For a second, all seems quiet in this primeval forest,
But only a second, silence is something they all detest,
Each to itself, noise is their only music, their only protest,
For, asking for understanding, is too formidable a request.

Above the saplings, beneath the vines, I finally reach a clearing,
Only to comprehend, it is the end of the jungle I am nearing,
There was once a time, when it stretched to the ends of land,
Ages ago, before it was within grasp of man’s lusty hand.

But things have changed, and so have the times,
All that persists, is the pungence of its ripe limes,
The grandeur only remains in the great oak’s tale,
As a witness to a relationship now nearly stale.

Gone are the days when the flora swayed in the breeze,
To the tune of young birds celebrating their release,
Days when the daisies couldn’t wait for the sunshine of spring,
Nights when cuckoos shivered, at what the winter would bring.

But the birds, grow tired soon, and shall no longer sing,
They find the tree too stuffy, to  even rest their wing,
Deafened by time, the trees too are now beyond caring,
Although they admit, the separation is beyond bearing.

The squirrel meekly watches, as the birds go their way,
Leaving the old peepul behind, for people to log away,
It looks up one last time, at the slowly receding pack,
Now more than sure, nothing will make them come back.

One such a ground I stand, a slave without a conscience,
Greedy, slogging for the greedy, who demand obedience,
Sweating, I continue, hacking away at the roots that feed humanity,
So that my children’s dream can soon turn into a concrete reality.

Although any reader would surely put this under Gazebo, the place it rightly belongs is Mirror, because not only is this about the environment, it is more about my own life than anything else. The message and the rest of the stuff is merely camouflage over a more sinister story of my own life. It is as much about an educated woodcutter and the ecological balance, as it is about two people whom I value more than my life fighting with each other, unable to bear each other. There’s a lot more to say, but that will have to wait till I get some comments .

A few years ago, they took me away, cuffed and chained,
Only doing their duty, they knew not how much it pained,
Days, weeks, months I have sat, staring at the bars,
Awaiting the day to fly and converse with the stars.

Alas the bulb above my head tell me neither day or night,
And the minutes seem like an eternity to ponder my plight,
Of ever leaving this room, my hope has lost all sight,
Atleast they offered me a few hours of this artificial light.

None would listen, they wouldn’t believe that I was innocent,
I should be ashamed they thought, I should be repentant,
They were shocked at the lack of remorse on my face,
Knowing not, that this ignominy is more than I can face.

They parade me around, an apprehended dangerous criminal,
And my chances of walking away are sealed, almost minimal,
Standing in the dock, of the portals of law, supposedly called justice,
This was my last chance, and I really hoped I could do it justice.

Sadly all they believed was evidence, one given by circumstance,
It confounded me about why they denied truth a chance,,
It finally came down to my word against the evidence,
That was their value of my life, a gamble with providence.

They questioned my testimony, my character, my credibility,
And separated from it, every shred of believability,
There I stood, spoken, unheard, untouched, ravaged,
Following their orders, hoping my soul would be salvaged.

Alive, alone, death seemed the only one who was proud,
The only one unafraid, to call me its friend, aloud,
But God knew, and I knew, the difference between justice and reality,
And that knowledge was my compass, in the journey into infinity.

This one is for the Beacons, dedicated to Agatha Christie. The title is from one of the episodes of her detective Poirot’s serials. Somehow the moment I read the title, it reminded me of a lot many things that I used to dream about. And surprisingly, although it might seem odd, one of my childhood influences that left a lasting impression on me, namely, Tolstoy’s “God sees the truth but waits”, had nothing whatsoever to do with this one. The relation to that struck me when I was typing this post. But come to think of it, it does seem more and more like a versified form of that.

I always used to have this idea, probably from reading too much of Robin Hood, and such other stuff, about what I would do, how I would behave if I was imprisoned wrongly. Somehow all my life(even today) I keep getting this fantasy idea of myself as a vigilante after getting released for some crime I didn’t commit etc.  But thinking practically of a scenario where I couldn’t get out to do all that superman, batman stuff, this was what I could come up with. Maybe this is the way it will be.

Walking away from today’s corridors devoid of light,
My chances of fully breaking free seem but slight,
Finally a flicker, the sunrays begin to draw myriad shapes,
While my mind is busy scripting one of its greatest escapes.

Although my shoulders sag, bogged down by ruthless time,
The heart hangs on, knowing memories are never past prime,
The anxiety, the anticipation only add to the confusion,
As life leaves me to wander, in search of an illusion.

Decades have passed since you’ve forgotten their meaning,
And so you decide to take a walk back into the beginning,
You take the first steps forward towards going back,
Wiping away the grime, whitewashing the memories now black.

As the black becomes whiter, and the uncertainty lighter,
The credibility intensifies, but hope grows no brighter,
But there is nobody beside to recollect those years,
To bring back yesterday’s laughter and share its tears.

The past walks through the window grill, mocking my desertion,
Bringing back haunting remembrances, attempting a diversion,
Challenging me to prove myself again,
By going barefoot through these ravines of pain.

Today the corridor is filled, with many more like me,
Playing the sunlight, played by sunlight, just like me,
Right behind the nearest door, my redemption looms,
While those still alone, peep into the empty rooms.

They find a clean blackboard, devoid of words,
Awaiting a chalkpiece, to etch out new worlds,
And those empty chairs of a hundred bygone dreams,
Where others will sit, to create tomorrow’s dreams.

This one has me stumped with a dilemma. Do I put it under Beacons because I was inspired by somebody, or under Mirror, because I experienced it myself, or under Gazebo because many others are experiencing it? Quite an amount of history this one has. To begin with, this one was yet another one that came to me, during those endless waits for employers to get free enough to interview me. However this happened not at the employer’s place but at the consultant’s place. I was sitting in the Dewdrop office waiting to be sent for the Dell interview when I had to wait for nearly 2 hours. As is the case I had brought my book along expecting such a wait.

The first thing that struck me was about a guy(my senior in college) who was in love with this girl, during college, apparently things didn’t go well, and atleast she called it quits. One year later, this girl came to the college to give her Wedding Card to a few lecturers, and co-incidentally the same day this guy also came to the college on some work. You should have seen his face when he heard about it, whiter than a blank sheet. I was in the class that day(yes, I sometimes did such a thing as sit in the class, when I got bored of bunking) and happened to see him dragging his feet along looking into one classroom after another, tears welling up, remembering the old days.

It would have been fine if this story had ended there. However a few days back I happened to go back to the college again on some work, and happened to walk past the classrooms, out of curiosity, out of nostalgia, I just looked in, and at that moment, that day flashed back in my mind again. Funnily it made me look back into the classroom trying to rewind my cassette of the same rooms, and I found things were different only at a very superficial level. More than anything, for me it was about those dreams that we all dream, of becoming somebody, of doing something, of getting somebody, and how after a while it mostly all fizzles out, probably doused by a liberal shower of reality. Yet those in those rooms never stop dreaming, probably because they don’t yet know, and maybe because dreaming is such a good thing after all. Perhaps it is the only thing that is ours to change whenever we want.

That about rounded off the story of how the concept came about. But the story doesn’t quite end there. What had happened in the Dewdrop office was merely the concretion of the concept and storyline itself, the actual lines and their interplay had to wait  for a while. Yesterday due to  sudden torrential rains, there was a power outage and by the time I got home it was already nearing midnight.  I don’t know why, but I got a wild idea, and decided to try it out. Probably because I wanted to complete this one and found myself ‘power’less,  I remembered those history textbooks I had read which said people like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar studied under the streetlight and  cleared the IAS exams and so on. I decided to try something on those lines. But unfortunately even the street lights were out, so I had to settle for the next best alternative, vehicle headlights.

I was sitting with the book in my lap in the busstop, and whenever a vehicle passed by, I would get to write about 3 or 4 words a line. The rest of the time I would spend thinking about the continuation or the next line. Just when I had got a portion of some line, a vehicle would pass by providing just enough light to put down those words. That was also fine until the clock neared midnight, and the vehicles got very scarce if any at all. So I packed up, came home and with the last bit of battery left in my cell brought it to a conclusion by getting it out of standby every 10 seconds that its backlight went into power-saving mode. No sooner had I finished it, within 5 minutes, the power came back. Guess some things are meant to be out of the ordinary.

At the break of dawn, life has already begun,
Amidst the victor and vanquished, the task is half done,
Those unfortunately alive, are pre-occupied with the dead,
To notice the direction in which to futilely head.

The unborn generations would readily believe,
From the earth, there’s a better way to leave,
Than by a downpour of bombs across the distance,
On innocent civilians, who offer no resistance.

A flood of blood, that tears mother and child apart,
You wonder, whether anywhere lies hidden, a human heart,
Among the debris, try as much to atleast find,
The word ‘kind’ is surely missing from mankind.

Everyone’s awaiting to fight their blood brother,
In an encounter that will obliterate one another,
The planet will be left with only peace and tranquility,
After we humans perish, the messengers of mortality.

We fight amongst ourselves, unheeding the reality,
The reason for our clash, we lack proof and clarity,
That it wasn’t fair, our conscience will stand as surety,
If only we were to eliminate our uncompromising vanity.

This one is another for the Gazebo. Seems many are coming that way nowadays. Anyway, this one was written, again on request from a freind in College. She had asked me to write an essay-kind-of thing about the Iraq war, and being as lazy as I am, I told her I couldn’t write an essay, but I would write a poem since that would be less tiring.

So I set about and the first thing that struck me was the scene of the war itself, I was supposed to go on and on, but then after the beginning I just kind of got bored, and later could never get back to it. For those concerned with chronology as I am, this one was written around December 2004. So that makes it another one from the archives.

Sad, dejected, half-heartedly, I continued to walk,
Wishing I had somebody, to whom I could freely talk,
Someone human, someone imperfect, someone fallible,
Someone who believed in the concept of impossible.

Someone  who sympathised with the mind’s inherent weakness,
Someone who empathised about society’s ironclad harness,
Someone who realised that living itself, was life’s greatest progress,
Someone who yet understood, why everyone, must someday digress.

