Un-Limiting the Sky

The sky opens up to us, by and by

Even with someone or the other

Staring at it at some point of the day,

(It’ll get to know light years later, it’s alright!)

Some squinting for inspiration, some with disappointment,

Some with hope, some at child-like wonder.

The sky is a shy, breathing being, you know.

Who knows what secrets it keeps on the other sides?

Do you think it is two dimensional?

It never perceived itself that way, you know?

The changing colours are only a peek into her person’s aspects, you know.

It’s constantly unfolding,

Like a neatly-folded piece of origami

Sky’s the limit, you all say?

I wonder whom the sky looks up to

For inspiration.

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.

Experiences

As they say

Words fall short to describe experiences.

Photographs are still pixels away

From being a reflection

Of one's memory -

A refracted reflection,

Of the experience itself.

So what about hopes

To capture, treasure memories for this lifetime?

What about people

Who love to imagine,

And spend their lives

Living on memories

Of those imagined sights,

Scenes, smells and people?

How much more real is our world from theirs', I wonder.

Epilogue: Memories are interpretations. Memories are karma. Retrospection is imagination in an inverted frame, or a regressive mode.

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.

The Echo

Before you set off on a song

Strumming tunes

Of a hunky dory future that calls,

That frenzied adrenaline rush,

Bring it to a halt.

(These dreams my dear,

Should be taken with a pinch of salt.)

If you're chasing a wish,

Because the inaudible frequencies

At the back of your mind

Clash rather than merge 

With your future song's rhyme,

Then you've clipped its' wings already

For your creations,

Fantastical as they may be,

Stem from a mental hypochondriac

Stamp of injustice.

Epilogue:

‘Do you often catch the chime of reality,

Singing to you a morbid lullaby

Have you lately been crawling

To unbeknownst corners and turns (in your mind)

Only to slide down back into the pit of

Questions, angst, fears?’

Problems are meant to motivate,

Turning our thoughts to action,

Not so we become complacent 

In our mind's utopia

While reality becomes

Only a reminder of 

The mental hypochondria 

We subconsciously keep 

Seeking a right to.

On Curiosity

How do you define something that always escapes us, 

Something which we sense only by virtue of its anticipation?

Curiosity (at times),

Turns out to be nothing but a tale

Waiting to be deciphered and interpreted

In a new way each time

For without the other, neither could exist.

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.

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.”

To Be Continued

I've snuggled in your embrace,
Smuggled and sneaked in 
On you on tiptoe
(On the tip of a bubble)
Kissed you a million times,
Cringed with shyness,
Pretended to scoff at you
To break into laughter
And clasp my hands with yours.
Bumped into you 
At some street, on some staircase,
Letting you spiral down a step further
Into my soul's merkaba.

I have sketched you in fervent hues
I have penned you in vivacious blues
I have perused you numerous times
In my pursuit of you.
Fondled you after fumbling for you
In my dog-eared memories
Of my portrait of you
On a blank wall of my reality.

I've often visualised you
Lurking around the corner of a street,
On another day, in a library maybe,
As I gleefully offer my mind for you to read 
In lieu of the book that we picked
At the same instance.

At times I let these scenes 
Play on a little longer in my head,
(None of it ever happened anyway)
Till the juncture when you walk up to me 
(in those scenes)
While I
Freeze the moment then and there,
When you're probably just about to utter
Something I may have been longing to hear.
To then move to a distance
And admire that still frame I'd set, 
Picturing a dewy winter morning
On a summer evening.
Till the sounds, sights and smells disperse

Till we part ways like always,
Without having met, yet!
To meet again in an unfamiliar setting 
Against the backdrop of familiar feelings
Born anew 
In the thrill of anticipation (of)
The certainty of uncertainties.

Trust me my dear,
Your visage will fail 
To do justice to my portrait of you.
Let us meet  and be lost 
In my mind's tangled sketches alone.

P.S. Fell in love with my imagination of him whom I have never known, yet met a million times in my mind.