy on bench,Sunday not surely being a holiday from beauty.Beauty lies in a shack, a thatch and on a benchFrothing in brown at the top, to flies buzzingAround eyes , the world having lost its outline.The earth and the sky become a vast single mass.

45

The coconut moon

Every coconut has to have a moon in its fate.You see the moon happens as an appendageTo our coconut trees, mostly, in early nights.On a rain less night the moon rises over themAs a beauty-flower in their hair in a dark sky.At times moons are mere light bulbs hoveringOn rooftops,peacefully existing with coconuts.When they are moons, not dim-wit light bulbsThey may be broken with some moon missing.But they always stand by the listless coconutsEncouraging them with their characteristic cool.

46

We have arrived

We had always lived in holes,crawling with men.We are now in bigger holes with smaller onesInside them for morning ablutions and yoga.We now have separate holes for individual men.Our holes smell nice with room freshenersMade from the private parts of civets in heat.We are a gated community, staring from gatesAt the passers-by and listless cattle droppingTheir green feces on the wet road nonchalantly.Our lawns are manicured green like our minds.We buy all our cattle droppings by kilogramsFor our green plants that have arrived like us.Thank god we are now suited ,booted and gated.

47

River steps

River steps are wet with village women’s baths.A golden sunlight floods their mornings in boatsLeaving early for mountains on wrinkled rivers.Giant banyans greet them from the other of bankSpreading their shadows of hair on the blue sky.Mornings are for sun,your palms cupped with waterLooking the sun in the eye, lips softly tremblingWith prayers, as white wet clothes cling to body.

48

Forgetting

Forgetting is sound disappearing, body’s spasmIn folds of death, mind’s entrails in a stomachAs everything of you freezes in life’s green liquidAn ice block of death, whose water of life meltsThe night when it happens in a death that staresAnd you collect life’s water in rags of wet clothesAs body is a waiting rag torn off from your fabric.Forgetting is fire and wood, in a crackling sound.

49

Decline and fall

It is September and you mark the decline of the sunBehind the long rows of buildings and listless trees.From the train its decline is noticeable in arid wastesThat have straggling shepherds and their grazing sheep.The sun does not envelop their bodies in silhouettes.The orange of light shall wait at the mountain’s mouthBeyond the spartan colors of the lake, less its shimmerAs clouds pass without event, giving rain a sabbatical.The decline will of course be followed by an exciting fall.

50

No right answers

Our poetry is made from blurbs of apparitionsThose have vaguely tapering tails in place of legsLike you draw them roundly in kids’ magazinesVanishing in trees, if you answer a ghost’s riddleAnd if you don’t answer, head will break in pieces.Somewhere in the head you have a thing growingThat makes your head break, even if you answerAs the ghost does not accept it as the right oneBecause there are no right answers to its riddles.

51

Egg-head

We heard about a boy who stared in the hospitalTrying not to cry, when they were shaving his head.It is the uncertainty of what lies inside his skullThat is what makes him cry, not just an egg-head.An egg-head is a joke, a laughing matter in mirror.But we are all egg-heads and we are in this together.

52

Bird brains

Birds gave me their ideas, from their wingsAnd bones full of hollow air, silky feathersThat would some times drop in our streetDancing down many layers of air playfully.We would catch them and curate them in pagesOf books, afraid to use them for homework.

53

Blue smoke

Grandmothers cry from no salt in the eye.They cry softly from waters in the headOf memories of husbands lost in opiumOf sons and grand-nieces lost to a moon.

They laugh toothless laughter in ripplesOver vegan jokes made specially for kids,Not on fart jokes in high demand by them.As they make hot evening snacks for kidsThey rub their eye-whites, of blue smoke.

54

Shoulder talks with head

It is in the hot words of wax in a cold syntaxOf a mobile talk between shoulder and headAs the former comes close to a sneezing head.

The head is now leaning tower on motorcycle.Such heads, leaning on shoulders, warm copsIn their pockets, their hearts, burning stoves.

55

The chair as an idea

The chair’s memories go back to a sylvan pastMen, women and kids in leaves of loin cover,Fire in twigs and bird calls , bees of honey.The ancestors might have sat on its ideaWhen there were no chairs, only branches.You can see our ancestors’ seats delineatedIn the chair, as if they had once sat on them.

56

Dissolve

You know the merger of light in the darkIs easy on our body and feels like a breezeBut the merger of light in light feels likeGetting back into the claustrophobic spaceFrom where we had all emerged years ago.We had come there from nothing and willDissolve in the space of nothing from there.

