Life at Cross-Roads

There's no going forward, and there's no going backward, for it's not a regressive backward, it's not a forward-leap, either, for how do you know which is which, when can you ever claim to figure the coordinates of any point in infinity? There is no path because the path e-merged from the whole. To be sure, all paths lead us there, but all paths had begun from there, so there's no mid-point limbo where you're stuck. And all those paths, they spilled in all directions, criss-crossing each other, overlapping each other, like strains of water sliding down fogged-up window, suddenly giving you glimpses into the other end.

Timelessness

The way we keep hoping to keep track of time (thank God there's time for it) by matching our clocks/watches with another's, or the community's clock towerc- Do you really think the inevitable back-and-forth jumps of a few nano seconds couldn't have shifted us a whole day, or weeks, years, millennia in time? Even that atomic clock with its precision will stop one day in submission to the timelessness of time.

If Thoughts Were Audible

If Thoughts Were Audible,

Would you try to catch & make

Every fluttering thought your Bible,

In your craving

To come face to face

With that one thought

Which would have the answer

To what is the question,

That has gnawed at you since birth?

What if you bumped against

Hitherto infrasonic tremors

Of a morbid sigh or curse,

While hoping to tune into

A blessing or yearning?

Would you consider yourself

The sniper of the Panopticon

Or a prisoner of it?

Would the nail-biting curiosity

Of groping the trail

Of fragmented thoughts

From all (how many?) corners

Make you lose your own 'stream of consciousness',

                         as they would call it?

Deaf now to your own mental utterances

Would you (n)ever speak again?

[Since,

Your eavesdropping mind

Would already know

What the other has to say

As would he, about your thoughts

Before either uttered the first syllable.]

Or,

Would you start thinking

About what to think first

And what order to place those thoughts in, next,

So you could fool your mental trespasser,

Sending him off to a parallel trail of thoughts?

But of course he would be able to

Hear through your strategy

As he would also know

Of that moment

When you decided to

Guard your own thoughts.

But the question is,

Do you have any left, now? 

A numb stare is reflected

In your mental neighbour's eyes

As you both confront

The fact that

Deaf people don't have

Songs stuck in their head.

Puzzled Enemy

There’s vengeance gnashing its teeth

The anger, blindfolded,  

Flagellates at my insides

Churning out a fresh helping

Of supine decay,

Feeding its crippled existence.

I shrink at the sight

Of fingers pointing at me

To then direct wobbly steps  

Of melting courage

To be able to peer at

The faces behind

The exclamations

Of accusations aimed at me.

Till I bump against a mirror,

That, I had thought to be a window.

My palms scramble for strength

Clamped on to the mirror

As I slip on to the floor

I hope the aches will

Numb me into sleep,

Till I wake up

To fidgeting arms and feet,

As the glass ceiling above shatters

To reveal in mockery

A mirrored ceiling right above,

Which I had thought to be the sky

Before I had entered the room.

 P.S. The mind is its own worst enemy. 

The Dance of Shadows Part II

Stuck in the rut of 

The (so called) dye-mentioned reality,

You walk past your oft-mentioned

Thoughts, fears, cravings, yearnings, 

Learnings, ramblings and musings 

Squeezing them into 

[You say they were two-dimension-ed?]

Shadows that remain there,

Brain-dead, 

They play havoc now

As their amoebic infinity

Spreads like an endemic,

Ending your sanity, morality, duality.

They were meant to save you either ways.

Don't you complain them thoughts of sadism yet!

Infinity

For science and art 

Are but two interpretations

Of the one infinity

Called the Universe.

Of Being the Hypocrite

I am happily waiting for the day when I will have a farm full of pet dogs, ponies, rabbits, and as many of these furry animals. Watching a dog wagging its’ tail or a bird thoroughly enjoying a mud-bath, and many of these tiny things, I could spend quite a lot of time with as much awe and adoration seeing them, everyday. On my way to work, once nearing the workplace, I see herds of cows, grown and small, walking on the road, scurrying away in frenzy to a safe corner across the road, while a flurry of vehicles surge past it. How the cows manage to emerge safe and unharmed, each time, surprises me. I do have a fondness for these creatures that grows each time I see them doing some trivial act in a state of unknowingness, maybe. This is the good, happy part.

              I have loved non-vegetarian food all my life, I have tried to imagine how the fish probably die after struggling to breathe for seconds, or the trembling carcass of a slaughtered goat, and wondered what gives me the ease with which I gorge on non-vegetarian food the next time, or whenever. If we were to have a pet, we’d thoroughly pamper it. But to see a dog limping on the road makes one probably just feel bad for it. I fail to understand how can I ever in a sane frame of mind, call myself an ‘animal lover’ with the spilling greed for non-vegetarian food. What if someone spoke of your pet using terms like ‘fresh’ or a sumptuous choice for a dish – would it make you want to smack your lips or look at him in disgust, and why?  

