Old poems

Of late I started becoming lyrical with the belief that I could possibly revive the poet in me that remained stoically indifferent for over thirty years. But lo, the efforts gradually faded out like the vanishing ink! Reconciling the reality I peeped through the pages of my old notebook of those days to discover the poetic touches I had at that time.

Silence

Silence is the word

To describe innocence

Or separation or love?

I cannot say.

Pity, days are such

One often meets it in the streets, in the office

And strangely over ‘phone

To talk is different.

Pouring words down the memory lane

Makes moments hazy and hectic.

But lo, silence there writ large

When the curtain drops over many flashbacks.

Is there no escape from the onslaught of it?

And again silence is the word.

Introspection

The urge to know and be known

Are simultaneous desires

Hovering round relationship-new and raw

To be in love is to be in fire.

Torments are the musical notes

That keeps the fire dancing till the rains.

And then the smell of earth; misty drenched with memory.

Man probably loves repetition and renews misery

Mistaking yesterday for tomorrow

Journey

Distance is a disagreeable small girl

Who does not understand much of geography!

Distancing the distance is love.

Separation, the irrepressible attribute of love

Is so sweet, so musical

One often forgets the rhythm of worldly dance

And celebrates

The ceremony of the abstraction instead

And you are a journey

Alternating between love and distance

That never started.

Vermilion

I saw vermilion reflected in the two drops

Oozing out of your eyes

When I injured my finger in the broken pane

You never uttered a word nor did I.

Probably we understood words are meaningless

To stamp the emotions with date and hour

But yesterday, only yesterday

I saw the mark clean and clear on your forehead.

Oh, don’t ask me if it had been

Tears in my hand

Rhapsody of six days

First day

Glimpses of a sunrise

And the prospects of the day new and fresh

Stole my sleep for a month

I never understood, really never

That it was a sunset.

I deserve the darkness anyway

And no tears please

Second day

What Hamlet Mused?

Is an academic discussion but what I feel

Is a personal suffering

Equation of the two

Might have some relevance for posterity

But to me none

Third day

Diwali and the lights

Failed to illuminate the dark recess of my heart

But oh, the beverage? Yes.

Hot and stingy liquids

Washed all those impure insidious invectives

And made me pristine like the first water

Fourth day

Devotion is a sacred word

To substitute hypocrisy

I wish I had been a little hypocrite

Don’t ask me what my devotion is

Or what it ought to be

Laugh if you must, but save the tears

I know what it means.

Fifth day

It has always been a weakness with me

To say ’yeah’ in a wrong place in a wrong time

The monotony of days is so disgusting

That I invent mistakes

To escape the long drawn ennui

I suffer but never regret;

And for heaven’s sake don’t console

In case you want to be charitable

Pity those who pretend to be righteous.

Sixth day

It has been almost a week

Since I had the fleeting glimpse of the waves

Emotions, accompanying the waves

Rolled in such symmetry

That I had the illusion of a pattern- solid and strong

That is why I wrote a letter to you, my love

Don’t question the prudence

Measure the intensity instead

And forget, as if it never happened.

 Happy New Year 2014 and best wishes.