57

Edit

You and I were trying to edit detailEmotion that cut thinking at its back.The morning needlessly brought poetry.I cannot seem to edit all that detailFrom this night of life that it occurred.I cannot edit the color of my dreamsNor change the depth of field in them.My picture seems shorn of all depthAs I am caught fishing in the fish-eye.

58

God in mountains

There we felt warm and tea in stomach, but coldUnder the skin with bones shivering in anticipation.He might grant a moment’s sight of flowery smileAmong hairless men and women waving as flowersIn a warm sun flower bed, against a blue winter sky.We come to these mountains to meet our God.

59

The window

The window burst from the opacity of the wallOn the morning was the music flowing freelyAnd as music went, the pipal leaves dancedThe breeze struck beauty in a sun’s ambianceShadows flowed from tree’s exquisite motionsThe world danced, trees danced , wall danced.On the wall the elephant danced with tail highThe kings of old rode on camels that laughed.On the opposite wall yesterday’s man and womanJoined life’s chorus from across death’s borders.Their space merged with time,images with solidityWater flowed in gardener’s hose, silver and softWith flowing sound that smelled earth and water.

60

Posture

trying to read storiesin the noontime,whenleast rain is expectedthere is a hot chimeraon the tarred roada lone woman with ametal pot on headthe sky becomes hotin the pipal leavesall that happens inthe transience of the hemin the corners of leaves.the body posture replies,the question posedthen the reply ,in the body,in the way it crouchesand in the colored back

61

Tar

Hot were their expletives and mixedWith liquid tar by boys in the shadeTheir eyelids closed and play-heavy.This man turned the drum of liquid.The fires crackled and black smokeWent up above the tree and red wallSilk- smooth and black like a snake.

62

Others’ phrases

Others’ phrases are tiny palpitating mothsThat die by the firelight of your old winterLeaving heaps of fluorescent wings in gapsOf doorways, in balconies that precipitateTo abrupt darkness of wordless mid nights.We scoop up their fluorescence to pocketsBut our work lies elsewhere, in other wordsBeating warmly in our chests of furious work.

63

The call never comes

The tree stood mute by the templeA man cogitated on the verandahAnother,bent on knees, stared at the riverAn old man squatted, his head bent,Among turbaned men of another time,Awaiting the call from across the river.Actually the call has never comeIt never comes in dreams and art.

64

We felt small

He interrupted us ,smiling,In our endless dreams,In the infinite space beyondWhere the eagles soared.The earth came aliveWhere his feet touched .Thick conical leavesIntertwined with his legsTo hide a splendid nakednessFrom the sleeping world.

We felt small as ifWe had to remain silentWhile the earth came alive.

( The statue of Gomateswara , a Jain saint stands tall atShravanabelagola in Karnataka- the world’s biggest monolithicstatue constructed in the 10th century )

65

Talcum

In the evening we smelled talcumAnd tiny white queens of the nightAs we passed by the stairs of room.Once out we saw talcum-fresh girlsWho giggled for nothing in the sun.Their eyes had memories of the noonWhen their books appeared top heavyAnd their eyelids dropped for sleep.

66

His job is done

In the Book of Jobs God in thunder hated questionsDirectly addressed to Him from ashes of sons, wivesCattle , body, mind, prayers, rosaries of faith-all lostTo an arrogant divine omni- desire to prove a point.

Forget it if you mean to ask anything about apples.Apples do not mean anything, even when polished.A bite is sin prompted by serpent of knowledge.Every Steve bites his apple, even the apple of eye.Every apple shall turn ashes, once the job is done.

(remembering Steve Jobs of the Apple who passed this year)

67

The old stool

It is a four-legged stool made years agoAnd got colored by her who is no more.The stool she had fiercely guarded as ownAs a thing of the heart, next to the bird.The stool that would not be left behindIn house relocations, giving us body-liftTo the light-bulb, to loft of empty thingsTo airy things of sky and earth’s sweetWater, elixir of life, a support to logic.It is from it we shall reach higher worldsAs it will continue to leave us all behind.

68

The baby girl

She was crawling like a floor lizard last year.Now erect, she smiles and fiddles with thingsPuts them in God’s order, on dusty surfacesSetting them right like an airy angel from sky.In the corners of eyes, she smiles a moon smileAs if she has known things and you all alongAnd the dark secrets behind your shirt-pockets.

