Barrel Down, Beaming Clown

Free.

Free
At last.

But freedom's not.

Freedom
Has a price:

A headache
And a frown;
A jester
And a clown;
And my eyes
Looking down
This barrel
Of renown.

They laugh,
They scoff;
I try,
I deny.

But the longer
I fret,
The stronger
They get.

Mockers:
Will they kill me?
Monsters:
Will they let me be?

Lord, I wish
It was ever that easy.

Awakening

Silence, o silence,
O midnight’s mutant son!

Bane of the small, cane of the tall,
O silence, your time has overrun!

Blankets woven, spread
like cheese, slippery
to touch and rebellion;
Blinkers spun, shielding eyes,
killing awareness—
primly done!

But silence, o silence,
O midnight’s muted orphan!

My face to the wall, I voice my call,
O silence, your spell is now undone!

Beeswise

(A thought-ridden man once found himself floating beside a bee in a dream. Startled by its casual assurance, he asked the speedy being for advice.)

Wand’ring bee o wand’ring bee,
Wings of wonder wear thy thee!
Say it, oh, now make no face,
Thy wisdom wrong doth leave no trace.

(Halted midflight, the bee, bemused, answered thus.)

Man, o lost o wond’ring man,
Reason’s foe, o doom’s own plan!
Why think, wise fool, when pace
Can blur from sight this barren place?

To the Mistress of the Urban Ape

I will.
Never.
I must!
Rest.
But it is what comes to me.
Well then, contain.

And to that
the Ape could say no more.

----

The primal Ape is woebegone.
He wants the Man to speak
in a manner of force—
a speech of will,
unbridled,
unshaped.

His memories are rife
with mossy cliffs,
watery valleys of stone
and naked coral reefs,
all fluid with life.

The Man, however, is Urbane.
He must not make
a mockery of poise
and silence,
studied,
subjected.

His vision is filled
with buildings of stone,
modelled to be mute,
alive, and yet,
unmoving, unwilled.

A war is in progress.

It is the race of him,
millions old,
crying to express,
and this face of him,
newfound,
refusing to depress.

----

Oh, I shall tear this world apart!
You must not!
I will.
You will n...
And now a bellow, now a scream,
As his face is ripped asunder.

---

The Ape, victorious,
holder of the horn,
now announces his plea
to his Mistress not-to-be:

O hark,
you Thoughtful One!

Of flesh, of mind,
of heart, of soul,
of the loftiest
and the dingiest,
of the fleetest
and the finest,
of the holiest
and the darkest,
of the newest
and the brightest,
of the ancient
and the worn,
this Ape forlorn,
in terrible pieces torn,
shall bring to your feet
the best.

Call my name,
O my abiding Love,
and rest.

I wait to serve,
subdued.

Ideal pity

To be, or not to be?
Die.

To want, or not to want?
Cry.

To wait, or not to wait?
Say goodbye.

It is now a crime to scream.
It was ever unforgivable to dream.

Oh mother,
shall I wake at last?

Betrayal

Like words,
there are promises;
like promises,
there are lies.

My trust
never vanishes;
my love
never dies.

Unmake us

Prometheus,
unmake us;
we failed.

Bodies of mud,
once
as you made, and
sparked,
have dimmed
and muddied
in mind.

We kill,
expunge,
shed life
and lie, rested,
to rise, like
ravens, again.

Prometheus,
no more;
melt us.

Let this planet
not thirst
for death
anymore.

Resurrection

A life
replete with sorrows,
bleak days,
obsidian morrows
and a vacant face,
misunderstood.

A tired angel,
given to cry.

Soft murmurs,
warm and still,
touches
of a feather quill
and a painted smile
of sandalwood.

Attempts at joy,
fragrant.

Lifted
with the faintest jerk,
a flight of light
across the murk,
and a shriek of mirth,
long withstood.

Blessed me,
resurrected.

Falling

(This has nothing to do with mythology or history, apart from names and scenes.)


A golden land there once existed,
Bloodied by a war. Good and evil
Long persisted; vanquished
Were they all.

Pell-mell the men had swung and slain,
Kindness all undone. Amid them a man
Had waxed insane; his name
Was Arjun, Indra’s son.

Flying fish whose aim could blind,
He was an archer supreme. Gifted,
Noble, quick and kind, his wealth
Was a warrior’s dream.

Brothers fought from either side,
Five against a hundred. The royal
Court in great divide, lay dying
Upon the thousands dead.

In battle this Arjun like fluid flew,
Arrows whistling forth. But oft he
Stopped, wept anew, and wondered
Of its worth.