I suspected nothing when my feet never touched the ground,
My mistake, I believed that such a thing shouldn’t astound,
What else were dreams for, if not to fly,
Where else was a freedom, none need buy.

Though you weren’t mortal, I thought it mattered not,
Apparently that was the first flaw in my thought,
Thought the days, the clock, was running out on me,
You never worried, time wasn’t something you could see.

Maybe the problem was, you couldn’t feel at all,
You could foresee the mistakes, but not stop the fall,
You wish so much, to correct me, comfort me,
Yet I am more astray than even you can see.

Not just a lifetime, we are completely lives apart,
And so I only wish you too had atleast a heart,
For, that distinction between our souls divides us,
So that we must exist, neither as one, nor as us.

You never could get those embracing arms, not even a conscience,
Thus we stand, thus we float, my body in between, like a fence,
So I decided, to ascend, leaving behind all bothering things,
Sadly proud, of having finally got, my own pair of wings.

This one is dedicated to Nicolas Cage and his intriguing eyes and wonderful performance in City of Angels. The movie joined my list of all-time favourite movies, for one simple reason, it has the first pre-requisite, a sad ending(something I call a KB ending, Indians don’t seem to have caught up on that front yet, since there are hardly any recent movies that have made it to this list with the exception of ‘Gamyam‘.

This poem was my own interpretation of what I might possibly do if faced with such a dilemma as Meg Ryan faces in the movie. Although it takes the premise further, hope it is justifiable in the name of poetic licence(the point that if in the movie, angels could descend into mortals, surely we too can ascend into angels???).

When the matter is confusing, and our opinions fight,
Much time is spent agreeing who is in the right,
Though you assure me you do not mind,
I doubt, the silence in your mind.

When the times are bright, and moments, many to enjoy,
Laughter often doesn’t do enough justice to the  joy,
And so you just let each moment smile,
I like, that silence in you smile.

When the weather is rough, and familiarity new,
I wish our reservations would be more few,
Though I cannot control my own thoughts,
I want, the silence in your thoughts.

The truth is something, that we both shall miss,
Something we lost, when I broke the promise,
I thought that would take you by surprise,
I see, the silence in your eyes.

When the difference are too big, to softly speak,
And humility seem, like a virtue of the week,
And yet I find you short of words,
I fear, the silence in your words.

When every moment needs a lifetime to stay together,
And we scarcely believe, even a moment we can weather,
Everytime I talk, of us growing apart,
I know, the silence in your heart.

If existence was a dream, everyone would be a fairytale,
But face to face with reality, dreams  will always  pale,
And so, when they tell you of my death,
I hear, the silence of your breath.

Had promised my dear friend, that i would rip off a lot of concepts from his site and reproduce them in a new and mangled manner here. Though it hasn’t yet come to that, this is another effort at first running through the titles of his posts(of which i must say there are many more that impress me, guess Yanni must take a break, i mean i guess Yanni must be relieved) before getting to any of the concepts actually talked about on his site.

The moment i saw this title on one of the posts, i knew this was something i badly wanted to write about, the different shades of silence we come across. Not that we can grade silence, but there are so many nuances in silence itself that makes us wonder if silence was really so silent after all.

So this is another one for the Beacons, dedicated to Dreamcatcher, for letting me so kindly reinterpret a beautiful theme of his, well only the title has been rehashed, but soon maybe the content also will be.

Just give me time. 

When the day grows tired, and decides to leave,
The night is more than ready to help relieve,
The ending was too simple, just like any other,
For, each of their lives, were shortened by the other.

Every day was a new fight, every minute new territory,
Only for a day they enjoyed this transient victory,
For, to even contemplate rest, the next battle was lost,
Such was the price that this incessant struggle cost.

Though each one is less than happy to go,
They know there is no way they can say no,
They go their ways because they will surely return,
There is no way this fate of theirs, they can overturn.

Though this is a cycle that will forever repeat,
They never wonder why they both can never meet,
All they know of, is an assumption, a hazy transition,
Something that spares each of them, the difficult decision.

Sight, they know not, to see each other,
Speech they know not, to greet each other,
Desire, they had not, to feel each other,
Fear, they need not, to meet each other.

That the two of them, were so separate may seem so strange,
But they really had nothing in common to atleast exchange,
Despite their wishes, they were forced to remain silent,
For, they know not, such barriers how to circumvent.

Deemed to never be together, they preferred themselves alone,
And nothing described their lives better than forlorn,
Strangers to everyone, there was no sympathy they would get,
For the only friends they both had, were sunrise and sunset.

This one is again another for the Gazebo. Simple it may seem at first, but if you looked deeper, you might realise whom i am talking about, or rather why i am talking about what i ma talking. Initially things might seem as clear as day, but the more we look at some things, the more night we begin filling into them.

We begin to ferret out questions from every answer until there is no question that can be fully answered, and our life becomes filled with that big question of what caused all of this. Was it possible that if we were less curious, the world would be a simpler place to live in, a more content place to abide in?

You step away, and I believe it will be forever,
Forever seems alien, since I can’t even define ever,
Walking back, I cannot trace even a single footstep,
They just seem to wipe themselves away, step by step.

I try asking something, but the words disappear,
I try recollecting, but all the courage turns to fear,
Probably the fear, of causing one final displeasure,
Or maybe your reaction, an inability to measure.

Foolishly, disregarding caution, I let my dreams fly,
As if seeing through them, you give a fitting reply,
Being dreams, they are already prepared for such a demise,
But this one is just too much, even for them to surmise.

Every passing moment is a riddle, puzzling to its own very self,
For, you know not, the number of times I question myself,
Being unanswered, the doubts pile with every new moment,
You realise not, these queries, or how much they torment.

I decide to capture every moment, until the last glance,
But I know not, against fate, whether I stand a chance,
The eyes get distracted the moment you begin to speak,
For it is now the ears, that all of my attention seek.

And thus I stand, when you begin to walk away,
My feet utterly confused, whether to follow or stay,
The mind is inconsolable, but the heart sheds not a tear,
Though a lifetime apart, it knows you are always near.

When distance is an illusion, a mere matter of perception,
Every step away from me, is just a victim of deception,
And so I let you go away,
Because, I am, the only way.

Most often in everybody’s life, there comes a moment when we lose somebody close, and wish we had a chance to say goodbye. Or when somebody who leaves with every intention of coming back, never happens to. More than the act of saying goodbye, what we fail to realise is the sorrow of spending that last moment. How many times have we separated from someone knowing it will be the last time we will be ever seeing them, hardly a handful.

On how many of such occasions did we already know beforehand that we would never see them again in our lifetime, maybe one or two, or maybe none. Suppose you got to know days/weeks in advance, somebody you cared for, was going to leave you forever on a particular day, what would you do? What preparations would you make? How would you plan your last moments with them? What would you say? What would you do?

This poem is about one such opportunity granted perhaps by God in His more humorous moments, to get something I never could plan for many years ago, get a lasting last glimpse. The last time I saw those two people, I never knew it would be the last time, and was never prepared enough to depart for a lifetime.

But God being what He is, gave me another chance at life, by sending me advance notice of my last glimpse of a person who I would say, peculiarly resembles both of these two people, given their extremely different characteristics. So I spent the last whole week thinking and thinking over what I would do when I see Snigdha for the last time in my life. The outcome of those thoughts, this poem is therefore dedicated to her and those underlying Beacons.

Many years ago, I made myself one,
Though initially I told it to no one,
It is one of those things that needs no telling,
They seized it, like an idea that needs no selling.

Only for a few decades, one lifetime, I had thought,
And yet I cannot even count the daily battles fought,
It seemed every victory was only an encouragement,
Every step ahead, another test in mind management.

People might say, forget it, they are just words,
They were never supposed to have an afterwards,
But a word once given, remains given forever,
Something I will never be able to deny, now or ever.

The clues, my lips may play around with, and converse,
But your name, it shall always remain hidden in this verse,
Many times, from the temptation, mind does almost cave,
But worry not, this is something, I’ll take to the grave.

You have never seen me, the way you know it is,
And we have never talked, the way it really is,
Perplexed, though you don’t, you know it but you don’t,
I am sorry, but in this matter, the secrecy is paramount.

We have never talked, I said, and so you never suspect,
And what puts you off the trail, is probably the respect,
With too many dead ends, you don’t know, whom to expect,
Which suits me all the more better, in fact just perfect.

But every secret has to die sometime,
So too will this one, after a lifetime,
But until then, there is something that you will never miss,
The story of the person, behind this unbreakable promise.

My first post in the new year. Though it might sound like gibberish to most of the readers, one of the ones that give me the most personal satisfaction in this new year. I feel like as if a considerable portion of the weight i have been carrying has been shifted to the blog’s shoulders.

This is another of the Mirror ones which is truly mirror in almost every sense. This is the closest i have ever come to telling my story. Though it had a more than a thousand chapter, one for each day, this was something that was like the overlapping theme connecting them all together bound by a promise.

It tells of the difference one single promise made to my life, and how nothing was the same again. It would have been simpler, people would say if the promise was broken, because then i might have got much more happiness than now. Alas such a happiness would never have lasted like this one does, and will keep doing for as long as i live. Even afterwards, the happiness will show through every line that i wrote about it.

Every so often, we all make promises, how many of them are ones that make us commit ourselves for a lifetime. And on how many of such promises do we maintain our commitment in the letter and spirit of the word given? We will never know the satisfaction of successfully maintaining our commitment on the ones that we do, but then, that’s where the actual pleasure in the whole game lies.

Being a winner without even being able to know it, receiving the reward without even existing to accept it. It makes every single temptation that we come across seem like the test of a lifetime, because that’s what they are, ones that try to break the determination of a lifetime. It also makes every single temptation we overcome like another little step towards our very own star trek, and mind you stars are never very near.

To the casual observer, they seemed like a pair any other,
If it wasn’t for that singularity, they wouldn’t even bother,
Like all the others, they seemed immersed in their own world,
With the occasional interruptions reminding them this world.

