Wait …. Wait ….

Re read my lines …;

Before you read

feel the space in between...

they are filled with the depth of a river…

Let your eyes listen to those prayers

that reverberates with the birth of each word.

Close your eyes and repeat after me …

Begin slowly …  

And then let me know

if you have liked it …

 

 

What do I do with so much love?
They are of no use in my everyday life.
Sometimes, I use them in poetry
for it leaps, I don’t know from where!
Or at times, I bury it below the Gulmohar tree
... And keep expecting burgundy red flowers…
My pitiful waiting!

 

 

This beautiful painting was the inspiration for these lines ... I actually wanted to write a happy note, especially as it is a new year ... but it just came like this ...

She does not have a sorrow;
If she had, she would have dipped her pen
in its velvety darkness and
... written those saddest lines, tonight.

Tears were not there a few years ago,
tears were not there yesterday,
even now they are not there.
Those tears, they just wouldn’t go away!

..... Baishali
(inspiration - poet Hughes Mearns)

sex

I heard the word

when I was 7 years

and at school.

I scrawled it neatly

on the last page

of my school diary.

Teacher saw it

‘Gosh what a rotten girl!’

and my mother was summoned;

I remember her face

red in shame and despair.

Since then,

till date,

the word remains dirty.

The poet

Don’t call it loneliness
name it poem;
those dense dark moments
spiralling out of her pen,
words intense like sin ...

 

Don’t call her weird
call her a poet;
she who has etched
a blue butterfly on her arm
and
she who writes
in the middle of the night
dipping her pen
into that pulpy sorrow
which she collects gently
from her belly.

 

Musings ...

Last night the rain came. 
Tip tapping. 
All it wanted was to whisper a song into my ears.
 All it wanted was to die in my arms, singing. 

... and I was busy reaching out for my umbrella, 
adjusting my window panes, 
securing the bolts!

 

*******

If only I could come out of life alive
I would have brewed it one more time 
like my strong black coffee
slightly bitter, as fate,
a little grey, as those discarded days.
But this time I would have remembered
to put a dash of sugar,
this time I would have learnt
 to sip it at leisure.
If only …….

...

I do not remember clearly;

was it Belgium or Srilanka?

Or maybe Himanchal

Or else in my dream

I saw Buddha

sitting in a giant wooden structure

like an altar, perhaps,

with a make belief tree branching out behind,

eyes peaceful

but a mourning in the incline of the lips.

The knees are blackened

by the candles lit by devotees,

a piece of stone had broken near the palm

and nails hammered on his elbow for some repair work;

the feet chapped and scratched

maybe while cleaning

or by some naughty children.

He almost looked like Jesus Christ;

and the branches behind Him

reminded me of the hands of Lord Shiva.