Krishna, the Lord, was at his wheels,
Driving Arjun’s steed. Duty, he said,
Was bread and steel; and the prince
Could only heed.

The sun thus set and rose again,
Redder every day. Till the archer
Faced his only bane; his eldest
Brother was in his way.

Airborne coins he used to nail,
Eyes into the sun. His prowess
Bore a flaming veil; he was Karna,
The Sun God’s son.

With thunder the sky responded,
Rain beheld by fire. Krishna,
In his head, knew Arjun couldn’t
Lay rest to Karna’s ire.

So Karna’s chariot sunk in mud,
Cursed unfairly so. And then there
Sounded a final thud, as Arjun
Slipped the fatal blow.

Victorious, he wailed a battle cry,
The wind in his voice. The night
Then breathed a tired sigh—how
Men are blown by choice.

-------

In a day there arrived bitter news,
Arjun’s son was dead. Caught in
A vicious chakravyuh, Abhimanyu
Had rivers bled.

Maddened with rage was the father,
Avowing to avenge. Like a madman
He killed, and rather, in evil
Himself drenched.

Krishna advised a nobler course,
To accept and depart. Too many
Lives had bent to force; time
Had come to part.

But Arjun, for once, disagreed;
An equal life he craved. To make
Them kneel and mercy plead, he
Had his visions saved.

Bhishma, their general, hence arrived,
Challenged by this cry. Immortal,
Immune to death contrived, he dared
The archer try.

Broken was Arjun’s crimson dream,
Thus taken to task. How could he
Start, even seem, to live up to this
Mammoth ask?

He stepped instead to Bhishma’s feet,
The chariot high forsaken. A smiling
Krishna went upbeat, as a prudent
Path was taken.

-------

An epochal exchange then ensued,
The dead sky watching still. No one
Even dared intrude, as Pitaama
Weaved his worldly will.

“This war has taken lives enough,
And I am tired now. It is not an
Answer to your call; but, son, it is
Time you take a vow.

Plant me over a bed of arrows,
Drown me in abject pain. Refuse me
Water, ignore my throes, and let
This struggle not remain.”

King of his fate, Bhishma had spoken,
Choosing his demise. Arjun, shocked,
Knew not his ken; and wavered
In surmise.

“Take him,” said Krishna, “Shoot!”
This was his chosen end. His
Rider, still mute, struck Bhishma, who
Did nothing to defend.

One by one the shafts embedded,
Ripping the statesman’s spine. Each
Arrow, two headed, pushed him
Closer to recline.

The general fell, so did the sun,
As did the somber night. Falling
To his knees, the battle won, Arjun
Lost his sentient light.

Splinter

The denouement was
a dream; extinct now.
The dream inspired
disaster; I’ll explain how.

She was the Eve
to my Adam in Eden
reclaimed.

And I the apple
to her taste, forbidden,
unclaimed.

Like fire we came
to touch;
and fire that burnt
as much.

We loved to smoke
and smolder;
and stoked the flame,
turned bolder.

And in that furnace
a dream was forged;
two hearts in ardor
thus engorged.

We vowed to live
as hellfire, never still;
and fueled, the flame
maddened with our will.

Till all that was left
was cinder;
and all I could do
was hinder.

It was done;
the ash said it loud.
The fire of our pride
Had consumed us, proud.

Grace was now
An impossible crest;
And the apple, now bitten,
A ruined test.

So I let her go
with the apple stuck
in the scalded way
of her breathing, strained.

And I was left
with the apple's twig-
a splinter driven through
my soul, seething, maimed.

... and the swine flew.

Once upon a torturous time,
I lived at a place called IIT—
A stinking sweatshop, called for a dime
The place for you and me to be.

So there I remember an evening new,
When in a filthy tee and threaded jeans,
I strolled in search of the females few,
Unwatched, ignored, invisible, unseen.

My dream was love, young and slim;
My hope a catch, thin and fair;
And just as the dusk grew cold and dim
She turned a corner, my fairy of air.

In wonder I picked my nose afresh
And pulled my knee-bound trousers up;
Why, I thought, in wire and mesh,
Could this become the coffee of my cup?

Idly I sauntered, closer and cleaner,
Eyes and ears and nose engaged;
With every step my belly went leaner
As with breath a battle I bluily raged.

And then I was there, a meter away,
Bathing in her beauty of foreign make;
And it seemed my heart could forever sway
And dance and see and smile and shake.

Excuse me, she said, and I said, oh sure,
And made to give her the narrowest berth;
She squeezed in, I squeezed more,
And then relented in latent mirth.

