Life, I still live you ...

 An invisible worm destroyed a rose.

It was the night of death.

A strange quietness filled every hole
and every gap of the darkness,

the walls and windows were yawning
and stretching in boredom,

and the roof reflected an anxiety of
an ominous, menacing end.

An end, 
so grotesque and murderous in itself;

I heard a sudden howl of a dog, ugly,

splitting the bizarre silence of the night

and a frantic scurrying and scuttling

of the mouse to escape a hungry jawline;

the moon was opaque and pale, divided into pieces

and the stars were some ugly wounds oozing out puss.

 that night

her soul was killed fragment by fragment

 hopes and dreams,
 sobbing
 in an abortive attempt to soar higher,

against her nameless mistakes 
and faceless errors

fell headlong on the ground

like a wounded bird whose wings were hacked.

Then why is it that the dew drops
still kiss the morning fragrance?

Why does she still nurture an unborn in her womb?

Why does she still feels as white and chaste as a lily?

No thorn or threat can stain her existence,

the spring still hides its beauty for her and

the buds still blossom and grow.

Now she sleeps peacefully tucking the lyrics

of her innocence and experience inside her heart;

she stands higher and confront the brutal eyes;

they ask her to weep in woe of death and misery

yet she sings and dances and is merry,

 the world could do her no injury.

O Mother earth! do not weep for her any more

she wont escape in your bosom sulking, as before

today she has conquered death,

now, she rises lofty from her grave and aspires.

 ... posting it for poetry potluck ... for the theme 'survival'
http://jinglepoetry.blogspot.com/2011/04/poetry-potluck-evolution-environment.html

for you my love ....

That night has come again
tiptoeing in the silence
without consent,
a morbid barren storm
ransacking existence
invading your soul
in a nameless cruelty.
But among disappointments
I stand firm beside you
a companion like a bunyan tree
full of promises
to take you in my arms
keeping you safe from
fret and futile of the earth.

I hear the voice of your eyes
harassed and hassled
among countless known
and unknown faces,
your dreams crowded
with ice cold blames
of identified errors and
faceless mistakes of the past
climbing down the memory lane,
suffocating the future
in an anonymous panic
and among collapses
I stand firm beside you
a mother with her reassurance
nourishing you with nectar
to protect you for ever
from worries and wantons of the earth.

I feel the bitterness
of your existence
on your tongue struggling to escape,
your essence besieged and plagued

in a tiring effort of
justifying and convincing,
now the stars in this night
appear as ugly scars in the sky
your fatigued mind searches vainly for
same sensuous softness of the moonbeam
yet among failures
I stand firm beside you
a wife with all her faith
to hold your hand
till death does us apart.


That night has come again
With its uncanny fear
And an unknown trepidation,
but you are not alone anymore
for I stand firm beside you
with all my love
to make you feel the lost rainfall
to bring back the glitter in you
as we will together get drenched
in a wild whispering zephyr.

Lean on me, my love
droplet by droplet merge within me
see the changes of seasons in my eyes
believe the glimmer of hope in my smile
I will destroy all odds
devastate all difficulties
annihilate all sorrows
I will turn the holes on a dark sky
into glistening promising stars
I will add the halves and make
a full flushing moon,
with you, I will
create a nexus of love and warmth
which together we will name as LIFE!

My stiletto will tell you everything ....

O stiletto, my stiletto

You are my individuality, you are my face

you hold me in your tight embrace

snuggling and caressing as you trace,

goading and nudging me to walk ceaseless

among dirt and dung or filth and carcass

O stiletto, my stiletto

You are my individuality, you are my strength

 you depict my story true and worthwhile
you coax and cajole me to cover the extra mile

over the mountains and meadows and even above

you soil and spoil yourself all for my love

O stiletto, my stiletto

You are my individuality, you are my command

twirling and turning, crossing green pastures

take me to my land of dreams, indigo and azure

lithe, over the furrows and potholes you fly

agile, across the mundane and the aquamarine sky

O stiletto, my stiletto

You are my individuality, you are my psyche

clicking and tapping

and splashing and slushing

devastating my reticence you give me poise

your hue is buoyant optimism red black and turquoise

O stiletto, my stiletto

You are my individuality, you are my alibi

in a distinct style, you are a pretty fluttering by
in your inimitable flight you are a naughty little butterfly
your shapely elegance murder many hearts
your twist and swirl butcher and rampart

O stiletto, my stiletto

You are my individuality, you are my stride

A walk of faith a walk of love, a unique loyal union

for you I stand taller than mountain and peep into the sun

creating steady shapes and marks on the soil
you engrave many a stories of my life and toil

O stiletto, my stiletto

Give me fire

Raise me higher

Sing me a choir

Assist me aspire

Inspire!

another letter to YOU ...

