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.

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.

On Procrastination

I have procrastinated for months

To eventually write this poem today

Ironically, this time

The poem to be penned

Was meant to bring to an end

To my pet peeve of procrastination.

I thought my writing of it

Would be bring me face to face

[Oh, no. I am behind time and Procrastination is ahead of me.]

With procrastination.

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.

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?

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