She had passed and I had turned to stare
At a back and bottom so uncommon,
Only to be shocked to the pulp of my ware
As she turned beneath the westbound sun.

Oh, this dream, and I knew it was not,
For my nose was slick with slime again;
But oh, what else could a female hot
Want to say to a lover so plain?

Whatever, I thought, but want she does,
For here she comes, her eyes on me;
And my own went gaga in a frenzied fuzz
For her lips seemed curved a tiny wee.

And then she was there, an inch from who,
Her smile a pout of a kiss like glue
Plant that she did, and tongued, dear Pooh,
Your snuggles is sick with dead-swine flu.

…

Years have passed since that time
And I no more live at IIT too;
Hell’s my shop, and for chuckles a dime,
I tell them how the hot swine flew.

This and That

This love, that love…
My word! What love?
This life, that life…
Wake up! What life?
This want, that want…
I’ll say! What want?
This need, that need,
Good lord! What need?

It’s a joke, this world…
It’s a hole, this mind…

This love in that
That love, and my life
Two loves in a love
Two loves, and my life
This need, I need!
That want, I want!
This life, or that,
I’ll live, I’ll live!

It’s my hole, this world…
It’s my joke, this rhyme…

Stop and go

To you, my heart,
This question
I ask.

Will you
Forever

Love?

What if
I want
To go?

Will you
However

Hold?

However
Wherever

Will you
Forever

Care?

Answer
O heart,
My heart,
My love,

Will you go

Or will you
Forever

Stay?

Vertigo

(Another blast from the past. Wrote this a few years back. A truthful fantasy.)

Once upon a time— a few years ago—
When my world was small and my life a trifle slow,
Someone within, in a voice I didn’t quite know,
Wished in whisper for vertigo.

Soon the whisper was more a wordless scream
And the wish my most recurrent dream.
The voice was slowly, but surely, gaining ground
And ere I knew, it was more than senseless sound.

It was now a message with a vibrant echo
That told a most beautiful tale
And it had a wondrous picture trailing in tow
To show the dream in detail.

A thrilling thought it was, a prospect pristine--
Washed in freedom's sanguine sheen--
Talk of the ocean, terror-trimmed,
And a sparkling sun that never dimmed.

A sickle of fear then sliced through me,
Enquiring if this was destiny,
Or madness profound, as if I cared,
For by now my heart had dreamt and dared.

Lightning flashed, thunder roared,
And in a fervid frenzy I was aboard
A ship that sailed waters high,
On my journey to a land none too nigh.

My bed of flowers was left astray
My shielding canopy was blown away
My psyche was left unclothed
And I felt myself stranded at bay.

It took me some time to see
That my life was no more as it used to be
And that these merciless waters, this listing ship
Were my new home, and my new identity.

Now I live a wanton sailor
In the midst of a hectic dream
The sea is a storm, and I free her
Once awhile with a joyous scream.

The Silent Monotony of Murder

To every thing I do, there seems to be
This unbidden sense of monotony...
This sameness of desire, this guilt entire,
And this winless, windless monotony...

To every step I take, there flood in wake
Vermilion rivers of myriad motley vagaries...
Scarlet all in hue, feeding on my blue
And my restless, jestless memories...

To every breath I suck, there is nothing
But the promise of the next I may inhale...
As deflating in wait, I am held in my hate
And my girthless, mirthless veil...

To every lip I slit, there smiles at me
This unwelcome sight of saturnity...
This staccato of sleep, this silence deep,
And this endless, friendless saturnity...

Storm

Might, invite:
This dome, supreme,
This black, this white:
This sky, invite!

Sight, incite:
This globe, beneath,
This blue, this green:
This earth, incite!

Fight, ignite:
This space, exact:
This glass, this gray:
This wind, ignite!

Untying Knots

Wings in his head, the Carefree Man
Once decided to promenade
Palms in his pockets, sans a plan
He slipped through many a shade

Smile on his face, sun pouring down
He looked an artist's dream
Spring in his step, vale and town
He roved with many a beam

Glitter in his eye, the Carefree Man
Thought himself brimful of vive
Chuckles in his chest, wise and wan
He leaped for many a dive

A final shade then crossed his face
Met with beam and dive as due
But now the Man tripped over his lace
That lay untied in wanton view

His stop at last had come around
His face at last had gone aground
And all because he'd mastered not
The trade of tying a trusty knot

The Dusk... A Conclusion

Dusks, I believe, are everywhere. One for every ship and one, perhaps, for every soul. Take, for instance, that fluidly coalescing dusk on the horizon, watched in quintessential serenity by gentle drafts and eternally strolling waves which, in ways both entirely perceptible and latent, are the perfect counterpart and counterpane to the vanishing sun. And then that dusk in my heart, that which is mine, that which is a child to my nascent gusts and a parent to my senescent storms, and that which is hence acutely and remorselessly chaotic.

