Mother:An Elegy

 

Mother: An Elegy

Who could have fathomed

How deep the roots will have to

dive, wrestling against

the earth's crust

to wring out water 

and food.

What we saw was the canopy

of green foliage 

offering free shelter

from sun and rain.

When mother lay 

on the pyre

her lips were locked tight

in a smile,

for she was free now

from the everyday death 

she died

trying to wring out

food and water for others

from her marrow.

Nobody saw or heard

the thousand words

her lips held from escaping

lest the walls should crumble

around her.

Now she is at peace.

May be the world is

a better place today

for some  mothers,

A place

they won't want to leave.

NOMAD

 

Nomad

That you wear this nomadic life 

on your sleeve and move 

from house to house

scene to scene, drawing lines 

on water and then 

shuttling to another horizon altogether

in burserk, 

It only speaks of your rootlessness.

You have forgotten even to be sad,

Your eyes are dry like a perennial desert

The rain comes, but in such odd 

and strange hours that you 

do not recognise the clouds

once in a while.

A flood rises in you purposelessly

not seeking any shore to drown

but as a random thirst,

There is no hunger but of the stomach;

That also you do not feed with zest,

 You spend the empty hours in langour, without chasing a Buddha 

or a denouncement, 

Stray flashes of thoughts 

hiting the walls of your non-being,

when you are not struggling

to meet the necessity of the necessities.

Purposefully someone something wrote

in the slate of time,

And you lost a home,

So that you will be making homes here and there, until the times comes,

to fly back home,

Past the etching of a half hazard tale

of half inclination

and half comatose existence.

Till then it is frenzied songs

sung quietly in the long summer hours 

of the day or the wintry nights,

Or the afternoons when the 

sky casts the gloom and suddenly 

changes into the storm's costume 

forcing everything into chaotic madness.

Then you dance, then you come alive.

You breath the ordinary charm

of the extraordinary days 

like the fragrance of mellowed afternoons.

The overwhelming moments

keep whispering,

that you are here

for a few seasons,

So are the happy yellow flowers 

falling outside the window-

Arriving, blooming and disappearing. 

THE DAYS OF CORONA

The lemon seeds

fell into the cup, 

with subdued protest

before I could intervene.

The mint leaves in their small pot

were blackening 

as I noticed.

They lacked sunlight,

I lacked sunlight too.

Unlike the leaves

that were dying indoors, 

I was blossoming 

with the blissful 

water-light moments of my own

granted impromptu.

The intermittent journeys

down the gullies

and the by-lanes of the mind

that I missed, 

the existence has gifted,

It had understood their need.

What the life's necessities

had stolen away

flinging me headlong

into the gruesome scuffle

of daily subsistence,

The creator had blessed with,

without depriving 

the visitations to the manifested world.

Transformation: In Waiting

Transformation: In Waiting

The pale pall of gloom descends upon the little sky

playing hide and seek among the wind-excited foliage.

A strange amalgamation

of light and darkness 

tugs at the strings of delicately hanging strains of an old tune, 

with which

one is  clueless, of

the exactness of music, 

which is neither pain

nor happiness.

It is nothing that leads you either down some old road 

of nostalgic pleasure 

or through the static, still 

afternoon monotony of 

repeated moments

that often passes through your somehow reverberating sojourn with time and timelessness,

randomly vacillating between thoughts and calm.

There is still a discovery

waiting somewhere,

An awakening that is beyond

the reach of your seemingly

self sufficient yet 

infant self 

which a cosmic turn of events

may change.

Confession Hour

Not to have

A picture on the wall,

When you are winking and

peeping through all the slivers

of our existence

and keep coming on stray visits

to drown the present 

and blur it,

of whatever tidings,

with your compassion face.

It is not lonely nights anymore

or silent summer afternoons,

The entire residue of time

is your haunting ground.

Come and go,

as and when you wish.

There is no dearth of tears

or remembrance,

We are ever ready

to open up,

to all your unannounced sojourns,

to  completely throw

ourselves into the avalanches

that the thought of your

unmatchable goodness brings. 

Tears are a river of perennial water, mother, they never dry up.

You come, keep coming,

nobody here

is afraid of pain.

It is only in death

we grow wiser.

Self love is

the abyss of 

eternal forgetfulness

that we fall into,

again and again,

in our apparently vibrant

hours of 

abysmal imbecility.

Love lives

through lives,

new suns

new seasons and graves.

A mother has to die

to get this truth home.

Women

WOMEN

Blossom like flowers

anyway,

in every corner of existence, pronounce your 

presence , blurt out your dreams, and spread that fragrance

smiling  up at the sun 

and the passersby. 

It is inevitable,

that some will take you home and offer to deities,

Some  will hold you in hand,

gaze at you fondly

and be amazed, 

Some others will pluck you off the stem and tear your petals for fun,

and will discard you

and forget.

Some will make garlands of you and put you on pictures

of dead people.

 

Some will throw you down on the ground and will trample upon you, 

Some will put you on their hair until you wilt and wither.

You will be made into a bouquet and will

be given away as a gift sometimes, 

But the best ones will 

cherish you in their gardens 

and will never touch you,

They will delight 

in your existence,

in your just being there,

laughing in glee,

Their hearts fill to the brim

that they grew you

in their garden,and 

You will be allowed to die your own death 

in your own time.

Whatever may be colour of the sky,

whatever may be the strength of the wind,

The rain will touch you softly or ravage you,

still keep blooming

every day, 

every moment,

Flowers as you are;

Assert your existence.

Women:Hues

Women:Hues

When you leave your abode
Of unhappy and sick existence past a life,
That draws blood,
And hollows your being,
Both in body and psyche,
The trees in the backyard fall silent, and the wind stops blowing,
When it rains, it sounds
Like weeping
And the nights smell of death
This is what happens when you die mother.
The house looks like the interiors
of a tomb
and we feel like visitors.

-2-
When diseases hurl themselves
Mercilessly at you,
Sister comes riding the hurricane of love and
Kind vengeance, giving
Pain an anchor to grasp onto,
To ride out of the abyss of
fear and darkness.
An angel and an outlet to
All the bottled up sewerage
Life gathers day in
and day out.

-3-
The limbs
no more support the huge psychotic and
Titanic being inside the patriarch
And the tower of self-passion
Comes crumbling down to
a weak body and two weak legs.
The heart seeks and the mind refuses
To take refuge
With someone.
At this time daughters undeniably assert their presence,
To lend two hands and a big soul
Bursting with the burden of
Gratitude and an aching heart that cries inside
Yet holds the ground
And runs errands
Till the last day of your
Diminishing existence,
With unflinching devotion.

-4-
You are the only creation
That lives a phoenix life,
Burning into ashes every now and then and rising from it again.
You are the one
That breaks into
Fragments, melts into tears
and becomes one again.
You open your wings at will
and close them in love, you
Fly high above the clouds yet come back in the dusk,
to your earth and your earthlings.
You are the forever stream of
Tenderness overflowing the edges
of existence, diligently
home-bound yet branching
out to water life, growth, green pastures and wastelands,
You are the elixir
that bears, holds and sustains
this throbbing, rippling, decaying, and re-growing
Creation of the maker,
from genesis to nemesis.

ou are the cause and you
are the manifestation,
of what all of this earth is,
and all of its weird
and beautiful seasons of transition.