69

Orange

O’Hara had his De Kooning with an orange bedAnd a radio to perform Prokiefieff of a week ago.Bukowsky’s radio got flung on the roof playingIn the woman’s back against a highly orange sun.Our radio plays from a light to a tiny arrowhead.Radio is dead but it is still orange our sunset.

70

Spinning yarns

This side, old spinster is at her needleFor unfinished dupattas, long flowingFor many Diwalis that went in and outRiding out a prince on a white horse.Her needle is now spinning long yarnsIn endless story, from Diwali to DiwaliThat will go on like a failed wet cracker.

71

Father

He stared there from a photo cornerWith no knowledge that I was comingWith a future that meant his going.There was space only for one of us.He would stay wedged between old headsStaring at an old space unremittingly.

72

Love

Love never took the wind out of your sailsOn the seascape but the fight with waves.It seemed like phone waves up and downThrough a milk bird in a running train’s eyes.Your eyes are full of tear love, wet in regretsBut with a click in throat enjoying every bitAnd the salt of it is fine on a lolling tongue.

73

Freud in common cold

And pictures are real of women climbingThe attic for long overdue green picklesAnd the dream stops in confused statesOf men and children, in mixed up states.The women are yet to pick up their wetWhite widowed cloths from the wall peg.The pictures are real in children and menIn confused states ,in snakes and planesWhen the latter fall on the falling formerIn Freudian sleep mixed up with nose cold.

74

Felt words

Like houses that exist without built walls,Poetry is built without words but with felt words.A girl of large eyes is floating to th’ sun ,As ponytail and bag fight for space on h’r back.Those were felt words on her schoolgirl back.

75

Driving up the Tirumala hills

This air is still crisp and there is promiseOf excitement on the leafy floor of the forestAs the mongoose scurries in the yellow leaves.Zany butterflies of many hues burst from bushesStriking the stunned panes of the passing cars .

76

Titiya bird

One day a brown bird flew over us, in our sky,With its mournful cry that shrieked out titiya.Our dear cousin looked up, lying sprawledOn the stretcher, with eyeballs screwed upThe whites of his eyes were opaque and pearlsNobody told us why he would not come with usTo hurl flat-stones on those water surfaces.

77

Faces

He drew many faces on Kolkata’s billboards.His brush touched up cheekbones to heights.They cast nebulous shadows on low’r lips.In the city’s wee-hours he depicted timeOn the Hooghly banks waiting in old jettiesDiscarded by its deceased jute factories.

78

Belong

In the night those tiny parijat flowersActually belong to the dark neighbourOf the red and yellow house with a womanHanging out of a white parapet like cloth.Their fragrance does not belong nor she.The parijat belongs to wind and death.She of the parijat house parapet belongsTo the evening and the blue sky of rain.

79

Pretending

Off the stage, the Blue Roses calls out, her glass recently broken.There was nothing blue or roses, just pleurosis, wrongly spokenYou know she is expecting her gentleman caller the warehouseprince.Her brother calls his mother a witch who is rising on a broomstickYou know, she does not like his going to the movies all the night.BTW he is actually not going to the movies but is merely pretending.Blue Roses is not going to the business school but is pretending.*Actually nobody is going for a morning walk. We are just pretending.

*Teneesee Williams play The Glass Menagerie

80

Questions

You would wish to ask whyOur friend’s son has not returnedFrom his bath in the Ganges .You cannot ask such questions.

You can , of course , whisper themSoftly into the misty morning airStanding on your toe on the railingIn the dizzying heights of Qutub .

81

Web

The ailing old man is alive and ticking in pulseHe should stay that way through the rains,elseHis wife cannot come to do my house’s dishesThat is how our web is woven across the bushes.

82

Silences

I hear two old men on the park benchSpeaking softly to each other’s silence.I write my own lyrics and you?I compose mine on the bathroom wallsAnd some times, sing, in dulcet tunes,An exquisite duet with the night cricket.I love this real solo hum that comesFrom the vacant holes of my insides.I hear it in the silence between my ears.

83

The white wall

The man slept on the grass ,his face turned to the park wallHe was dreaming of sleep so he can dream beautiful dreams.He turned to the wall shutting off the world from his eyes.There was this park wall that stopped his world at five feetTo make a single white world that left him free with his dreams.Behind his eyelids was the infinity of yet- undreamed nights.

84

After him

In the meantime there is death in the air.A mere movie in the afternoon on telly-Was that deep as death ? After him ?After him there is noon ,there is sleepAnd another waking up to death againAs though there was no waking upIn-between but an ontological continuityBetween sleep, wakefulness and sleep.