I am an engine's honk away from home and rest, walking my well-worn daily trail. Inward my mind is restless, for this is when I reflect. Outward I observe, and the world is what I make of it. I am crossing a wide, barren field, with a queue of trees patrolling its ambits. They imprison its bounds, but also help me escape, for the knowledge of a limit is the strongest incentive to breach it. In my case, I look inside, and I find my mind grasping for a parable, a peek through the window of the utopian unseen, searching for love and beauty at places where I believe they exist.

In fewer words, I wish to be with my beloved, and my mind seeks her. Her company, for one, or just her presence, for another. She is that perfect dusk for me, that utopian evening on a white-sand beach, amidst soft unceasing murmurs of harmless waves that seem to speak the true language of peace and pleasure. The beach is empty but for the two of us, and we look out at an equally empty ocean, broken in its solitude by a single ship, its mast proud and red, its listing even and sound. The sun is resting in the combined laps of a hundred floating wisps of vermilion cumulus, seeming to smile down on the carelessly intertwined fates of our twin bodies. Love and quiet. Peace, and beauty.

Meanwhile, the sun outside is plotting its curtain call, and looks poised to hide behind a building to my right and ahead. The building is one of the many hostels, a brick-red structure whose brick-redness has changed in time to a slick-wetness, grimy black in countenance and derelict in appeal. The sight is equally humorous and poignant, and it seems to be the perfect mockery, a blindingly accurate metaphor of all I have made of my life. The setting sun seems to bleed with my own vigour, sinking like my heart behind a symbol of dilapidation, a broken obelisk that looks in its character eerily like my existence. For a moment I picture this as my own dusk, my final defeated reply to the kitchen-sink called life, and also, probably, my last reprieve...

The mast of my ship suddenly seems to darken from red to black, its fabric stretching at first, and finally ripping at places to show the crimson sky on the other side.The waves have suddenly gained strength, and the wind has begun to shriek. A tsunamic war-call seems in order as the ship tilts forever to its inundated end, waiting to fill up with the monstrously rising waters. Even the sun, my own heart, watches now with a curve of lip that is not a smile as much as it is a deprecating smirk. My whole world seems to have turned against me in a few moments of casual introspection, dripping with congealing drops of blood that vaporize on touch. My walk turns faster, wishing to be done with its course, already tired of this cursed elapse that has sodomized my sanity in no time. I look helter-skelter, my eyes turning pell-mell, this way and that, rolling in and about, meeting sights with acceptance but no understanding. I finally close them, and my peace suddenly returns.

I stare into the depthless eyes of my love, forgotten-thus-far but present nonetheless, here, right by my side, holding my hands in both of hers, telling me wordlessly to look out at the ocean again. I do, and I acknowledge an affirmative shock. The gory scene has transformed to one of tranquility again, and all my questions are answered. It is the benevolent sun and the resurrected ship that speak in unison, informing me that love alone is glue enough.

I open my eyes, and I see I stand beyond the tree-lined quadrangle, in sight of my hostel. The limit has been breached, and I see the world beyond. The sun may set wherever it may wish to, but my love shall remain, forever fiery and alive. She shall be my world when my world decides to cave in, and she shall be all I need.

I shall survive. This dusk, and every other.

Open to Misinterpretation

This spinning end I see, whirling on forever,
Is it of a top, or some jaded pencil tip
That, through its burning, flying bits of lead,
Churns out my story, said, unraveled, unsaid?

Writing hence, I see, in a hue that hopes to flush
To gothic red, or deepen to midnight black,
This pencil's end spells in gray, not one subtler shade,
That, which is my life, made, coloured, unmade.

A mountain is traced, high, proud, but quickly rounded,
Flattened, eroded, and then decimated, as it falls
Like a diver, to the memory-moist riverbed of its own canyon,
Well remembered and replicated, done, sketched, undone.

And now the shortened pencil tip, rejuvenated
Perhaps in the recurrence of its own failings, shows
A monster shell of peeling steel, caked in green
That leaks its grime to purge, seen, washed, unseen.

This spinning end I see, is stopped in time,
But runs forever in my unforgiving mind,
Circling, asking me answerless questions to which I say,
"My thoughts are weak, and open to misinterpretation."