They seemed not, to understand concepts such as time,
To indulge their senses thus, there hardly was any time,
For, they spent every valuable second, one moment at a time,
But the clock was ticking, and they knew it would soon be time.

Building walls around them, against death was no good,
And to waste it in such an activity, life, was too good,
They knew, that, for time, life was a regular food,
And so needed to make the best, before being gone for good.

For everything they said, something more could be read,
From what snatches you hear, everything seems so well-said,
All that needed to be, all that was, would eventually be said,
And whatever still remained, would forever stay unsaid.

To say time was of the essence, would be an understatement,
To claim they were dreaming, would surely be a misstatement,
They realised, and prepared themselves, for the final arraignment,
There was a lot more distance to even grasp any contentment.

From their sheltered cocoon, they never tried to venture out,
Yet in both their minds, there lingered one common doubt,
Which of them, would be the first, to finally leave,
Bestowing the other, with a chance, to briefly bereave.

Or perhaps, even death could be put to shame,
If they had already flown, by the time it came,
Maybe it would chill death’s own bones deathly stiff,
All they had to do, take a deep breath, and over the cliff.

This one is for Priyanka, the last of the KiDNAP(not the last you will read about them, but the last for quite a few months). With this i conclude the Beacons series on KiDNAP, and hopefully move on to other things. The first thing i am sure she will ask upon reading this is why me? as would any other of them, but thats exactly the tricky part.

Each poem dedicated to them has one characteristic of their personality cleverly woven into the narrative that it escapes all but my own eyes(of course the casual reader[people who dont personally know any ofthe KiDNAP] would not know any way).No prizes for guessing what this one is about, though i would be mightily be surprised if anyone guessed the entire premise on which the poem is based.

Another of the titles that i so liberaly borrowed from Yanni. Dont know what i would be writing if it wasnt for him(have personally found that unattractive titles lead me to write less expressive poems).

Such a shower, would normally seem out of season,
But he had long since stopped searching for reason,
He knew not when he lost it, cared not if it lost him,
A lot more important things had already left him.

He clearly remembered the day, as if it was happening today,
He knew not, they would no longer be one, by the end of day,
A misunderstanding, he told her, begging her to stay,
But in this matter, she had nothing more to say.

He was walking back, alone, when it began to rain,
He continued, for, weren’t they both the same strain,
One, unwanted by the sky, living a fall from grace,
Other, unnoticed, in search, of a now lost embrace.

Joining the earth as a stream, it would never again be the same,
Walking back from a rejection, he found no one else to blame,
Never the old form, even perhaps if it did evaporate again,
No newfound love, could erase, heal, the old one’s pain.

In its life of a few minutes, it changes and rewrites, many a fortune,
In a span of many years, he will never face a greater misfortune,
Every drop is saturated, with so much potential to live for,
Every moment is torturous, the next hasn’t any better to offer.

Those whom it caught unawares, scurried, running helter-skelter,
He hurried not, there was none left for his heart to shelter,
But it will soon be quenched, and people back to the asphalt,
Not him though, his life had already come to a final halt.

Condemned back to earth, it slowly meanders its way to redemption,
To even expect a glance back, would be the pinnacle of presumption,
For many years to come, people would never see such a November rain,
It was something he would relive, every moment, again and again.

This one is dedicated to Nisha, another of the KiDNAP. The Beacons never seem to stop glowing, beckoning, atleast for one more time, till Santorini is done with probably tomorrow. Am surprised with myself seeing the amount blue on the calendar widget for December, and there are still few more to come. Guess thats the luxury of being jobless.

When someone who you thought was yours forever and ever, suddenly decides to call it quits and never wishes to see you again, what will you do? This is an attempt to capture what i thought one person i knew might have done in a (to use an economics word) ‘free market’ scenario. And besides it also deals with another of my favourite topics, rain, and how both the rain and this guy are not really much different fundamentally, as they arise from the same conditions.

Another of the titles that i owe to Yanni. Somehow whenever i get short of titles he seems to be waiting to remind me of one.

Pretending it wasn’t over, was not going to be much use,
For, to feign forgetfulness, was not his cleverest ruse,
The floods had stopped, but the wreckage remained,
And everything around him, had forever been stained.

Over time, even the wreckage, may finally get cleaned,
But the scars, he knew not, on whose side they leaned,
They seem engraved, every time he remembers them,
And seem to fade, every time he begins to forget them.

He never seemed to know, was she a moment, was she a memory,
Whether what he remembered, was the reality or just a story,
And those mementoes, supposed monuments of romantic eternity,
Were they all fake, or just piercing questions about his own sanity.

The separation should be clean and final, they both did agree,
But memories are no verdicts, that any court can decree,
Nobody can fairly expect thoughts to suddenly vanish,
Even if they determined to steadfastly try and banish.

Did she too think as often about him, he wondered,
Because every so often, towards her, his mind wandered,
Did she ever think,of walking back the track,
Like he did, every moment of wanting her back.

Like a chain, every single memory clung onto the next,
Unable to get them to leave, to forget he had no pretext,
He understood how she must have felt, unable to forget,
But somehow, not remorsive enough to merit any regret.

Helps not time, the more it passes, darker grows the stain,
No sooner does he forget, it can’t wait, to remind him again,
How simpler  life would be, if he could leave her behind,
And start afresh, a new beginning with a spotless mind.

This one is dedicated to the next in the KiDNAP list Komal. Will the Beacons never stop? Hopefully i will get over them when the next two get posted and done with. Somehow kid myself that this is the way it will always be. Somehow end up not getting fooled at all.

This one is about a crisis that most of us face. Assuming an impossibility that i would face such a situation, this was a kind of intrapolation of how i would react and what i would require to survive thereafter.

When darkness becomes a stranger to the night,
And there no longer is an end to broad daylight,
When the moon and the stars separate upon a fight,
And yet he never doubted his future was bright.

If there was any indication of the events about to come,
He would never have believed the person he would become,
And that day was not very far off from today,
It was too late, to divert, too late to change his way.

He thought he knew her from the very first day,
And so couldn’t believe it would end this way,
Surely a joke, by fate, indulging in naughty play,
Or was it for real, for true, he could never say.

All that he knew, was that, the sun had set,
Set on a life, he never could fully forget,
The rains, they would never come, he had bet,
Alas, such drenched dreams, they leave him wet.

Barely in control, she turned around and walked away,
And found that they had indeed walked a long way,
A few more steps, and maybe, she could somehow end this day,
Memories, if only her mind could keep those vultures at bay.

She hesitated, turning around would seem most awkward,
But maybe it was the only way to move on, take life forward,
Why didn’t he ever look back, and see her pause,
Pondering a reprisal, fighting her own lost cause.

Though it mattered to none else, it mattered to her,
When the first tear fell, it wiped away her anger,
The clouds being spent, split. watching the two pine,
And let through between them, new rays of sunshine.

This one is dedicated to Deepthi, another one for the Beacons, and the second in this series. Saw the movie yesterday, and fell in love with the concept as well as the execution(felt sad for another reason though). Decided the title was too good to pass up a poem on, and since it was anyway a too big title for a poem, i decided to have double the fun by splitting the title and using it for two poems.

Although the next one was supposed to be The Spotless Mind, had a conversation yesterday after which i changed my mind, and decided to finish two quickies for DreamCatcher, titled ‘Resonated’ and ‘Silver Lining’. After which i will get back to the KiDNAP series as well as other long-pending ones.

For those not yet done thinking, this was about the simple ways in which a lot of relations breakup,and the small steps that people hesitate to take to get back on track. It is about how there is still hope every single day, if only we retraced our steps and found a common ground, maybe even if that means standing on each other’s feet.

It was trivial, I though it didn’t even merit such a fight,
She thought not, and refused to acknowledge my plight,
I tried telling her, that she knew not all the facts,
Unconsciously, she told me, that I knew nothing.

I tried telling her, about my pain, my lifeless days,
I tried convincing her, in quite innumerable ways,
I tried showing her, all my heart’s hidden pain,
Unflinchingly, she told me, that I felt nothing.

I tried asking her, about the reason for her fears,
I tried promising her, there would be no more tears,
I tried questioning her, the reason for her stand,
Unwavering, she told me, that I understood nothing.

I tried assuaging her, it was all my fault, a mistake,
I tried proving her, this time my tears weren’t fake,
I tried asking her, another chance at love, at life,
Unruffled, she told me, that I realised nothing.

I tried showing her, there was still a reason to smile,
I tried coaxing her, to think things over for a while,
I tried requesting her, that we needed another try,
Uncaring, she told me, that I deserved nothing.

I tried forcing her, to force herself to reconsider,
I tried begging her, she had a lifetime to consider,
I tried reminding her, of promises we made each other,
Unmoved, she told me, that she had promised nothing.

All that I had asked her to feel, she simply denied,
It seemed every action of hers, compassion defied,
I tried telling her, we were inseparable, for this lifetime,
Unperturbed, she told me, that we both were nothing.

This one is dedicated to Aruna. Seems the Beacons are getting more of their dues back with every passing week. More than the Beacons, this one was particularly the beginning of a series I will be bringing out in honour of KiDNAP. Was simply sitting idly at home and going through the Beacons, and found that apart from what i had written mostly in college there was hardly any new content on the KiDNAP.

So i decided it was time they got a fresh lease of life from reading something on themselves.(it must be noted that none of these poems actually represent what they are in real life, and are only mere visualisations of whatcould be, in case certain characteristics of theirs got into freeplay. The order of this series is purely alphabetical, and hence i request that people don’t waste their already strained grey cells, trying to figure out a pattern out of this. The rest of the poems coming up in this series are

2. Eternal Sunshine of

3. The Spotless Mind

4. November Rain

5. Santorini

After they get their dues, will be moving on to other things equally close to my heart.

The closer he went like a light-craving moth,
The farther he seemed from her, like her wroth,
Like the helplessness in him, his actions had wrought,
Less better tidings, the day’s moonlight brought.

