New Celebration

Please do not come to visit me
i'm already tired of nightingales singing newsongs
i'm on the hunt for funeral birthdays
for moonbeams are romantic no more
they are as lethal as George Bush's smiles

leave them untouched
let them play their play-boy games
Rajneesh style

remain unspent
touched by the waters of a worn-out waterfall

dank your nails but not your toes
puncture your heart but not soul

let not Buddha come and disturb my pillow.

Christening

Remembrance of bygone days

have the smell of dusk-rain

the smell of sun-washed sea-waves

the summer sun that wept red

behind the tattered purple hills

of ageless sorrows

hidden in the voice of their roots

when I left my woman

and walked the streets

alone at twenty.

A helpless old man

lay sprawled beside the water-front

with twenty bullet holes in his body.

The spell-bound sky arched westwards

with cool early storm-clouds

somewhat like the day

clouds of protest gathered in my hair.

that was the day I came across I

and was christened protector of the weak

in his inn. 

The Award

I can only rest in sinful silence.

By this I mean silence in the midst of sound,

because all of us were born in sound-silence.

The movement we created in our mother’s womb did create some sound,

and like a star orbiting in space which creates sound,

we too created our first and most meaningful music in our mother’s womb.

So, friends, do not undermine yourself, as you are no less a Beethoven

than he himself.

The organized movement of your mother – her heartbeat, her blood circulation,

her thoughts,

was an orchestra to help you create your best soulful music.

And when your mother held her new-born baby

in her arms, her smile was the best award you could have got.

You

If I have to listen to myself,

I am to listen to me

I am to listen to I;

the sea to its whisperings,

the interval between those whisperings

where many unsaid words

have more meanings;

so listening to myself

I am to listen to you

to your self

to what you did not utter;

like my other life

when it arrives without warning

without even one single peal

of a tiny bell

like a pre-winter breeze

fresh and shaved

and as smooth

as the table of my poetry.

And by listening to myself

I will arrive at your door,

slip through the crevice

between the same door and the floor

and help you taste

the crispy sunlight

the nippy breeze,

the laughter of children

mixed with the sand

and the shore of their life;

hand you a spoonful of honey

bought from the market of humanity;

to stir up the freedom of your thoughts

sleeping curled and naked like a question mark

under blankets of a fast life,

apathy,

selfishness.

The Sung Song

By now you should know that the song has been sung

from the bare-leaved tree of summer

pining for your lips to murmur

the elegy of the shadows getting aged with every past seconds

and whether within the timeframe of your house

the sun still shines on cloudy days, peeling onion skins,

slicing the flesh and pleading for those teardrops

that i have dried with my tongue and traced your rapturous profile.

Whether on those days naked pavement children

still play with hunger and stones

margining their life and hugging their pale emotions

close to the railway tracks.

By now the sea of green will have made love with the sky of blue

which you and i know was the common expression shared

between one layer of night and the other.

You might have gathered all your aphorisms

but one that bled green from the mango tree

whose roots lay suspended in a rectangular angle

joining the runaway night with the approaching dawn.

In the midst of these the designer store

might have been transformed into a call-girl den

where gigolos served whisky on the rocks

for an extra buck and the used condoms lay huddled

in the trash bin,

sleepy-eyed, washed corn-flour smell of hot flesh

but still sticky to the rim

whisperingly sharing their stories of froth,  

blend of panted breaths and perspirations.

At this time the panty and the brief

might have eloped on a temporary contract

gliding hand in hand over sleeping pavement dwellers

huddled in question-mark fashion,

over the many-tired pollution of the city,

even breaking traffic rules

when the slow-escaping aroma of coffee

from the closed coffee shops

mingles with the still-lingering smell of urine from the wall

and reach their nostrils.

So grotesque are the times that they see

broken lines.

By now you might have sharpened you pen

and put ink in your pencil

and colored your teats to a firmament blue;

the whistle-less train might have reached your destination

waiting for the smell of your after-bath body

waiting to hide in your nooks and cranniies’

The birds brought the smell of the sea

and the fish might have outlived the very salt

they were birthed with.

And you might be wondering the reason

For my writing this song.

It is the only live contemplation

I gave myself

to choose between my shadow and sunshine

and solitudes of quietness

when churches lost their Sunday aroma

with Saturday winning over

in the election of rest.

This I tell you not to conform

to the confirmation of doubts

but that my soul yearns to seal the contract

of togetherness in loneliness

solitudes in togetherness

the way the sky weeps at a rakish angle

shedding its light and water

in its wholeness of together-solitudes.

  

The Great Band

i am haunted by this scene every night

Macbeth plays the lead guitar
when Dylan sings It’s Alright Ma.
king Duncan dances with Cinderella
after handing his crown to his maid
and Tagore warmly worries the bass
as Julius Caesar beats on the drum
from his open grave.

Please help me come out of thiis trap
lady macbeth was unable to...

Word

Word, you are a wonder and I am in love,

with you.

So many forms you appear in:

Word, I want to elope with you

from the rear window  of my poetry caravan

compose the most passionate poem

on you                    

under shady palm trees sighing in secret conspiracy

with the calm water around an island.

You wrap your legs around the waist of my poetry

and sink my mood

into the island of Lostness.