    

Before I Touch the Sky

You're welcoming the future with open arms
As you shrink from your own reflection.
Lost in creating that Utopian vision 
Of the future
Which you think is waiting to walk up to you,
When all you have done 
Is to run to the past for solace,

And away from it when you were you realised 
You'd bore enough.

Before you soar off on the flight of dreams, 

Dreams you're afraid to call your own yet,
Watch where to your thoughts sway
Amidst the sands of time.

Presence.

I am
A question mark 
Slouching, lurking behind the wall
Waiting to stretch out 
Into an exclamation mark.

The Fear of Conveying 'Thanks'

The only feeling
I am sensitive to at times
[When someone says or does something,
Making me very, very happy indeed,]
Is the spread-eagled numbness
Gagging my thoughts.
Happy thoughts of gratitude,
Weren't those meant to be?

I smile at the person
Straining my eyes, 
So as to not let them blink 
As they look on at me, with a word of love.
While I,
Stoop within endlessly 
To pull out a few thoughts,
Clearing my throat
Hoping for a sentence to follow next,
However mindless;
Eventually falling silent.
I'd like them to know 
That's not me being cynically laconic, no.

I think -
The memories,
Charred with inadvertent retrospection
Wake up from their insomniac slumber
At such moments,
Rush to claim their place,
Smearing dust on the present.

P.S. Have you ever shied away from saying a thank you to someone who made your day?
It's not shyness being discussed here, of course. It's a constricted state of mind, feeling stifled enough to stop you from thinking at all, making you restless enough, though.

I Imagined a Poem

Life is

Just as I'd

Declared it

In my scribblings.

[It is] precise to the extent 

Of the [now] most appealing and repulsive

Contours and intricacies,

Some overwrought with older etchings,

Made darker by attempts 

At rubbing them out- 

Of where, pray?

[The eternal itch of perfecting the complete, you see.]

I'd dropped them 

Into a box called time

Shuffled into compartments 

Of past, present and future.

We mistake dreams for reality.

And then

Do you mistake imagination for imagination nowadays?

In your sleepwa(l)king consciousness?

The weaved hollow of Empiricism,

The added undulations of space and duration.

Somewhere, one's interpretations

Sewed into another's visualizations

Vis-a-vis

The maze you charted for yourself

To be/get lost

Where all that has existed yet,

Is the reality of the imaginary.

Knowing there would arrive a juncture

When you would be breathing

Into a kaleidoscope of chaos

Waiting to wade into patterned perfection, 

Eventually, when; Alas! 

You fell for time, again, time and again!

And shifted to the infested realm 

Of hackneyed manifestations.

As the universe thrusts that sheet of paper

On to the pen in my hand,

In my quest to trace and quench 

The voices sketched somewhere

In the white void of the sheet,

As I pen verses of salt & pepper.

P.S. Reality gets as real as the illusions we create. Reality is a vulnerable entity that never existed. Imagination is mistaken for unreality, were that a legit term, to explain the context better.

Living Things

I often have conversations

With objects around me -

From

Mindless banter snowballing into

Heart-to-heart conversations,

To

Waking up in the middle of the night,

Fumbling for the right switch in the darkness

To put the lights on so I can see

For a split second,

Things obligingly lying still in their place,

As they stagger through burdened time

To lull myself into sleep

With an assurance of familiarity.

On days I enter my room 

With bottled thoughts, when these things, 

With all their weathered, withered strength

Spur me on to etch out utterances at length

Knowing as they do, 

You don't always seek 

A response, reaction, remark, judgment, 

To something you nevertheless feel the need to speak, 

Which at times starts to turn incomprehensible

To yourself and to the other, 

As your tongue rolls them out

In the gibberish of vowels and consonants.

So I start off on a mindless rhyme

At times confessing my mind's crimes,

Scraping out fears rusty with neglect

Pulling out halted thoughts from a staggering stack,

Laughing as I admit to myself that joke was funny.

Crying with relish for I won't be accused of being weak.

Stretching out a tune I'd only ventured to hum [in public], 

Into a song, hearing my voice sing & strum,

In a long time.    

                           [Hitting the table with a pen 

                           To make up for the beats.]

Dancing with awkward steps on my two left feet,

But dancing nevertheless.

[Thank goodness I have feet to dance.)

P.S At times, when the familiarity 
      Of my own presence poses a threat,
      I need their company, these non-living things, 
      The only solace sensitive to my minds' mutterings.