There was once a time, when his life meant sunshine,
And sorrow was something he never could define,
The days were to him, rosy, cheerful and sublime,
And he never felt the need to measure such a time.

And then one day, he wished upon a star,
Committed for his life, to an object so afar,
All that he wished for, was one single meeting,
He knew not how swiftly his wings were melting.

Watching it alone, day after day, at midnight,
He had no one, to share, to unburden his plight,
He had no idea, that this was beyond his might,
He only had the destination, imprinted on his sight.

But she was human, more than a twinkling star,
And though face to face, she was never more far,
She looked through him, noticing, yet ignoring,
And the pity, sympathy, was beyond his bearing.

Thus began his descent to earth, feather by feather,
Such a rejection, even his hardened wings couldn’t weather,
Deserting him, they floated like brush strokes by an artist,
It was nearly morning, approaching with its forgetful mist.

He had never believed that a star could be so cruel,
That it would challenge his own heart to such a duel,
The body was anyway gone, along with those feathers,
The soul however, would join other such unlucky brothers.

This one is dedicated to Akshi, (another one for the Beacons) whom i last happened to see sometime in March 2003. Although this poem in no way reflects her original personality(which was much more sweeter than many of my poems allow), somehow when i began writing, it was always her image that kept flashing until i was done. And therefore i decided to give it a little bit of humanity, although this was supposed to be a completely sad version, i changed it at the last moment, to spread the sorrow both sides of the fence.

He begins another day, fishing in the waters of his mind,
He knows not, if that lost object he will ever again find,
It will never repeat, even if only to again remind,
Only its memory, a vague sketch, it leaves behind.

He walks not, in this journey of a thousand miles,
For, this isn’t the earth, to journey on his feet,
Around every corner, it is teasing him with its smiles,
He stops not, there are a thousand more identities to meet.

Somehow, it seems to be him, every part of it,
As if taken by himself on an unearthly visit,
He is a stranger to himself, like his quarry,
Only, his prey never pauses even once to tarry.

To believe it was false, would test his imagination,
But it was true, leading him to a new destination,
His efforts each time, would never reach culmination,
Since he could never stop it from re-germination.

A dream is not his guest, to come home towards him,
Instead, it is the door, that from yesterday awaits him,
If he never reaches, it will still push itself ajar,
To show him the next door, not quite afar.

He sometimes believed that he was living through it,
And yet he clearly remembered breaking away from it,
He would walk through one, and walk into another,
And could no longer distinguish one from the other.

Alas, the dreamcatcher, he knows not the meaning of rest,
Every single moment, every single dream is another test,
The remains of its body, his thoughts may clasp,
Its life, its soul, no human mind will ever grasp.

This one is another for the Beacons. It is dedicated to a dear friend also presently titled ‘Dreamcatcher’. Had promised him that i would rip off a lot of inspirations from his blog, and here i begin with his name. This one is about the dreams that we all dream, the biggest one being life. And how we never realise we are walking through the dream, and instead wish for other dreams to take its place. Had only planned to limit this piece to this when i suddenly found out yesterday that i had been tagged. And surprise, it really was Dreamcatcher back again.

So i set about replying to his brand new post, and decided to compose a welcome-back poem for him, and here it is(he knows who the star is, and who the child is)

life slowly halts as the sun goes down,
and the night descends upon the town,
galaxies apart, he knows not its is afar,
the little one waits for the promised star.

the bright star looks down,
at the child’s stubborn frown,
no consolations, no words of renown,
could excuse the kid being let down.

only a month more, the star had said,
believing which the kid went to bed,
weeks past a month, and yet no star,
ever so hopeful, the window was ajar.

the star came through, but the child couldn’t see,
and so wrapped in his little dreams, it let him be,
waiting for the day, when it would set him free,
as always, a fingerwidth above the tallest tree.

So Dreamcatcher get ready for more.

The next batch of them stepped out of the cave,
The first steps they were taking out of the enclave,
Everything went blank, outside, it was just blinding,
So unprepared for things that were now emerging.

Things they never heard of, things they could never believe,
Sights and sounds that their minds would now never leave,
It shattered all their myths, shattered all their cherished beliefs,
It rewrote them, and taught them, facts were the only beliefs.

For them, from now everything in life was just another question,
The only way it answered each one was with another question,
It formed a chain of questions leading all the way,
And every diversion they took was another new way.

The road stretched out for ever with no visible end,
And the light around them was all they could depend,
For years on end, its expansiveness they admired,
And wondered to themselves, how the feet never tired.

They never knew, what they were in, was called day,
Because from it, they could never grow apart, astray,
Through all its bylanes, they would never know the way,
Whether they knew anything about it, they never could say.

The more they explored it, the lesser they knew,
And yet everything they uncovered seemed new,
The more they drank, the more thirsty they got,
And yet, where its charm lay, they comprehended not.

Gradually each one of them began to miss the night,
And wished, for a few moments they lost their sight,
Where were those days, when everything was more than ample,
Back in their cave, their lives had been so much more simple.

To begin with, this one is a paraphrased, versified form of a comment i wrote on Aparna’s blog. Had promised her at that time that i would get back to the topic when i found more time, and now comes that time. Below is the extract of my post then:

knowledge itself is by no means qualitative. it neither creates nor destroys, it just shows people a path. it is what could more properly be likened to light.

imagine a world where everyone was living in darkness(maybe in a cave of simplicity, maybe in a well of contentment), and then one fine day somebody finds a way into a place called light, a place that improves matters and yet complicates them. a place that tickles the restless and thereby hastens change.

it is because people felt too stifled by the darkness of the cave, maybe too bored, that they chose to seek the pleasures of this new city of light called knowledge.

unfortunately theirs proved to be a journey of no return. there was nobody people any longer knew who could shed their cloaks of darkness for these new shimmering dresses called knowledge and soon outgrow dozens of these tight-fitting robes and find a way to get back their cloaks of contentment.

it was an addiction that refused to darken, a disposition that could not anymore brighten. it was the simplest form of organised chaos. one that exploded out of itself only to implode into itself.

the people used to the confines of the cave could never get enough of this newfoundland, because it had no walls, no roof, it spanned an eternity, it spanned the entire horizon, and a flexible one at that. the more they walked the newer the horizon got, but thats all that happened, there was nobody who could ever get to the end of the horizon, to realise that it was one big circular dream that revolved around itself.

thus ended the legend of the cave dwellers, ones who could never wait to get out, and those that could never find their way back home again.

Hardpressed for time as i was on that day, i never could follow it up even afterwards, as different other things caught my fancy, but life being what it is, had to come back to this in the most unexpected of ways. Personally i have nothing against knowledge. Whatever i am today was made possible because of the knowledge that i have gained along the journey.

However, the kind of psychotic that i am, i keep alternating everyday between the quest for my scientific hunger and the thirst for contentment that keeps drying up my throat every other moment. The entire point of the above was more a dialogue between myself everyday, a dialogue between contentment and ambition. Knowledge that by nature has no quality, by its force of power, proves itself as the most deadly temptation human beings ever knew.

It pushes every person beyond their limits, in a supposive bid to increase their happiness. Happiness people believe comes from awareness, from the uncovering of the secrets locked into everything they can and cannot see. Alas, they realise not that contentment too is knowledge, but then nobody goes down that lane, probably a dead-end. It would not seem out of place to expect that people who set out on a journey to keep away from a dead-end, even though that is possibly the only terminal they will ever come across in their lifetime. It presents itself at every turning, and yet the more they see it, the more they choose to ignore it.

Soon will reach a point when everyone would have forgotten what the word satisfaction means. The next generation already believes satisfaction means the beginning of a new pursuit, not the end of the previous one. Anti-progress, anti-development you may think i am. But like i said, what hurts me is not actually the knowledge, but way people choose to selectively imbibe harmful bits of it. Progress is not bad as long as it includes everyone on this journey. But to hoard it up, even when on a full stomach, only to ensure security for tomorrow’s hunger, while many die in today’s journey is what hurts me. It is that contentment that i am talking about.

That is the true sign of a knowledgeable one. One who can share having had his fill. One who can lead others over the roads already travelled by him, instead of walking ahead on a lonely quest of self-fulfillment. Sadly i find this vanishing at an alarming rate among the travellers of knowledge-land today. Everywhere in the world, there is somebody suing somebody else about a patent, about a copyright. Whatever happened to that anachronism called “greater good”. Has it been relegated to the dusty pages of a book that the librarian forgot all about? Or must it be brought back from there only to be sullied by scheming politicians looking out for the greater ’self-good’.

Though i find this abrupt, i cannot help but end here, for now, as a series of disturbances are pulling me apart from the computer and hope to put in some more, both as a poem and as its appendix, probably on another day, when my mind can no longer bear to merely think over to myself what i feel, like it was today.

You are struck by one, and then another, blow,
Perhaps a result of lettings things to go slow,
In retort, in return, a harder punch you try to throw,
Feeling it sailing across, you begin to get back the flow.

Those that back off, are the ones that get knocked out,
Those that fight back, are ones who will finally walk out,
They wipe off the blood, and get back on their feet,
They carry their scars, and their next opponent meet.

If everybody backed down, right after the first punch,
This world would be populated with a losing bunch,
If everybody gave in, to their every weakness,
Nobody would even know, the spelling of success.

Every victory is, but, a seed,
For a new quest to eventually sprout,
Every obstacle, a parasitic weed,
Growing up on a nutrition of doubt.

You decide it must be plucked out, weeded,
But failure is not the one to stay uprooted,
It twines its roots deeper into the mind,
Its branches spread out, to forever remind.

But to those for whom failure is merely another event,
One that repeats for those who only choose to lament,
With everything vanquished, there is still another weakness,
One that refuses to get over its special human fondness.

Despite the successes, the one battle all must lose, is death,
Only the victorious have the luxury, to neither lose or conquer,
But nobody is really a victor, until their last breath,
There are always battles to fight, weaknesses to conquer.