I have understood why I love to write so much. Guess, it is because I find it easy. Until now I have conversed about many things – my education, college professors, a new movie, the rising price, an alarming decay of human values, kids, spirituality, hilsa fish – but I do not talk about what I think or what I feel, especially words that describe pain and tears never taste good on my tongue. So I bury all my hurts deep down inside my body. May be that’s why my silences always weigh so heavy. That is why I could never relate to another human being and pain, melancholy had become most faithful of my friends till I met you.

And this is exactly what I was trying to tell you the other day. I feel normal now, like every other girl around me. I feel I don’t have to bottle up and be tensed anymore. You know, I used to feel like an envelope! I can even imagine the familiar amused indulgence twinkling in your eyes as you read this. But honestly, it was as if I am an envelope, glued and fixed. And if I let anyone come close to me they would become those paper knives and would slip through a gap innocuously only to slit me open and then I wouldn’t be able to stop or collect all those blood tinged words that will pour and spill out and get scattered all around. Hence I was guarded. So when you goaded and coaxed me to write I started living. Now I feel free. My poetry, my writings have given me wings. Do you understand that it is you who set me free? Do you want to know how I see us together here? It is as if I am running with a spool, yelling and screaming in excitement like a small girl, my hair unruly in the mountain breeze, as you release the kite and soon it unfurls above us, going higher, in a vibrant shape of clear, genuine human joy. Perhaps now you would know that my virtual communication was more because of the extent of expressing myself in terms of writing and was not so much connected with my loneliness or boredom. People did not matter so much but talking to strangers, in a way, helped in being my natural self.

But it all has changed now. You have suddenly yet firmly rooted me to the ground and among reality. And when I see you turning and reaching for me in your sleep or tucking your hand neatly under your chin, bending your knees and sleeping in peace like a baby I realize that there’s no more need for me to be celestial, to be away from the earth. A similar line of Robert Frost starts ringing into my ear and I feel earth is the place to live and love. Now my life is all about a pair of deep magnetic eyes and an unsuspected dimple. I do not need to look beyond or bygone anymore.

I know there will be other fights, other hurtful words, perhaps even tonight. Yet everything, even my ordinary kitchen utensils glitter like hope and promises. And in every nooks and corners of our house there’s so much love that oozes in intensity. I know it would guard us like a protective bubble, always.

I lost my paradise!

for the only man who has loved me real and true .......


I can not see the same glitter and twinkling in your eyes when you look at me these days. I do not feel the urgent warmth in your arms when you embrace me. Sometimes you forget my presence; at times you ignore my love. With a fear of yet another world, perhaps the only one that I can call as my own, closing down on me I become frantic in my efforts to tighten my clasp, trying to hold the only love and belongingness that I had in life. It is as if someone is trying to pull me apart limb by limb. In a peculiar panic that resembles a dying soul’s last effort and gasp for breath, I rush to your room and try to smell your crayons and touch your pokemons or just sit and watch the tiny bill board, my hands unconsciously trying to play a rhyming number on your little synthesizer. My lips twitch in a sudden smile recalling how you grumble that I had made your room look like a junk yard as I don’t allow you to throw them away. When you go out to play cricket I would quietly sit to watch your favorite cartoon only to feel that unconditional bond, as if I am blindly groping for something tangible in a pitch empty darkness.

 I think our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. I have no idea if I have failed you somewhere while trying to build a life for myself. I do not know if by mistake I have built walls instead of building bridges! Or perhaps you have just grown up and I am unable to accept that! I do not know. I realize that whatever my struggles and triumphs may be, all too soon would bleed away just like a watery ink on a piece of paper.

May be some day, very soon I will tell you sories; the good and the bad; stories of my errors and imperfect life. Perhaps then we would be able to strike the same old chord of love and happiness in between us. I am hopeful.

my search for peace ....

let me now jam the brake of my life
it’s time to blink and flutter the eyes

I would harness all my power

and stop the gushing and pushing of the hour

when the waves sloshes and splashes on the shore

and the first rain patter and splatter on the door

the creaking and screeching

silence of my soul

drops and plops and shatters

every earthly dream of my own

soon the munching murmuring

and muttering of my brain

will gasp and gurgle before

the last sleep in vain

but only then I would be able to feel

the jingle and twinkle of the eternal peace!

So O life, whip up the courage

open the whining door and give in

for death outside is already honking and hooting!

Memoirs of a conventional woman .....

MEMOIRS OF A CONVENTIONAL WOMAN WITH DREAMS A TAD UNCONVENTIONAL, ... TRYING TO LIVE THROUGH AND SURVIVE ACROSS DIFFERENT GAMUTS OF A RELATIONSHIP  .....

I created a world of my own

a home for my soul

I felt like living life

I felt free!

and I held it all in my fist

those white jasmine flowers,

with reverence and awe

as I would hold my newborn

to my chest.

