passion...

across the boundary ...

A golden land with eucalyptus grove,

blue screaming birds in the yellow sky,

America; the land of dreams
peep through cedars and dazzling roads.

"Mother should come and stay with us,

isn't it lonely for her there?

And then, life is so troublesome in this land,

slogging and struggling to collect every penny,
coming home, cooking and washing

and now the baby!

We need someone to take care,

Afterall, you can't trust anyone here!"

Above, the sky bleeds its last red tinge

and the sea gives up to the dark.

Mother waits;

the longing in her eyes, fettered

among the green smell of a far away land of the Ganges.

The perfect round red circle on her forehead

reflects paddy field and a smell of raw undug soil.

For Mother, the rising Sun, at once its setting seven seas across,

history, flapping like a serpentile forked tongue in her heaving chest.

Between the lands, time ticked away.

Her tongue, a stiff embarrassment in her mouth;

her hasty wiping away of tears,

"dearest son, take me back to my land, my house needs me"

hangs like the bewildered clock;

her eyes wait

beyond the gurgling waves of the ocean,

for someone

to take her home,

where she was born.

http://amolife.com/image/art/victor-cyganov-incredible-paintings.html

Notes: - the diasporic plight for the elderly generation is still strongly prevalent even in this present day close knit global structure. They would have their longing for their homeland, struggling and striving to adjust with a foreign tongue and an alien society, caught perpetually into an in-between nowhere zone. After all home is wherein lies the heart and not the foot.

posted for http://dversepoets.com/

We who forgot to live ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kuoleman_puutarha_Tampereen_tuomiokirkko.jpg

I step out of myself

and watch her

staggering and numb

casting and recasting herself

wrinkled and sore feet;

her ... and him ...

 them and

everyone;

 I watch you all

passive and pale

half smiles

rolling down your cheeks.

So many people

so much more dead

than all those corpses.

They have all died

without cremation

without burial.

Poem for the dead ...

I dedicate this to all of them who have died at Mumbai, Oslo ...

 

image - www.amolife/image.com

posted for http://dversepoets.com/
http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2011/08/poetry-pantry-is-now-open-61.html

being a stranger...

for all those who have become a stranger to their own selves in the name of compromises, adjustments; for being polite, for not to hurt others ... it is important to know, recognise and remain true to ones own identity ...

Falsities came

unchecked, unescorted,

like a silhouette, tiptoeing as a winter sunray that

manages its way through narrow slits of the branches.

Walking along with him, across seasons, covering hours and minutes,

I lost Truth, on my journey, at that unsuspecting bent of the zigzagged road.

Gently disintegrate me.

Removing all the layers-

blue, crimson and green,

get to the core.

And you would know

how I have worn a fake, forged face

all along.

All those dreams that were left unattended;

all that I hoped but never lived;

all those meaningless smiles that I carefully tucked;

all those half hearted promises that I never kept;

all those sobs that hid behind well groomed eye brows;

all those fears that were pushed beneath an uplifted chin;

for all of them, and the pretensions,

and for you
I have been a fake.

http://amolife.com/image/women/women-photography-by-antonella-arismendi.html

posted for http://dversepoets.com/

alley of flower

He often holds my hand and walk along with

in a summer noon

on melted tar, black and brutal like lava;

Death;

he is a constant companion,

in his grim sarcasm,

accompanying all human efforts;

courteous, quaintly curious, with a huge robe

that seemed as tangled as my existence,

 he would drop in for a chat

like an old lover

to have pillow talk on my ailing bed;

and then again, at times, right across, like a stranger

turning me numb, scraping my nerves

with a metallic screeching of wheels;

at times, I see him wild and passionate,

rampant in his irritation at human foolish ness.

I trap concern in my fingers and
 clutch conscience to my chest

and guiltily rush towards safety.

‘What is it you fear?’ he asks in his surprised baritone.

His voice, a caressing whisper against my skin,

he says there’s an alley of flowers, beyond,

where eternal light filters like rain drops.

There are white flowers everywhere,

  White, the color of purity and a woman’s sorrow,

mingling with the fragrance of wet earth.

There are night queen jasmines,

flowers for the bride and the dead.

Death goes on describing,

his breath, like the softness of flower petals,

like a blessing.

city bleeds ...