This one is dedicated to James J. Braddock and Sukanya(both fighters in their own ways). Initially Vijay anna was waxing eloquent about this movie, so i decided to see what it was all about. And needless to say it was worth every pirated minute i spent on it.

In every corner of this globe, in every walk of like, we see people who refuse to die out, who refuse to spend an eternity wallowing in mediocrity and decide to stand up and make sure their point is heard(mera number kab aayega?). Such people are more often motivated by the results of failure(whose very thought in their minds are unimaginable) and the future that it portends.

It was to this end that Mohammad Ali one said (am paraphrasing) “In a fight between equals, only the person who knows what it is to lose(the fall back into mediocrity and most certainly deprivation) can come up with the winning punch”. Although this is a breed that can never die out, wish it would spread at a faster rate, but that again can only be done by fate.

A different language, where letters are unnecessary,
One where words are dispensable, a mere accessory,
Where every single word is complete in itself,
And no sentence is required to express oneself.

Where the silence speaks louder than any word,
And the sound begins to seem like an afterword,
Where the feelings speak louder than any thought,
And the instinct leaves no thought unthought.

If sentences were all that made up a conversation,
To believe this, your mind would need no persuasion,
If only every thought had a word as destination,
It would bring every single desire into observation.

Like the fragrance in the air, after the first rain,
When the clouds come back singing their refrain,
When all the pedestrians curtail their walk,
For the earth and the sky to begin their talk.

Although largely subdued due to the thunder,
They show no signs of quietly going asunder,
All those who rush for shelter, get closer in a huddle,
And listen to its humming song in every single puddle.

Pitter patter they beat and pound in a rhythmic code,
Like the everglad tidings that the monsoons forbode ,
Splashing its joy on the rare passerby who does stop,
Showering its own happiness on all, drop by drop.

Why is it that only the earth always gets wet and dirty,
In this conversation where both are equally thirsty,
Alas! There must be an end to this ceremony,
One that so closely resembles a perfect harmony.

This one is about my favourite topic, rain. It is about the conversation between the sky and the earth, and the unique kind of language they use. Although this language is not limited only to these two, but is infact an inherent aspect of nature as a whole, i chose to explore it as a conversation between these two only, because of my mania for rain.

Every dream needs a sacrifice to begin,
And every sacrifice needs an objective to win,
But is not every dream a sacrifice in itself,
Does it not relinquish its life to fulfill itself.

And every sacrifice is but a dream,
A dream that fulfills another dream,
But not every dream realises the sacrifice,
That the previous dream had to sacrifice.

When such a dream gets shattered,
And even its fragments get splattered,
What happens to the sacrifice done long ago,
Must it follow its dream and likewise go.

When the sacrifice itself becomes a dream,
And the dream therefore must be sacrificed,
Is it right to consider the sacrifice sacrificed,
Or does the sacrifice live on, if only as a dream.

Is any dream worth the sacrifice,
Or will mere dreaming itself suffice,
Is there any sacrifice worth a dream,
Is a person alive enough for such a dream.

We choose to sacrifice because we dreamt,
Did we ever sacrifice because others dreamt,
Sacrifice was a mere tool to get the ultimate prize,
Therefore we never dreamt to be able to sacrifice.

This is probably the most non-sensical piece of language that you have probably read till now(won’t say ever, because i am confident of writing loads more of such gibberish). Frankly initially it was supposed to be a fun poem which was to be built on an interplay of the two words. I had this concept from quite sometime, that every one of us have lots of dreams. Some that we barely remember, others that are more clearer, and others that we will never forget.

Dreams in this context are supposed to also include desires that are long unfulfilled. A lot of times, to fulfill these dreams we need to make sacrifices, and many of us think either then or retrospectively, whether the sacrifices we made were worth the dream that we set out to fulfill. Quite often we find that this is not the case, and that a lot of times it was pure satiation of the dream that drove us to the sacrifice rather than the actual worth of the sacrifice.

So as the poem progressed, it began to confound me even more, by the kinds of meanings each sentence was assuming of itself. By the time it was finished, i could no longer relate to the above lines as the poem that i had set out to write, it seemed more and more to me like a complex philosophical question about the very nature of the two terms, and the extent of their symbiosis. So much for a gamble on a fun poem.

They couldn’t resolve it during the day, their plight,
And so it was that they parted ways one night,
Try as they did, they couldn’t let each other out of sight,
But forced they were, to get as far away before daylight.

How long this way they would stay, no one knew,
But surely to both of them, this was something new,
For, without love, one seemed a stranger,
And without life, the other seemed even stranger.

To a thousand and more hearts, travelled lonely life,
In every single one, there was only turmoil and strife,
To a thousand more beings, travelled lonelier love,
But every single one, seemed already dead somehow.

In vain did the relentless love strive,
For, not a single one it managed to find alive,
It seemed every single person that life had known,
Seemed determined to live their life all alone.

There were no more smiles, no more tears,
Only moving corpses, living out their fears,
There was no more guilt, and no more repentance,
For, nobody was even sure of their own existence.

Nobody cared for the day any longer,
And the echoes of night began getting stronger,
For, without life, of what use was the sunlight,
And without love, what else was there, but night.

But neither was the sun out of sight,
Nor was everybody deprived of its light,
For, can there be any love, devoid of life?
And devoid of love, can anything have life?

This one is another Gazebo kind, with a superlative focus on a single aspect. What if, one day, love and life decided to part ways? Was it possible, in the first place? And if so, what would come of such a happening. Were they separable? Is there any living being that is totally devoid of any kind of love? Is there any being in love that is not alive?

People already know the answer to these questions, and therefore the focus was to examine in a very superficial manner what would happen when these two inseparable things were indeed separated. In fact they seem so inseparable that they start to seem to be a single thing.

Encore! She cheers after another amazing trick is done,
And the magician is ever eager, to please the little one,
He turns his hat topsy, tossing and shaking it a while,
And slowly pulls out a wonder that makes the girl smile.

The hall begins to empty, “one last time” she pesters him,
And for the first time, in his eyes, tears begin to brim,
Down the years, many a child had come and gone,
But never such a one, like his heart had now won.

Such satisfaction in his craft, he had never before found,
Than by just watching this little one sitting spellbound,
Alas! The day came to an end, and she too got up, determined,
That one day, the secret of this enchanting magic, she would find.

She went around and asked everyone she could name,
But the answer they all gave, was invariably the same,
“Grow up little child, and you will know all there is, to know”,
Persistent though she was, she couldn’t bear an immediate ‘no’.

She counted not the days, for, like minutes they sped by,
She courted instead the knowledge, whenever it came by,
Helpless, the magician watched, as she slowly wrecked her dream,
Asking himself,why people were never satisfied living the dream.

The dream that she had so long come to lifelong cherish,
Was through her own will, own mind, beginning to perish,
For, the charm of magic, lies in the beauty of the unknown,
A fantasy, that disappears once its truth becomes known.

Because truth leaves on her such an indelible stain,
The very sight of it, can inflict on her a remorsive pain,
There will always be other kids, to charm and to entertain,
But, this one, will never be able to feel the magic again.

This one is another autobiographical one, with a little ‘gazebo’ kind of angle to it like most of the ones on ‘Mirror‘ have. It is the versified version of a story i cooked up to explain my concept of love during one of the long conversations with Nisha Ahuja. I was trying to explain to her the reason for the stand i have taken, as also the reason why the girl i love must never know it(not the stand, the point about the love).

To begin with, neither am i a magician, nor is she a little child. But the whole poem is a metaphor of the ‘need to know/right to know vs. the consequences of the knowledge’. The crux of the arguement was that if i loved a girl, she had the right to know, because it was upon her that the love was being showered upon, so obviously she deserved to know where the rain was falling from(maybe because she liked, maybe because she did not want to like it), right? Unfortunately, a little lunatic that i happen to be, i do not subscribe to that arguement, and so came up with the story of a magician, who’s charming a child with a trick.

The focal point between them both being the ‘magic’. The child, although wonderstruck by all the mumbo-jumbo of the trick wishes to know the secret of the trick, where the ‘power’ for the magic comes from, and maybe whether she too can perform it one day. And so she sets about obsessed with one day uncovering that little secret the magician carries, the power of charm that he wields over her. The magician of course wishes such a day never comes to pass, when this kid no longer is in awe of his magic. And so wishes day and night, that the child never grows up.

It was put to me, that such a thought on the behalf of the magician, was nothing but selfishness., pure and unadulterated SELFISHNESS. To show the kid the trick again and again, and tempt her with its stupefying disbelief and yet never want her get to the secret of the same. To create a desire in someone and nurture it personally, and wish for that desire to never be fulfilled, only because the magician can again and again further that undesirable desire, was what else if not selfishness.

I had only a few simple lines of arguement. A few lines that will initially sound so insanely impossible and so impractical that it will be immediately rejected, out of hand. But just allow it to simmer for a while in your mind, and also add to the simmering a fact that you are dealing with a wierd kind of relation, and maybe someday you too will be convinced of it. My point of view was that the magician was being selfish, all right. But he wasn’t being selfish for his sake, he was being selfish on behalf of the girl, a manifestation of the girl’s own selfishness without her will or thought for her own benefit!(i know it can seem kind of supreme idiocracy to call a person ’selfish’ on behalf of someone else, but just hang on, and read the rest of it).

Lets assume the girl has now grown big, and has learnt that magic is nothing but a load of trash, and it involves mere ’sleight of hand’ and is an insult to the rational intelligence of a mature human being. Being a twenty or thirty year old, have you ever gone to a magic-show and never felt that it was al one big fraud and only because you couldn’t stand up and shout what the fraud was, you were sitting down, and thinking to yourself what the angle to this trick was. Atleast i have never seen a single adult drool unashamedly with mouth agape at every simple little the magicina performs like the little children do.