Like a bird that loves to fly

in a vast light blue sky

like the sun that shines

on a golden hued beach

like a moonlight that

nurtures a lover’s mind

I felt like living life

I felt free!

I began to float

joy and choice around me

like a multi colored rainbow bubble

shielding me from the fret and fever

I felt like living life

I felt free!

Then why is it that

the very next moment

all those start slipping through the gaps

in between my fingers

as brittle and slippery as sand,

and then when I tend to search

life appears to lie beside my feet

scattered and unattended

similar to some dead man’s ashes

colorless and opaque.

And the pillar of my imaginary home,

a dream that I nurtured and cherished

like the unborn baby in my womb,

stands forlorn and fickle

and altogether strange

in the context of the known!

Then I realize that it is a cycle

traveling through the passage of moments

from time immemorial.

Soon again would happiness beacon

from air to here, through the universe
promising more, needing more
like an empty page in front of a poet
thoughts conflicting and disappearing
yet again forming and
shaping through words
so I know
soon it would begin to connect
with new found clarity and meaning.

hope persists
I feel like living life
I feel free!
thereafter … forever …

I love to talk - 5

Keeping sanity at social networking sites ......

I feel, these social networking sites are the culprit of several social hazards and functional for diverse psychological and emotional trauma among human beings. I myself was a victim for a very brief period and thanks to a close friend of mine that I could see the darker side of the so called innocent social friendship sites.

Initially, I wasn’t so careful and to my dismay was a bit stupid too, to catch the smart ways of people who use it expertly. And when I actually got a firm hold over it, I was traumatized to discover that my profile has already minted several new “friends”, kind of people I won’t even look at, leave alone talking to them had I met them in real life. I am sorry if this sounds rude but this is the truth and I am not demeaning anyone in terms of social status etc but simply referring to the difference between us in terms of mental and intellectual wave length. Of course, I have only myself to blame for all the mishaps that followed. To my utter horror, I realized that I started letting my guard off as talking to unknown faces was kind ‘a fun and started expressing my hidden weaknesses or unhappiness and ended up portraying a profile of a lonely, sad, bored married lady! And then it started producing a fountain of scraps and messages from dicey duplicate profiles, frustrated people, lonely men, men who are there just for some kind of an extra kick, leaving me completely disgusted.

Though I can not deny knowing a very few talented, original, good people there yet I am so very mighty glad that I have resisted the temptation to lose my mind on stupid unnecessary virtual stuff and steered clear of something which in no time has become a global social disease that takes almost everyone in its loop.

Now, I find it funny when people go gaga and croon over having found some long lost friends from their younger days! I wonder about the futility of the whole exercise, for if at all they meant anything for us, we wouldn’t have lost contact in the first place.

If we are lonely or bored or unhappy at certain bent of life, we should realize that we can not seek for the solution or our happiness in others, leave alone in a bunch of strangers or long lost faces that we meet on networking sites. Our happiness is in our hands, hidden within the layers of our own mind / psyche. So let us keep these sites at an arm’s length where they deserve to be. It is the real world where we would have to fight out our own battles and survive. A phrase that I once read rings true now – our destiny is created in those moments when we had made our choices!

Once upon a time ....

There is this little girl who sits at a river bank and keeps looking at the vast azure sky. A familiar stubborn tilt on her chin is captivating. Amazed she finds out one day, the sky with a bleeding pink hue, staring down at her with a pair of caring eyes that sparkles in loving amusement! With wide eyed wonder she falls in love with the rose-sky. The orange–indigo tinge of the sky brightens up her ocean deep eyes and flower petal lips. Now she comes and sits there everyday, many a times! And the sky never forgets to flush her face with the same red pink blush.
 
She has always been afraid of silence that rises from furniture in an empty room. So she tries to grasp the sky with all her being. And then she realizes that she is afraid of one more thing too and that is – love. She is afraid of its frailty as she holds it in her heart. She understands that everyone is ready to do anything to keep it from breaking. But then it breaks anyways!

 Soon she begins to wonder if her rose - sky would drift away! But that stubborn tilt of her chin doesn’t let her say her doubts and worries to her sky. She only knows that the day he is gone she wouldn’t be able to love the stars or the sun or the moon anymore! Without him even the breeze and the birds and the rainfall would appear distant. If only she could whisper all these into his ear. May be, then her rose-sky would have taken her into his vast arms. But to save herself from this pain of loss, one day, she stops coming to the bank. She goes away, never to come back, to cry alone. But she forgets to ask the sky if he weeps for her too! If he becomes lonely without her too!

 In her haste to save herself from pain she  mishandles loss; the loss of her childhood that has already occurred and the loss of love that has begun to occur. Yet she stays stanch.

Now I see her in a garden watering her mysterious plant and wondering about a sparkling blue silver sky with pin prick red tint, the same color as that of her empty computer screen!

