https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/06/14/poetry-on-solar-eclipse-more/
This poet is always proud to be featured in the honourable literary roll of Borderless Journal.
Two poems SHADOWLANDS and EXPEDITION capture my poetic evolution. They are featured here.
THE FALL
Before we lost our ways
and the west hills
saw lightning
strike twice,
we had been forewarned.
The great flood
had been
holding itself
in an hourglass.
It will now
unleash its scorn
before
the carnival of souls.
***
FINAL HOURS
A white light
picks its illumination
from the dying
snares of our city.
Cutthroat
and deepening with mud
and clay,
our world’s
at a penultimate
loss.
We will soon
be principles
of amber dust.
***
THE WREN
You have seen
him grow,
his fine timbres
touching our home’s tips
from
echo to echo.
When he’s gone,
the dance of nature
will be morose.
His song will be lost
to a gentle, frightening
fall.
***
CROWS
Boastful and
too advanced in his years,
he has now
been dealt a common hand.
In the new democracy
of solitude,
he is
counting crows.
****
PAINT THE TOWN
Paint the town
Redden its cheeks.
In the time we have
That leads to the inevitable
High hopes will accede to survival on sandbars.
Very close to the warblers,
Indivisible empaths will board the trucks.
Just wait and watch.
Every dawn is an eye half-open
Every dusk, a sun in recuperation.
This is the day we board our trucks to providence.
***
FIRST SHOW
Send in the clowns
Improvise the drama
Nestle within board and bed.
Heights of tragedy, unhinged,
have found mourners.
Ask for the front-seats;
this show is sold-out.
***
CLOSE
Very close to you
Envy has found its bowers.
Everytime you look around
Rabbit holes open their minds.
A very brief time it enjoys here
Nagging and nudging along peacefully
Getting the best of your finest thoughts.
A surprise can only be hidden for so long.
No prior electives can reveal it to you-
A life cannot always stir a reconciliation with mortal crimes.
***
LEAP YEAR
Quietly roll the days
Until a dead sun abdicates.
Evans had told it so,
“Every sun above our heads can be the last.
Nothing can bring us reason then”
In a leap year
Every last consolation is dead with that summer day.
***
A RETURN- PART 2
Can I go
back
to the place
whose
dignity
omitted itself
like an outbreak of melancholy
in this once fragrant garden?
Can I come back
here
since it was I
who
took the decision
to retreat?
You will not
say a word,
I know that.
And I will nervously
chew my fingernails.
You will not hold
one word of protestation
or complaint.
But I know
how you have
dispensed
leftovers
in my share
after
swallowing your
greater beauty.
You are broken.
I don’t hold now
either
your friendship
or your
final fading light.
This will be
my biggest
regret of all-
that I let
this bond
of Nature
and Mortal
pass away
before its time.
It passed-
distributing
worldly advertisements
with
the lightest
of colours.
Where did those
days go?
Why did I not
enquire after you
enough
in these last two years?
I just stood on the
other side,
with eyes of fear
stared blankly
at your
scattering,
wandering
downfall.
I have it in my heart
that you
did not erase me
from your greener memories,
did not exercise
the maturity
to turn away.
But
I’m just another
Coward.
I could not
look at you
with the same
longing pair of eyes….
I was
choked
under the knees
of my own
circumstantial
defeat.
***
Oh
my friend!
I was
stricken with
wild surprise
yesterday
and this morning
to look
at your
changed
appearance.
You seemed
so utterly alone.
What happened
to your open grounds?
To the freedom
of swaying
leaves and plants
that always had
a propensity
to induct
Nature
even on the
most scalded days?
What happened
as these two years passed
without my presence here?
And all mortals
disappeared,
birds,
crying for former times,
chose new branches
as homes,
across these banks,
the river
faded with the years
and little
saplings of
conflicted emotions
ambushed
the sheer sensitivity
of this return.
***
I did not cry.
I just kept pacing briskly,
avoiding your gaze.
I’m running from
the caves in my head
in which
all your open avenues
went to die.
****
Forgive me
if my farewell
made this site
sleep on its prickly bed
and swallow
all its liveliness.
This has
happened
at the end of these days.
Now,
we must
believe in these stark
truths.
You can come for me
with ten hands,
your primitive musculature,
drive yourself
ravingly
into the encampments.
Your batons,
like sabres
in the middle of the day,
will meet
the melting temperatures
and welding machines.
The head nerves
will spoil
their serenity
in your parochial presence
but
my name
will not
reach for its fowl-like
cries
to fear you.
Rest assured.
I will not cover
my head this time
with a fist
full of cowering mass.
***
Always ready with verses to imbue his bibliography with greater purpose, here’s this cinephile tracing a journey through two centuries of cinema.
He’s fortunate to have watched each of these titles through the current years, some of them adding to his love for the visual medium of storytelling most recently.
Here they are, in chronological order.
****
MOBY DICK(1956)
These harpoons
bloody
the most elusive
pearl of the sea.
Where is your mind,
Ishmael?
I can’t blame you
for all this frothing madness
around you
has made you wander
on the ship
that has moved towards
the lip of the docks
and burns with the
heat-strokes.
All reason is dead.
THE DEFIANT ONES(1958)
Free men
have put our skin-colours
on the line,
chained and fenced us in
around these
antebellum counties.
We run.
We have no colony to seek home.
For these few days,
we’ll be taken by
the rain,
the gorge,
the ridge
and the hedgerows.
Then
if luck permits,
we’ll breathe
across the river.
BOMBAY TALKIE(1970)
HEAT AND DUST (1983)
We look through
satin curtains
and gilded rails.