So if this girl now no longer feels the magic(she may still ’see’ it as magic, cause she cannot perform the trick herself, but she will no longer ‘believe’ it to be magic), who stands to lose? Let us put that question to both the parties involved, the magician and the girl. The magician first. There always were, there always are and there always will be little children for the magician, to show off his tricks, and take them to a world they never will again be a part of. There is no dearth of children, and there is no dearth of magic. The girl now. She will never again be able to see a magic show/trick without suspending her disbelief, and even if she did, she would never be able to do it, without regaining her disbelief. Such a suspension even when rare would only for the most astonishing of tricks, and never for simple ones(such a pity, that now in her life, magic is no longer just magic, it is now categorised into amazing tricks, bearable tricks[the 'been there, seen that' kind] and boring tricks).

To conclude in a line, for the magician there will always be others, for the girl there will be no more magic. It was that selfishness i was talking about. Borrowing somebody else’s selfishness and using it on them because they never know at the time that such lack of selfishness on their part(wishing to never grow so they can live in magic all their lives) would ultimately take away all the ‘magic’ that their life now has. Because, in order to understand magic, you have to first lose it. And it is such a loss you can never get it back in your life again. Innocence only stays until willed away, knowledge haunts till death.

So, anyway whatever you choose to make of it, woudl only like to say that, the whole story above was only one part of the actual reason for this poem. Only one half ofthe poem deals with that aspect, the other part of it, through various randomly arranged lines, deals with my schizophrenic nature of living in a “Neverland” and having these “Peter Pan”ish ideas of a life that is never short of surprises and magical ones at that, where angels are no longer fictional sketches of a hallucinating mind but are characters i wish i could talk to and maybe even fly with, and when i can simply chase butterfiles down lush green fields that span upto eternity and so on and on and on.

Guess its time i stopped here. Its becoming more and more like prose blog, specially with WordPress giving such a small textbox that i can’t see how long i have rambled on. So that’s it for now. Wish i could tell the whole story about that side of me, but maybe more pieces of it with another poem(another Mirror one to be precise).

If such things were true, an angel’s life should be a fairytale,
But you don’t find them more different than this one’s tale,
Like those winged-one, you don’t see her fly away,
And you begin to really believe she is here to stay.

Ignorant were those who said angels have no feelings,
Probably they believed angels weren’t living things,
Maybe they hadn’t talked to one, or listened to one,
And so felt that one angel is like any other one.

They never could see the smile leaving her face,
Never could see her in the moments she couldn’t face,
When the odds weren’t even, and she began to shiver,
That’s when she seemed more human than ever.

The tears leave a stain as they roll down her cheek,
It is not her chin but some humanity that they seek,
She wipes it away because you would not believe her,
But wishes it to flow because you cannot understand her.

Those words that you said, they didn’t cause that anger,
Because you never believed that she knew about anger,
You never expected that one day you would see her tears,
That those tears would finally harden to make her fierce.

Soon you see those tears begin to dry,
And notice her anger begin to die,
You see the pout leaving her folded lip,
You realise how mortal she is to the last fingertip.

Her smile forgives you without a single word,
Her laughter begins to again fill this world,
You begin to ponder when she bids you farewell,
Whether it was already one day with a mortal angel.

This one is another one on “Little Miss Sunshine“. After she commented, i thought i should write something more, since the previous one conveyed so little of her “multi-faceted” personality. Besides, it was too much truthful to be a poem, so i decided to add some spice this time and make it more fictional(unfortunately it still ended up being as nearly truthful as it can get).

I still believe that she resembled Drew Barrymore when young. The photo above is another proof of the same, although she refuses to do any more than simply deny it rather than back it up with adequate proof. I won’t argue on that count because she never lets me lose an argument, don’t know why.

She is gone before your eyes can even blink,
And yet she is the only thought you can think,
You stumble upon everything, already in a trance,
And become yet another slave of her glance.

Every time you look around, you see her beckon,
It’s only this one time, one last time you reckon,
Alas, you realise not, the power of allure,
And the enticing number of times it can lure.

You search for her, the source of this spell,
In which direction to go, nobody can tell,
They too are in the same well, in which you fell,
Trying since ages, to somehow break this spell.

You wonder, what eyes they must be, ones that can enchant,
While the rest of them are repeating her name like a chant,
If only for a single day you were given the reins of fate,
What would you not do to get out of this state.

To step aside and learn what keeps us all prisoner,
Like a never-ending melody that addicts the listener,
To find out why we follow her like obedient sheep,
To discover the keys to those secrets her eyes keep.

Alas you are no closer than the farthest among us,
Maybe because our destinies have deemed it thus,
Hanging forever because none of us know what is the hook,
Searching forever because none of us know where to look.

Tied forever because none of us understand the knots that bind,
Or maybe because it is all an illusion, the creation of our mind,
Thoughtless in our minds, we can neither surmise,
Nor forget her, the one who could mesmerise.

Back after a long long long break of a few weeks. This time not only is it on my current muse “Aparna“, it also happens to be one of the very few and rare ones by me that are confoundingly abstract. Personally, i found the meaning in them only after completing it, it seemed to have taken some srt of recognisable shape only after it was finished completely. So for those of you who don’t understand a single line in it, don’t worry you can simply ask the line you didn’t understand and i will be glad to be of assistance(i too was in such a condition for a greater part of the poem, left me thinking this poem had absolutely no concept, no continuity of thought, no clarity or direction, until the moment i got done with it) Those who manage to figure out what it means in the first reading itself, my deepest salutations, for being able to do what even i couldn’t.

In brief, this is about a set of people who were proud of their control over their mind, and find that they are incredibly trapped/mesmerised by a force they always believed was in their control. They fail to realise it is their very control that holds them prisoner, while all the time they blame a spell, on a person who never cast any.

Swaying in consonance with an ebullient breeze,
She shakes off its advances, with a careworn ease,
Ruffling her petals, as she hung onto a slender stalk,
Proclaiming gustily that it isn’t only humans who stalk.

She stands up, and walks away free of the bond,
But she is no fugitive, to hide and abscond,
Walking away she is, from the grasps of human sight,
Away from those minds bereft of any genuine delight.

Walking away from those who interpret her like a question,
From those who wipe her out of every broken relation,
From those who treat her like an insane obsession,
And those who hoard her like a miserly possession.

Running away from those who suppress their affection,
From those who use her to disguise cunning defection,
From those who cannot see her, blinded by rejection,
And those who don’t want her, drowning in dejection.

They follow her, chase her, to the limits of perception,
They all need her, want her, to cover up their deception,
Without her, their greed, their envy and jealousy cannot live,
And for that reason, her life, they will not let her live.

So they strangle her life, and pluck her for the day,
Use her and discard her, to be trampled along the way,
She cannot remember a single one, who allowed her to stay,
For, she was always available, if only new, everyday.

Away she ran, before her fragrance they could steal,
And in the world, there were no more smiles to heal,
Hope is all that is left in this world of gloom,
A hope that she was not the last one to bloom.

Frightening. Thats the mildest way of putting what happened to me. I was struggling to write something on Aparna, just because I felt like it. Alas it was not be, as I struggled for 3 days sitting with an opened cap before an empty page with a title “Daisybud”. It seemed nothing would ever come out of it, and after all I might have finally written the most uncreative title in my life after all. Then it happened, today morning, I woke up early and tried to get back to sleep, and as a result found myself in a 3 hour dream involving who else but Aparna. After I woke up from three uninterrupted hours of looking at Aparna there was no looking back.

Aparna to me signifies a smile, a smile of laughter, of delight, of pure innocent joy, the kind that is long since missing from this world. So the dream was a kind of ‘wake-up’ call for me, to open my eyes and tell a story that was crying to be told.

Everyone nowadays sports a smile especially since ‘people-relationship’ got a flip through the endless number of personality grooming sessions that everyone seems to undergo. But how long was it since a person truly smiled out of the happiness of the heart rather than a hollow mechanical movement of the lips. When people smile to mask their seething discontent, their anger, their envy, their greed, their discomfiture. When they groan silently beneath those smiles, and curse and fault everything around and within them.When the smile becomes but an article, an accessory to the drama of fooling everyone around, it is then that a smile is powerless to do nothing but watch its state of deprivation into the depths that even a frown never knew.

I could have easily titled this one as ” Rape of a Smile” and got away with it, because nothing would have been more apt, but instead chose to call it after a flower because it signified the hope that I have on humanity that the situation will soon improve and that people would hopefully smile because of their unbridled inner joy, rather than social conditioning of what reaction to give to what situation. That is also the reason why the daisy featured at the beginning is just beginning to bloom, a symbol that everyone in the world still have their Aparna for another day.

They walk the streets of every town, every city,
A living tribute to the greatest human ability,
To get hurt, and be unable to forgive or forget,
To bide their time, counting the days, at every sunset.

A miserable existence, if you can call it one,
To forcibly live a lifetime, pining for someone,
Knowing it as a dream that will never come true,
Somehow hoping, in their case, the truth wasn’t so true.

To yearn for someone, who can no longer be theirs,
And try to dissolve their sorrow in a flood of tears,
To agonise for someone, who will no longer feel theirs,
And try to digest their failure, through the passage of years.

It is beyond their considerate heart, to step out and ask,
But they can no longer put up with their own mask,
So they try their best, to smile those memories away,
And try to concentrate on these routine chores of everyday.

A few are successful, though most are not,
That doesn’t mean, it ever leaves their thought,
It keeps nagging their mind into meek submission,
Turning their lives into one big despondent mission.

When every second they live is yet another battle,
In a war, that only lasts upto or beyond a lifetime,
And the next one is upon them, before their eyelids can battle,
They simply choose to ignore a living, in the confines of space and time.

To have a life, an existence, that is deprived of soul,
And not have the love of your life beside to console,
Dangling all their lives, by an unbreakable thread,
Wretched indeed, is the life of the living dead.

Ever fallen in love, only to see the person you love getting married to someone else. Ever thought of a life spent ruminating over the loss because the mind refuses to forget and the heart refuses to heal. If you have, then this one is for you, and the thousands of others who dot the landscape of every city and town, in fact they dot the landscape of every human habitation there is.