Moment ..

You look into my eyes ... and

I am drowned in the depth of a placid lake.

The way you tuck that forlorn tendril behind my ear,

push a wisp gently with the back of your palm

and plant a kiss on my forehead ...

a river within me pulses and surges up

to be one with you!

You hold my face in your cupped palm

and keep staring almost with a feeling of reverence,

touch the tip of my nose with a strange awe

as if I might dissolve ... and

my senses get filled with

the dizzying fragrance of wild tuberose,

the aquamarine sky swoops and dives within me.

I talk to you with all my excitement and urgency

but you just witness the movement

of my lips and evolution of my emotion,

and murmur absentmindedly ‘poetry in motion’...
I feel a wild fire inside the hollow of my bones

and a chill of pink blue ice within my veins.
You say I am your princess ... and

I try to fathom the shivering

that rises up from the soles of my feet.

A cactus flower blooms within me

your  fingers, my fingers …

A part of my logical brain cries out ‘you are insane!’

But I push my face against your chest

knowing with stubbornness that I wouldn’t let go

of this moment!

YOU and I ....

I bring a cry from the hills

and you bring a rainfall from the cloud

I rise like timid smoke after a bonfire

You rise like dragon smoke red and sapphire

I drift as a sand storm spiraling in motion

You drift as a wild tornado speeding and a beacon
Uranus rules me and I rebel
with Mars you energise and propel

I move in ellipses and circles

and you move on a straight line and settle.

But we meet.

I tow a gash

You shove a slash

Yet we meet.
 

Days and nights begin to merge

in a multihued karaoke medley.

We rummage each other

for new meanings savoring

every unread line and page hungry.

I dissolve like warm wax

You melt like an unspoken verse.

Then we begin to grow

outside our bodies.

We walk and the world laps up our skin

like the split slithering tongue of an iguana.

We persist.

And strangely you and I find

 all golden chrysanthemums within.

I am whatever the Moon has meant to you

You are whatever the Sun has sang to me!

Love gives us wings and we become life.

You and I

dissolve away, thoughts fraying,

coalescing and forming again

into something even bigger than nothing!

Meaningful Meditations ....

I often wonder about the silence;
Just as I have wondered
where do my dreams go after they die?
Yet this silence is more real now.
Like a tombstone or epitaph or ashes
kept in a holy copper pot.
I can touch this silence now,
I can hear its whispers around.
It even screams and echoes
within me at times, nurturing my core.
Now I hold my silence with reverence,
in my palm and feel its clarity and connection.
It is not anymore like a pretense
of a virtual space where one struggles
to converse and connect
with a curtain in between,
where emotions are just mere brackets,
colons and hash, hyphens!
Now silence is authentic and true.
It trickles down my skin like warm honey
It sparkles within my fingers
like a passionate glow worm
and envelopes my windows
with a naive fairy tale.
It isn’t anymore a silhouette of
a forced rhyme and a thwarted hope!
now an unborn peace,
a beginning of a never-ending!

To LIFE ...

Let me be a human being, I am just too tired being a woman!
All my life I have heard so many times from everyone around that I should be careful, timid, well behaved, decently dressed and docile in my behavior only because I am a woman! I was stopped time and again to play, jump, loiter and dance around to my heart’s content because I am a woman. I have been an attractive looking woman all my life but beyond a normal human satisfaction I have never given any importance to looks and rather always tried to be a good human being thanks to my mom’s values instilled firm in an early age. Yet time and again I have been made conscious of my looks in a way as if it is a crime! Even today when I am in my late 30s and a proud mother of a 12 year old boy, I am told frequently to curb my smile, stop my giggle and not to flutter my eyes too often!! And I wonder why can’t I live like a human being and not just as a woman!??

the following lines are dedicated to Maya Angelou's Phenomenal woman and to every woman whom I have known and not known in life.


I am a woman
I fall yet I rise like a phoenix.
Does my femininity anger you?
For you can never unfold me or
empower my core?
The sparkle in my eyes
and the swing in my walk
keep you enchanted
yet your futile efforts to own my soul
leave you aggravated!
I remain unmoved by all your opinions and
stay unchanging to my journey and my destination.
You fail miserably when you strive to conquer my being
but for love I smilingly bestow
and to you I cling.

I have often easily swallowed my anger
and hid my tears to forgive you.
I have matched your step and embraced you
I have flown high and rose above to kiss you
I have bend down in modest humility to accept you.
When you try to unclothe me
you find out in tiresome amazement,
the unending layers of depth
of my thoughts and my feelings
only to uncover layer upon layer
peeling off to reveal yet another layer
of my giggling and my sobbing.
It ain’t my fault
if you could never defeat me
It ain’t my fault
if you could never own me
For I am a woman
I have fallen yet rose from my own debris
And stood lofty and beyond in every crisis!