The Recital

(Attended) a poetry session today,

Enacted by a poet through his

Onomatopoeic, gesticulated gestures,

Clenched fist-ed, strained, wide-eyed,

Shifting his weight from one foot to another,

Like dodging his public-speaking fears,

From one leg to the the other,

As he tried to build

A rapport with the audience,

Through his words as they (the words) sifted

Through the folds of the air

To make a silent thud against

An attentive soul's solid, soiled exterior.

While reciting, looking into lit screens,

Scrolling up and down,

And trying to look for that line,

That trail of thought which was (most) perfect

Only in its untimely, chaotic, vague birth in that mind.

As the poet tried to familiarise

Himself with his feelings

Flattened out on fresh paper in

A font different from how

The curves & edges had felt 
In that first gush of thoughts,

When he'd probably first thought of

Penning down his thoughts,

Wise as he was to realise how

Precious they were.

Maybe he wanted to

Articulate his thoughts in written,

But ended up pinning them down.

P.S. Having attended a poetry session today, where the emphasis seemed to be on gestures, sounds, or let's say on the 'enactment' of poetry, I had a question stirring from within. The strain of thoughts, must be penned in words for retrospection and introspection. But once a poet, in all his earnest yearning to convey his/her feelings through his words, to his audience now, and not to himself, takes up the task of 'presenting' his composition in a certain way, does not that precious, original thought, lose its very essence? 

Maybe, poetry isn't about being accurate. Maybe that is why, we converse in the intricacies of language, and not in equations and formulae. :)

Light as the Emblem of Darkness

The dog preferred staying still in half-bent posture in the drain, with its ears plopped down, and tail between its legs for hours this evening, for the kids in the lanes were still weren't done with burning those blobs of light and shooting them high into the sky. 'Am I insane, to not be able to sense the 'festivity' in the air, with the choking smell of crackers being my only memory of this day?' he wondered, each time it felt a thud hit and vibrate his body.The bird in the nest bent and dug its head deeper, curling its head with its feathers, thinking to itself, 'These men know that we birds can sense the break of dawn through 'rods' and 'cones'. Alas, they can't sense yet that we can sense fear too.' I observed a kitten curled up in my backyard, waking up with a start to the resounding boom of firecrackers every minute or two. 

      Maybe, the only way of reminding ourselves that we're alive is by choking ourselves to death.

A Leaf from a Tree's Life

Decades

Of pushing myself to the extremes

With one arm squirming

Into crevices of the ground,

The other reaching out to the sky,

Squinting at the sunlight,

Shriveling up with the raindrops.

I've turned out taller than the year before,

Though I wonder how far I've really come,

Because my flailing arms are still

Groping at the sky,

With me still pinned to the ground.

Tug of War

While I try to figure

Which is the trigger

And which the consequence,

A battle breaks out

Externalities cave in.

Simultaneity takes on a horrid meaning.

Anticipation becomes the catalyst

Of a demon that I created

But know not how to kill.

I forget where my comfort zone lies

In the sphere of my inability

To face, to do things all these years,

Or the realm I wanted to leap to.

There's no single-leap shortcut though,

I've been crawling all the while

With my head buried in the sand.

P.S. My stubborn mind preferred the stagnant familiarity. I don't. I had to distinguish between the two till I won the war.