They drown themselves in the hope that tomorrow will be different, in what way or manner they know not. Because they don’t desire, they just love. So they cannot take solace in the hope that something would happen to bring their loved ones running back into their arms, because that would taint their love, a love that is won on the suffering of another isn’t love at all, it’s just another bloody war, minus the blood. Besides, such a thing would surely cause their beloved to shed a tear or two, making them wonder if it really was love to make their beloved cry simply because they wanted to stop crying.

So they spend their lives in that state of suspended belief, where they can neither get over their love, nor can they love another. And though they go on to marry, work and other activities that continue to make them seem human, their heart isn’t in any of it, and so they live their lives like zombies, forever in a state of trance, alert to everything yet half-minded, eager for everything yet undecided. They can’t let go of life because that would mean separation from their loved one forever. Yet they can never get together with their loved one in this lifetime. Wondering if such a life was also an existence? Don’t bother. The person writing this is also living such an existence in every alternate second, though what transpires in the other alternate second is a SECRET.

Another of the few autobiographical ones, though this one is only partly autobiographical. Most of it is gleaned from the lives of people I happen to know personally(pssst, a person on whom a major chunk of this is based is living such an existence because Miss Aparna got married, don’t tell her this though, else it would defeat the very purpose of that guy’s life, he wouldn’t want her worrying about who was worrying for not getting her, leading a happy life as she already is, posted this one on the condition of complete anonymity. For those who are addicted to reading between the lines, “that someone isn’t me”, I already have a person to dangle a lifetime for).

I wake up and see one every morning,
Because there is one on every wall adorning,
They stare at me, those eyes of yours, always asking,
Why I still make my peace with you every morning.

They follow me to the door, smiling goodbye,
Staying still, while everything else rushes by,
A click of the lock, and I step into the world,
Into such a strangeness I feel myself hurled.

Where people keep talking, but somehow not to me,
And words don’t quite mean, what they are meant to be,
They laugh, and they joke, at such trivial things,
Reminding me of the joy that every small deed brings.

Silently, I bear with them and their uncalled for happiness,
Bear it until I can get through this unfinished business,
And so keep glancing at the clock, wishing it to get running,
As I bide my time, awaiting yet another homecoming.

I rush home, unlocking the door, to none in particular,
Silently wishing, that at work I was a little more popular,
So I could bring some of them home, and introduce you,
But alas, such thoughts are quite often very few.

I look at a wall, and blurt out the dejection,
And you reply, face saddened at the rejection,
I cry my heart out, and recover in a while,
And laugh upon seeing you returning my smile.

I guess I must be lunatic, talking such things to a wall,
And sitting up nights, listening for your footfall in the hall,
Things were much different, before you clambered up that wall,
Leaving me alone, to deal, with your death, and my own downfall.

This one is dedicated to the human stamina for unlimited brooding over long-spilt milk(or should I say long-spilt tears that refuse to drop down, and instead hang on for dear life, long past the their time, solely because of the unquenchable thirst a person has for sorrow, one that grows on imbibing it and fuels the thirst for more of itself).

Frankly, there is no parasite as parasitic as sorrow, because after devouring on every single little shred of happiness and delight that it can set its eyes own, sorrow never hesitates to even devour itself, if only to further its own cause and spread its addiction into every willing thought of a person suffering from an unexpected separation.

Enough said about things that are broody, having had my fill of melancholy, can’t take any more of it myself, so am switching to something more pleasant and refreshing(surprises me how this topic never fails to refresh every time I put my pen down, it is as if it is an inexhaustible reservoir of joy) called Aparna.

There comes a time, when everybody must part,
This separation, is not something that we did start,
Over time, our thoughts, our feelings have grown apart,
When we smile at each other, it’s no longer from the heart.

The time that we shared, shall always remain a memory,
One that’s bitter, like in almost every other love story,
When we say the nastiest things about each other,
And with the very hatred, could each other smother.

You will leave this behind, and find someone to share the pain,
However, try as much, you will never find this love again,
Remember, you found me, loved me and lost me, by your own hand,
Just by standing quietly and watching our relation go out of hand.

This mirror that you have broken, can you stick it again,
Even if you could, would it show us and our love whole again,
All it would show, are the fragments of a broken smile,
And a doubt, whether it is us, or love, that is so fragile.

To wake up at dawn, and find you have nothing,
To walk into the lawn, and find a delayed spring,
When your footsteps sink, too deep into the ground,
And through the rest of life, there’s that recurring sound.

To look at me, giving out your best smile,
And yet, since you last felt satisfied, it’s been a long while,
I have seen you many a time, trying desperately to talk,
But I’ve always backed away, for, aren’t we cheese and chalk.

You have tried to talk me out of this, just forget it,
Your blow didn’t miss and has already deeply hit,
You may take the pain away, but not the scar,
It will stay on, as a reminder, of how relations mar.

Pardon me if I have sounded too curt,
But I want you to know how much I hurt,
Alas, it’s a sorrow, that you can never compare,
For, you have broken my life, beyond repair.

With sunrise begins another brand new day,
For how long today, can you remain on the highway,
When your feet begin to ache, and your mind buckles away,
How much longer you can wait, only you can say.

When the rainfall ends, and the desert begins,
No matter how strong, your determination thins,
When darkness rules, and the night never ends,
And the farther you go, there are still more bends.

When all you want, are a few moments of my time,
And yet are turned away, like in a totalitarian regime,
When you stand by my side, all through daylight,
Hoping atleast once, I will take you into my sight.

When the charms of persistence, force you to surrender,
And yet, you cannot run away from my splendour,
When you know this tide will forever, not abate,
And yet, just like I did, can you still wait.

Describing to others what it cannot observe,
The mouth has thus no purpose to serve,
And the mind is unfortunately or not, dumb,
And so to the limitations of words, doesn’t succumb.

If only the eyes that see could just speak,
But alas, they are content to watch and seek,
They bother not, with the intricacies of speech,
For, within their sight, is a far greater reach.

When the waves within stop to think,
And the eyelids suddenly forget to blink,
And the shadows around begin to shrink,
Before you can again start to wink.

Writing your name on the sand as parchment,
Only to be washed away by waves of excitement,
Welling up within, ready for an outburst,
If only my eyes could ever quench their thirst.

Afraid to cry and wash your reflection away,
Yet hesitant to blink and forget the way,
Looking into your eyes, I can see myself there,
But deeper within, am I there somewhere?

Ask yourself this, when you make your decision,
And just think, what if, you were in my position,
To lose out on the chance to forever embrace,
Because someone decided not, to talk face to face.

I walk up to the college, where we first met,
And see if I can find, what I can no longer forget,
All that remains, is the building and the playground,
With no trace of you having been around.

I walk up to the bench, where we first sat,
When you first laughed and gave me a pat,
But the bench no longer has our impression,
Time has given it more people in succession.

I walk up to the tree, where I first wrote your name,
On the day that you took on all my worthless blame,
But it has got new leaves, and grown some bark,
And besides, there are lots like it, in the park.

I walk up to the store, where we first shared ice-cream,
But it is long since those tables have left that dream,
Because more people still come in to share,
Those last crumbs of feelings they have, to spare.

Everything that we treasured has since moved on,
Yet there was one place I found, that refused to go on,
Deep in my heart, there’s a room that’s still waiting,
One that’s immune to the tribulations of awaiting.

We talked through the ravines of the night,
Into the lap of dawn’s first light,
We talked of our lives, yours and mine,
And how each had lost its own shine.

About the smile that had never faded,
Despite the mires that we have long waded,
And how it managed to keep us together,
Through hard times, and all the rough weather.

About the stares we gave each other,
Oblivious to time, oh, just don’t bother,
When the looks traveled further within,
Until the distance became too thin.

About the love that wrapped us in a cocoon,
Making us impervious to either noon or moon,
And the stars couldn’t have come, a moment too soon,
To see us splashing around, in the mind’s lagoon.

Although that love is no longer there,
Search within, and you may find it somewhere,
Until then, don’t stop this talking in midstream,
Else I will have to wake up from this dream.

It was only yesterday, that I had seen,
Through those eyes, what a pair we had been,
The stroll that we took, down the park,
Holding your hand, maybe forever, into the dark.

I never knew a person could want anymore,
Once they had their fill of you, and your life,
I just looked into those eyes that constantly reassure,
That all this before me, is for real and sure.

Those times we spent, along the shore,
Gazing at the waves, that would never catch up,
When the nights were lit up, just by your smile,
Calling all those ships, even beyond a mile.

Those days when I waited outside your door,
To see you, before this conniving world did,
And take you by my hand, down the street,
Ah, was there a place, we never did meet.

But that was yesterday, yet there’s more in store,
Your hair no longer brushes by your cheeks,
You neither smile, nor look into me anymore,
But I still keep walking everyday, to the shore.

I walk up the mountains, where it’s really cold,
Anyway, you are beyond feelings, I am told,
What will the little boy do, once he has sold,
When he no longer has that innocence, that gold.

To walk beside you, I thought myself bold,
To talk to you, and your hand to just hold,
To take you to the fountain, am I too old,
That on seeing me, those eyelids begin to fold.

I gave to you, the laughter and joy I owned,
One that I wouldn’t for life, have pawned,
You took it with your smile and locked it away,
Where, forever in darkness, it is doomed to stay.

I stretched my hand to help you across,
Yet it remained behind, to remind me of the loss,
I have nothing left to give you, objects don’t count,
Yet you remain the peak that I can never surmount.

Still, I decide to try, just once more,
Ignoring those feelings inside my core,
I shall walk for you, to the ends of nowhere,
But, will you be there, when I get there?

I open my eyes, and see your gaze upon me,
Beyond those eyes, there’s a lot I can see,
Moments of joy, and those of solitary pain,
Seconds of ecstasy, that were long since lain.

They seek to tell me something, those eyes,
But your lips don’t ever let them get so wise,
They part, as if to utter something from within,
But close unto silence, even before they begin.

I too have those feelings, of wanting to share,
But have always waited for you, so we could pair,
That time may never come, like a distant dream,
Knowing how reluctant we both now seem.