“I do not believe,” [Edison] said, “that matter is inert, acted upon by an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand of ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence? . . . Gathered together in certain forms, the atoms constitute animals of the lower orders. Finally they combine in man, who represents the total intelligence of all the atoms.”

“But where does this intelligence come from originally?” I asked.


“From some power greater than ourselves.”

The Evacuation

Skin flaking away to shreds
Breathing a fresh whiff of mockery your way, my way,
Shrouding their compliments and
My pride that turned stale
As they were uttered.

Alphabets 
Lisping out of my mouth
Numbers
Trickling out of my mind
(Not a hospitable host,
This existence of mine, they recount.)
Fears & dreams 
Going into comatose.

Clock-hands pointing at me, 
At the stroke of wakeful realization
Like arrows, yanking out and
Darting past me, in all directions
On a time-bound mission.

Sounds, gone out of tune inside of me
Screeching out of my ears
Favourite colors, smells, sights 
Now driving me nauseous
A choking cough that echoes 
(Was it not supposed to stifle it, like in movies?)
Of all of these
Crashing at me, 
Trying to weave again
That familiar path on that train
That leads to the crossroads of that maze
Of self- destructiveness 
That I seemed destined for,
No matter where I'd exit from.
("The exit is only a dead-end!", a fleeting voice quivers)
As I stagger under weightlessness
While familiarity squints into a blur 
and
Alienation burrows a happy home
Mute stares from my end lasting three nanoseconds
Angry for they still don't get it
Thrilled, breathing a sigh of relief.
For I get it, lest I should forget it,
This, where I had arrived.

Or

Was I inhaling stagnant complacency 
Slipping into the reprieve of familiarity again,
Of accursed i-dent-ity
Wait. Am I getting familiar with myself?


P.S. Things you held dear
Where are those now?
Were they yours to admire?
Or mine to own?

Word is Out

An encounter with words in life hitherto
(Brought me asking yet again a helpless -
"Now, where to?")
For company was all I had back then       
An ebbing ebb of 
Self-assuring words at times, 
To a frenzied slew 
Of words, twisted & few 
Which sapped & gnawed away 
My spirits into mute stillness.
Like no adversary had ever managed.
Then another capricious turn
To a voice of rhetoric that mocked,
At every occurring thought 
In my breathing existence
Angry at what, I knew not.
Every mono-syllable I pondered over, or dropped.
Words plundering away words 
I had uttered, memories earlier,  
Words I saw, heard, smelled, lived -
Were they ever in my favour?
Or was it a path, I ought to have taken not?

Those words had more life in them
Than I then did, let me tell you.
Now and then, a war of words with 
The consciousness of words 
They and I had created
A dialogue, now supporting, now doubting,
I had become a dilemma.

Words are all I had at all those times,
And they failed me when  
I needed them most.
They sought a different muse.
Conscious of their mistress's dormant existence
Stammering her way through life,
Were they teaching me a lesson?
To take ownership of my articulations
With courage, wisdom & tact,
That which I probably lacked

Here comes news
Within dreams, with strides taken, 
With gestures, glances, I awaken
As I cross paths again with words,
Uttered - un-uttered, 
Now knowing their worth
Breaking the slumber 
of 
Clenched fists, 
Asphyxiating knot of syllables,
Scripting now, 
Drops of ink 
That shall make a million think.

My Verse to the Universe

The innermost core of my being
Bound to your outermost expanse by threads unseen.
Searching you, in garbs of space and time I trot
Pining, clinging to my sole company, of thoughts.
Light has forever cast its shadows, 
Playing old tricks.
While sounds deafen, 
The silences continue to prick. [shriek]

You are the shrine of the divine.
An abstract design, a definite sign.
I'm the echo of your origin,
We're paramours of a different kind.

The how, what and the why
Do not matter so much
As the Now, and you being firmly in sight.
As I wake now from slumber,
Cradled in your infinitude;
My soul seeks you, 
I begin to see your idiosyncrasies and your pulchritude.

We're like coincidences.
Two sides of a coin, connected.  
Deep down, I have known you ever since,
This is a tryst, not a discovery awaited.

I chance upon as many mysteries and finds,
Each time Your consciousness is twined with mine.
Neither is the seeker here, nor is one the giver.
There was never a 'you' and an 'I'.

I know it isn't just me 
Trying to reach out, night after day.
It's you order-ing fanciful twists and turns
Bringing to an eventual fruition, to eons of wait.

Space and time couldn't ever separate 
You from me,
For those had been this far my minds' illusion.
I continue to look for you in your vast presences,
Till we unite in the nest of our reverberations.