85

Midnight music

Midnight music is the rising oceanCalled by a reddening of the moon.

Midnight music is the pipal leavesPlaying the wind’s exotic hill musicAs its fingers touch the spiked ends.

Midnight music is the invisible cricketSinging in the dark silences of the bush.

86

Lonely

Loneliness grows on park benchesThat are as lonely as fans whirringFor nobody, with the bums away inHotel rooms clutching their heads .Bums gather moss of lonely roomsAs they do not roll in dusty streetsAnd other bums have other rooms.

87

Verisimilitude

A gray and sullen sky is up thereI cannot paint all those birds backInto a seeming blue sky, tiny dotsOn the painted canvas of the world.Since I have to maintain proximityWith truth, a verisimilitude of no birdsWhen no sun, but just white clouds.I wonder why in the name of GodFacts always come accomplished.

88

Intersection

At the intersection of truth and poetry,It does not at all matter if we prevaricate.Words do interfere by beauty and noise.We are not here speaking the real truthBut an almost truth, and if this is not it,Let the bodies speak, in their recedingIn their constant flux, movements away.

89

Place

In the rocking chair we are placed tightlyBehind the newspaper of all about places.There on a park bench shadows fall on usOf our many absences from thinking bodies.Leaves crunch below of remembered places.We sleep on soft pillows in running trainsOf moving places and fast moving absences.Our desire for place is moving away from it.

90

Voice

I can see the picture of mind’s knotsIn folded vicissitudes of inner spaceThat resonated with shrill bird calls,Flashes of memory, failure thoughtsThat soon faded away in a foggy past,A fall from a fecund sky, a brick wallThat returned all pharyngeal sound.In fact there is nothing with my voiceJust I cannot scream loud enoughTo be heard on the river’s other side .

91

Hung silence

There is silence here, of paper crackle.In the kitchen there is clatter of cups.There is the blare of oncoming train,A dog’s barks in the morning’s silence.Silence is in the wall, hung on a sound.

92

Sticking

On the side street people sleep on cotsNot to admire the moon but rest backs.Buffaloes stand there with vacant eyesTheir udders now full with reluctant milk.The old man is groaning in his blanket.He is still sticking to his point, his times.The train is yelling at men on the tracksIts flanks bursting with hanging people.The train sticks to its point , they to it.It is much fun to ramble, when all othersAnd all other things stick to their pointsThat way you are sticking to your point.

93

The flood relief helicopter

We see several hands stretching to a helicopter,From dry mouths that quiver with hope at its whir.A mystery how bodies can pile to form a pagoda.

And why some bodies are always found on a copterWhile other bodies rise from the dusty ground-earth,And bodies here have to reach out to bodies up there.

94

Black comedy

When we say a tennis ball it is a ping-pongWe know the tumor can’t be so large inside.We are playing our little dramas in our headOur script is black comedy, a fun thing we playWhen we are desperate about people we love.

95

Bodies

When spirits talk ,bodies vanish like spirits.Our bodies disappear in chloroform smellOn the table under a green cloth of scalpel.Some times they just disappear in clay-potsInto flowing rivers, melting snow-mountains.Our spirits are mere words, some tautology.Our bodies do not exist except in dreams.

96

The night of the sky

In the night the bushes behave like moving,As if they are lazy bears on the wait for food.The mountain in the distance stands abolished.God knows where the clouds went from its top.Everything is drowned in the night of the sky.

97

Silence

It is the silence at the edge of soundA brief highway of green paddy fieldsThat occurs between town and townIn the populous countryside whereNoisy chickens often cross the roadAnd men are found lying on the roadIn helpless pools of drunken silence.

98

Table

In the balcony our wet clothes hangRevealing tiny bits of the blue skyTheir tantalizing shadows will enter,When the table will embrace them.But that is a story of the afternoon.

99

Making meaning

On the sidewalk men sipped tea from a red kiosk.They made their personal meaning out of the timeAnd the information in the trodden dust of the road,In the bricks that piled to be built to a house’s wallIn the stray mongrels that sat listlessly on the roadAnd in the yellow leaves that fell on the parked car.

100

Verifying

In the whir of an electric fan in the roomThere is sound that comes from a childA child of the earth and a climbed wall,A tree with leaves plucked into pocketsFor worship of a stone god in vermilionAnd yellow softness of a beginning god.It is god nested in a heap of yellow rice.It is my women of rustling silks of the air,A fragrance of worship flowers and flame.It is the flame that dies in floral fragranceBut re-lives to verify my continued living.