a cup of coffee for you...

I want to make a cup of coffee for you

at dusk

when the sky will be fuchsia pink.

While hearing the tip-tapping rain in the wind 

and the thud thudding heartbeat of the soil

I will let the liquid dreams and

fragrant desires to blend and simmer.

I will wonder, as I whip gently the

pearl white of the milky cream,

how the coffee tastes against your

lips, your teeth, your tongue.

I will stir the sugar and allow the magic
of the steaming cloud hang heavy and

I will test the ready ness of the cup 

imagining

will it sting or will it be just right!

The vapors from the storming cup

like rust golden beads on my forehead

and I will pour that anticipated light brown

into your cup,

a shade that fits between the tamarind of my skin

and the golden desert sand of yours,

almost the colour of my possible child.

that obstinate headstrong life-force ...

 I wonder how I

constantly tread this hyphenated zone!

If I turn off the light the moths will die

and so will the bats if I turn it on.

Should I spend life searching for an anchor

or shouldn't I just tear off the sails

and let it be?

How good is living

on a handful of yesterday,

an existence

neither real, nor fantasy,

like the alluring horizon

between the Earth and the Sky,

at an arm’s length away,

but ever distant?

Why do I fill my book of poems

with haphazard listless things?

A mail box with drafts, remotes, phones,

a crossword page of an old newspaper,

five odd books, a gift that you had refused to take,

some songs that I listen to endlessly,

a few old snapshots;

all flung heedlessly, uncaring,

here and there;

Just about anything to fill the void

that once has been your side of the story.

YET

even now,

 between the breaths

lurks a stubborn dream

defying all other doubts;

A dream that often morphs into a bird

and take colourful wings

preparing itself for an ambitious flight

to soar higher and paint the sky.

And I throw away my existential despair

like a pair of old, worn out shoes

and I remember to plant a seed, all over again,

and wait for the moss green sapling

to raise its obstinate head!

a poem, incomplete ...

Once, into his ears I had whispered

the story of those glowing fireflies.

And since then,

 during many mysterious nights,

under the magenta blue sky

my whispers deepened

and the story became a dream;

a dream of a tomorrow, pregnant with today,

a dream of an unknown joy

with strange pains, hidden,

a dream of a horizon

towards which I had turned my back long ago.

The dream was soaked with the moisture

gathered from the monsoon rain. And then

he became my rain. Now,

He keeps drizzling in my brain and

 I carry him within

Like the fragrance of the hasnuhana.

But I know,

Soon, a silence will grow heavy
burrowing roots in the corners of the house,

and  the rainy season will change,
leaving behind
memories of a rainbow sky,
that I alone shall have to carry

into a warm winter fire,
struggling  to decipher
the mysterious monsoon,
recalling
of having once been soaked
in the rains;

wondering occasionally,

if it still rains where he lives

and if he still thinks of the paper boat

that we together tried to make!

Answers to which I will never know.

And till then, each time he will say he loves me

I would be surprised why there’s a lump in my throat

that refuses to dissolve into tears!

untitled ...

What if I become a snail struggling to hide my body into a stony silence?

What if I become a porcupine and you can’t make love to me anymore?

What if I become a comma and fill those empty pauses?

What if I am a riverine nymph and swishing my fishy tail escape into the ocean?

 

What if Hitler’s mother had Jew connection and Osama bin Laden’s Hindu?

What if my mood stops changing like the monsoon sky?

What if I become You and I peep into your soul?

What if someday you get the strength to let me go?

 

What if I become my eyes and close it against the world?

What if the blue black night becomes me and you watch but can not see?

 

And

thoughts are a museum; pictures on a wall ...

you leave it but it never leaves you!

for my unborn children ...

I have looked for you

into the pregnant river water

on the right side of my bed

in the crevices of my long stretched days

in basil leaf and jasmine flower.

I have looked for you

among the happy giggles of children playing.

I have looked for you in his warmth

 in his heartbeats.

In the day, night, dawn and dusk

and in the coiled vine of desire

I have looked for you.

When insomnia becomes an infection to the eyes

I  colour your apples

Name your dolls

Sing you lullabies.

When the night becomes a blue-black bruise

I look for you.

When the orange Sun looks like

an excess bleeding in the sky

I look for you.

When he holds my face in his palm

I look for you.

I lie

I nurture secrets

I long for the sticky knowingness of his skin

I die to see myself in his eyes;

All for you

Only for you.

Waiting for you to be.

Wishing for us to be.

happiness ...

‘I will call you for sure;

We shall meet again’ he promised...

 

In between the velvety folds

of those promises she built a house, long cherished.

And to live in an imaginary house is the best,

her house, built from the grit of memory

has no trial and no test. 

good to have a fantasy house with hopes and dreams so little,

as the walls of which bear no rhyme and not another riddle.

no expectations, nor fear in the mesh of other allusions,

longing neither to belong nor to search for meaning in this illusion. 

Resting under the painted ceiling out of which Images grow,

she feels happy as the walls cannot anymore smell of sorrow.

Not aching to make sense of the day or the night,

she doesnt weep any more, try as she might.

For she knows this is all there is, and this is so,

there’s no panic of an end, and no one to leave and go!

 

 

an utter mistake

Her father did an utter mistake

of not holding her

of not carrying her on his shoulder

showing her the world.

And you too have done the same

of not binding her with the sacred thread

or a stained centre parting, the mistake

of not giving her someone to carry your name.

So she never learnt how to belong

She never felt home.

 

And she kept dreaming

of roaming in faraway places,

of the night sky

all alone,

her fists closing on strangers’ stories;

 

Now, often,

she becomes a kite, the string lifts her and

she flies.

She feels that she bears a river inside her

her hair floating like water-weed,

she lies still and listens

to the upsurge of a river within her,

the water rises, rippling in circles,

legs, waist, arms ... and

she paints a blue bird on her navel ... 

And she never learns to belong
she never learns home.
 
They made an utter mistake
Her father and you!

for http://magpietales.blogspot.in/