What a fine example of hesitation we both make,
We never speak the feeling, or leave it to break,
And yet everyday, you stare at me, and I back,
To acknowledge to each other, the words we lack.

When it’s time to drift apart, each to our way,
There will still be so much that’s left to say,
But like our dreams, you’ll keep it to yourself,
And mine shall be left, all to myself.

Thanks to Divya for the idea, like I told her, this is my take from the other person’s shoes

Original post can be found at the link below

I Tell You In My Dreams

The sun beats down on the broken traveler,
As he scurries around for scarce a shelter,
But where can he hide, out in the open,
Like the meaning hiding behind a coaxing pen.

Step by step, he goes, repeatedly tripping,
Twines of hope, and joy, tightly gripping,
Yet a few paces forward, inexplicably slipping,
Beads of perspiration have long been dripping.

Broken in the body, breaking in the mind,
With no one present, to push him from behind,
Lurking in the undergrowth are creatures of despair,
Fear of failure, they make for a deadly pair.

Persevering, he forces himself to trudge further,
Poor man, he knows not, the horizon is always farther,
All those miles gone by are just a headstart,
Into the jungle, called a “Woman’s Heart”.

The pages have yellowed with the passage of time,
Leaving irrefutable proof of a broken heart’s crime,
Of believing in a feeling that is long past its prime,
And its endurance of persisting, even when clocks don’t chime.

Being chained by the shackles of a single emotion,
Whose ripples overflow beyond the confines of the ocean,
Walking along its path with a single minded devotion,
Dejected at not finding the promised alchemist’s potion.

Yet happy to be free, trying desperately to flee,
As far from the mind, as a human can possibly be,
For, just around the corner, is looming darkness,
One that wipes away the contours of happiness.

The scanty moonlight, only guides me over a thorn,
Causing the coursing adrenaline to be stillborn,
Curtailing me back to those memories and days,
That are so pleasant a pain, like the burning sun’s rays.

I know not how high above the eagle flies,
For, when I look, you are stuck in my eyes,
Where, challenging me, you will forever stay,
No matter how much longer I keep walking away.

As my longing for you gets stronger and stronger,
The sandglass of my shadow, grows longer and longer,
My heart goes fasting every moment for your laughter,
One that makes my heart beat a good pace faster.

To your heart, I don’t think I can make the trip,
Afraid lest on the way, our friendship may trip,
The farther you go, the difficult it is to stay in race,
With you, the mortal fairy of the fairer race.

Your beauty increasing like the start of each dawn,
In what way to tell you, upon my senses doesn’t dawn,
Every time in this contest am left behind to trail,
Leaving failure’s imprint, a very shameful trail.

A bystander’s eyes would rather wish me die,
Than see me fail, trying to look you in the eye,
As the morning ages, my shadow soon runs out of time,
But I still beg you, just let me tell you one more time.

It wasn’t very difficult to just fall into,
And seemed much simpler to fall out too,
The path seemed clear as daylight ahead,
But the lingering darkness, knew not, where to head.

When I finally decided to fully surrender,
It didn’t pain or cause me to really wonder,
That giving up pride was really worth bearing,
Or surrendering to a feeling was worth caring.

I felt fairly recompensed at that moment,
Not sure which way the winding path went,
Bothered not with how my endurance bent,
It was all fine, as long as a smile you lent.

The day seemed bright, right unto the night,
For all the day, God kept you in my sight,
And when night dawned, sent you as the moon,
So that I wouldn’t, out of longingness swoon.

I didn’t care when you slowly started to wane,
Knowing fully, it was only to become whole again,
Like the sadness that wouldn’t dare your face stain,
For, through your eyes, your smile was beyond restrain.

Days flew swiftly, held aloft on ceaseless wings,
Unaware of how subtly the passage of time stings,
Yet to descend down them, memories they bring,
Of opening my mouth, almost beginning to sing.

Yet always almost stopping at the lip’s edge,
Where my mind drove in an unsurpassable wedge,
Stopping my restless thoughts reaching your ears,
Maybe even stopping my heart from shedding tears.

Although I believed your heart to be always open,
I limited myself to the tribulations of the pen,
Within me, I feel the shaky fault lines deepen.
Distancing my mind from memories of now and then.

But my heart refuses to stop a journey just begun,
And devoid of support to revel in mirth and fun,
It trudged along the fringes of a beaten track,
With the passersby constantly urging it to turn back.

Every frustrated time that I decided to quit,
Your redeeming smile deemed my purpose fit,
To keep you smiling, just when you begin to frown apart,
For, with you, every ending shows a new way to start.

Just when it seemed this was an endless game,
I had to suddenly limit my time with your physical frame,
And let go, of my desire to keep chanting your name,
Being content, that into my life you atleast came.

All through the day you never said a word,
And revealing my heart, I never could afford,
Feelings for you, I tried by the bundles, to hoard,
Until it dawned, on a sinking journey, they weren’t onboard.

Destined to fly the night, far apart and away,
To follow you, I know not the conscious way,
All I could do, was look within and silently pray,
That you would decide to return and forever stay.

For, what couldn’t endure separation for a day,
Would surely not stay till morning’s first ray,
Stumbling along and trying not to go astray,
To meet morning before it came across my way.

The air seems suffused, with a fragrance never used,
Making me pardon, if you really would have refused,
To save you the embarrassment and the disgrace,
I decided to never let you see, the love behind my face.

Although you’ll never be able to see my pain,
I’m glad that I’ve been able to see you gain,
Although destiny ordained us to forever part,
I never knew how badly it would pull at my heart.

I tried to forget it and water down the embers,
But what the mind forgets, the heart long remembers,
Till the inhibitions crumble and the mind’s will, dissolve,
There is no stopping the onslaught of a broken heart’s resolve.

The receding sun never sets on the heart’s desire,
And yet the staring eyes never seem to tire,
From the constant adulation of you they inspire,
Saving your memories from failure’s blazing pyre.

Sadly, my mind was adamant to really agree,
That happiness could come from being free,
For, its words always seem weak and hollow,
When it tries, the distant mirages to follow.

I cannot control or put out this mental fire,
As I sink deeper into its enchanting mire,
Speak no more, for I seem to deserve no pity,
Only your return can resurrect this hopeless entity.

Wherever you stay, you’re never too far away,
To your heart, I’ll always know the way,
But life seems very empty, down-and-out,
When you are no longer there to care about.

Deep within, I know that it is just not fair,
To want you, when about me you don’t even care,
But the realization is too difficult to bear,
Such is the nature, of this bond that we share.

Nothing between us can keep us from liberation,
Because we share the unique bond of separation,
Just as destined, we were simply torn apart,
From the dream, that was doomed, never to start.

Looking into my eyes, you will never be able to find,
The feeling that for long has been soaking my mind,
I am reluctant to move on, leaving all this behind,
But destiny and my decisions haven’t been particularly kind.

The tree though wanting, has to let go of ripe fruits,
Or stand to risk losing the source of its future roots,
I have realized the pervading agony of growing too fond,
Ironically paired with the burden of breaking the bond.

This is certainly not going to be the last time,
That I will try to deeply tell you something,
Although I fear, you will deem it a great crime,
I strongly wish to confess to you, my only fling.

Every time I see the matchless curves of your face,
I feel like hurling myself into your warm brace,
Every time I see you walking with an inimitable grace,
My heart sets upon itself, a beat of pounding race.

I try to open my mouth, emerging from the shadows,
However I stop, unsure which way the wind blows,
Every step you take, I would like to forever follow,
However I stop, scared you’ll think my heart hollow.

Talking to you, I feel all my words slowly melt,
Thinking it will change the way you always felt,
I am happy though sad, to let things be as they are,
So that I can always love you, as an unreachable star.

Every time your delicate foot you set on ground,
My heart feels a joy so pervasively abound,
My lips let forth the ecstasy of sound,
At the discovery of a happiness refound.

With my desires constantly piling up as a mound,
Always within your footsteps, I follow you around,
Hoping to speak to you, of my message profound,
Alas your grim lips, push my hopes aground.

My hopelessness to convey to you, doesn’t seem to astound,
The lyrical reply from you, that catches me on rebound,
Within this relation, I see us eternally bound,
With no further hope of completing the round.

A step forward by myself is surely to be found,
Towards your melting reply with its long resound,
Close upon my heels is my conscience like a hound,
Trying to reassure that the next step will heal the wound.

Ever since I heard it from you, the whole world seems anew,
Like the inseparable dawn and dew, you painted me in a crystal hue,
Awaiting your word I shall never swerve, for I only desire what I deserve,
I wait in this dark night, for your approval to paint it morning white.

Every time I shiver, I see you flowing beside, comforting like a river,
Your voice creates ripples in the sky, making the parting clouds cry,
The resonance, even the water does flatter, making the incessant flutter,
The trees in the breeze swing, in the melody of the rhythm you bring.

It’s been a long time since I heard, you mind-soothing word,
Yet the sky did not fall, nor did the earth snowball,
The rivers ceased not to flow, the night moon ceased not to glow,
The sound doesn’t stop expressing voice, the breath has no choice.

Your voice is no longer a wonder, whose word me to ponder,
I can no longer just achieve, what you made me to believe,
When it all seemed a dream, suddenly there shone across a beam,
I hoped neither a man or a herd, could stop an angel’s word.

Now that I live to face this expected moment,
Knowing you and myself, I no longer lament,
I look back at those emotions we gave vent,
And after all that has happened, I no longer repent.

Events which led to this decision, we could not prevent,
And what remains of the accident is the dent,
As a last try to reconcile, a message I sent,
I don’t know where in the wind it went.

Let’s just forget our memories like an accident,
And wipe off the happiness, we each other lent,
Like we did with the times together we spent,
For my forgiving heart hasn’t one bit bent.

The joy of loneliness is like living in an open-air tent,
With nobody to ask your feelings for rent,
And finally what remains of you, is not the pain,
But the latent joy of being alone once again.