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.

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.

With Love, from Death

You've sketched & sought eternity,
Throughout the map of history 
In effulgent hues.
And what prompted it, pray?
Futile attempts at
Squirming out of 
The shell of mortality.

Of course you don't seek death.
You haven't been living life either.
What then, is it that you
Lived all these years?
Had you been living
The fear of death instead,
Lurking near?

I've been subjected to
A tirade of judgments from you  
But then you've judged life too
All along anyway.
(You've judged it more, 
And lived it less.)

P.S. (Achilles was wiser, 
Must I say.)

A Happy Re(s)trospection, This.

  For I don't really know how many nanoseconds of this one second have become the 'past' already. No I'm not caught up with you, and yet I am, for as I write, I realise I can never be 'one' with you. And maybe, it's meant to be that way, for the best. You're never a part of my present, but you have always been my present, once. I'd rather not term my past as a ragged piece of cloth worth being dumped in the bin. From thinking that I could just 'leap' to the glorious, fanciful future I'd visualized earlier, I got to realizing that just as I used to look forward to what was my future once, that future now having turned into my past, is probably no longer good enough, in comparison to what my goals for now, both short-term & long term, may be. However, were I to erase or undo that staircase of 'trivial' victories, life would probably not make as much sense now, my recent achievements would seem incongruous, neither would I know where to turn next.

(Past is the mirror with which we see our future. Yes, you may be looking forward to building something concrete from the muddled slumber of thoughts, but it's always in relation to, in comparison with the things, thoughts, and every influence that has defined you till date.)

From wanting to pass out from school, to retrospecting that it was probably the best phase in my life, till college happened, which became the  new best phase, these so called realisations do have a lot to do with a chunk of perspectives coming from a particular state of mind. 

         I've come to realising that it's wonderful to strive constantly towards whatever you yearn for, but concomitantly, you must realise that in working towards that so called 'ideal' future, you're not really escaping from it your not so ideal past, but learning from it, everyday. If things didn't upset you enough to make you want to change things in and around yourself, wouldn't it be more likely that you'd feel all sluggish and demotivated, in general? Past, present, of future, you have this one life to do whatever the hell you can. And living with the thought that you don't really value your past as much as your present, is as morbid as you could get. Your past will never leave you, and you must accept & cherish it, and learn from it. Many a time we've cast a disappointed glance to it, thinking there's no reason why you or I should remember any of it- of course, if you don't respect what has been and will always be a part of you, where you have always thought your past is an entity separate from you, you're not really building a future, you're only escaping your past, not facing it, or welcoming it. And when you do let go of that barrier deep rooted in your mind, will your mind be at rest.

‘A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.’  - Henry Adams