But we fail ourselves
when at the golden ripening
of the sea
and the dry hills
barely hanging
over these thirsty plains
across our clandestine windows,
we break
a dozen other
dreams
and
still see each other
the very next day.
The two of us lived.
But hardly caught
our breaths.
All of it
like dirt particles
on the doormat.
HOOSIERS(1986)
When
the body wilted,
languished
with the weeds
and nights and days
promised
pock marks
spread across the cerulean sky,
a
Spirit
appeared.
The vast field
of hearts
runs through this town.
It triumphs
with the travails.
IN CUSTODY(1994)
Dear Poet,
the word is out.
Your mansion
and your filigrees
are locked out of
heaven’s gates.
You have procrastinated much.
Just don’t ponder
the end of these days
and make it a couplet
for another trembling
pair of hands.
ULEE’S GOLD(1997)
The nectar flows.
The blood bursts,
in syringes and empty rooms.
Your esoteric mind
is the only piece of the puzzle left
to solve.
For the night is darkest around you
when you speak.
A SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES(1998)
Across the pond,
we leapt.
Our empty nests
made out of wood
and drying paint.
We only stick
with the new
wallpapers.
BEAU TRAVAIL(1999)
The longest days-
The desert roses-
All of the platoons-
crush them under the
isolation of
a sun that never
blows out
its candles.
Don’t look it in the eye.
***
THE HOURS(2002)
Tiny wrens
rise with their
pleasing sounds
around us.
The hours pass
with the river
reaching our
beds.
The self-inflictions
must be surrendered.
It is beautiful to
finally
sing with the wrens.
DOGVILLE(2003)
On the edges of this town,
life
folds into
horrors
unspoken.
She has fit herself
into the smallest
of cages
in our nation.
When she leaves,
there will be—-
there will be
smoke and fire
gutting
the ranges.
ALL OF US STRANGERS(2023)
The ghosts are here.
They are here……
They have come.
To their suburban
necropolis.
Be tender
when they stay a little
longer.
UNDER THE BRIDGE(2024)
Search for them.
The girls
who have made
the thorny bushes
their hiding place.
Their youth
falling like meteors
on an island
too hidden
to seek.
****
All clips are courtesy YouTube.
तुम नग्न हो ।
फ़िर भी
तुम्हें देखकर
आज सवेरे
ऐसा प्रतीत हुआ
जैसे साधु के वेष
के रंगों को
जो वो बूढ़ा छोड़ गया
तुम सबके समक्ष
तो तुमने इस बात
की आलोचना की।
पता लग गया
तुम्हारी सभा को
की वो बूढ़ा
भी धोखे की
मार दे रहा था
तुम्हारे अंगो पर।
***
तुम्हारी पपड़ी जैसी ख़ाल
जग ज़ाहिर कर रही है
की तुम्हें
अब लज्जित करने
वाला प्रचंड वन जीवन
बचा ही नहीं।
नंगी ख़ाल
इस वस्त्रालय में
कही ना कही,
कभी ना कभी
हीनता के भाव
को दर्शाएगी।
यह सत्य है।
पर अनूठा रूप
सलोना ना कहलाए
ऐसा नियम कानून
कभी था ही नही
हमारे दर्मिया।
अब संदल
की रंगत है
तुम्हारे पास।
वनस्पतियों की सज्जा
से ख़ुद को ढाकना
तुम्हारा दायित्व
अब नहीं रहा।
***
कहने दो
उन सब को
की तुम्हारा इलाका,
देखते ही देखते,
कुरूपता का
प्रतिबिंब
बन गया;
चुकी तुम्हारी मीनारों जैसी
ऊंचाई
मुझे अब और ज़्यादा
मोहित करती हैं।
अब सूरज इतनी बार
नयन खोलता बंद करता है
की
एक शिशु के खेल
जैसा माहौल
बन जाता है।
***
तुम सब ऐसे ही रहो।
बाकी
रूप
रंग
मौसम
खुद अपनी ओर से
बात आगे बढ़ाएंगे।
***
संदल- एक कविता जो कि अप्रैल और मई में सूखे पेड़ों के जंगलों को देख पहुंची इस कवि की कलम तक।
I heard them
dispensing
their fire sermons.
Just
some
weak words
they had
given up their days
for.
I had no business
there.
But I had
been there,
done that:
I pilloried
their brazen
tacks
and…..
the earth’s
baptism by fire
was staring at them.
It made heathens
of us all-
“civilization”
was another asterisk
on their torn maps
they had put
behind
the lavatories.
FLIGHT
A flying nun
rests awhile.
When the afternoon
blinks,
the day’s rhapsody
lightens its timbre.
She comes down
from her cosmic nest then
to the humbler art
of stepping on that tall,
old lamp
and says,
“I am not a guest.
I am here
to stay
in this upper storey”
We look at her
and forget
our immediate
preoccupations.
**
Time haunts us,
with the sky
a keeper of our thoughts.
This bird
is a surveyor.
She keeps her dates
with us.
She will rest awhile
or for as long
as we live
to hear her song
before
moon dappled evenings.
Even on foggy days
and especially
shimmering nights,
we recall her pitch and sweet timbre.
**
She rests
awhile.
For it is always
chaos, otherwise,
always her time to get
away
from it all.
***
MONUMENTS
Beckon the shape of life
and
it offers us
monuments to remember.
Through the mists of time,
a clearing has emerged on concrete.
A crowd dispersed
when the very dust
cleared the way.
***
It is just the two of us
standing there
before the monument of life,
with the purple and
maroon hues
and the sky,
The speckle and splash
of evening lights,
like halos
spread across town.
From the mists of time,
a bird has now emerged.
The lark
sings here!!!
****
An Awadh Boy's Panorama : tracing words on these filigreed, discerning fingertips. 