ON MY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I have cried frivolously,
In a way to dramatize
The time of my birth.
Past few birthdays flew
In doing just that…
Imitating my Birth.
But, why is birth pompous
And death discreet?
And why must we swing
To-and-fro, in-between.
So, I choose to defy this…
The matter of contradiction.
To have my death joyfully
Declared to myself.
Or to weep a tumultuous sob
To mark my day of arrival.

Since death is busy
Going about in its usual
But passé ways,
Attending many other and
Better souls,
I shall lament grandly
Lament my own birth.
And in the same
Act of dramatization,
Play myself over and over again
In these re-runs
Year after year.
And I play the role of a
Tear drop rolling un-noticed
Gushing along with
The pungent sweat
Oozing from the dark polished
Skin of a rickshaw-puller.
And EXIT
In next scene, I play
The trickle of musky sweat
Rolling from the fair hide
Of a plump girl, languishing
In her balcony,
Watching vehicles pass by
But to intrigue all contradiction,
The sweat rolls to merge in
The ocean of tears she spills,
on the eve of her birthday!


24-06-2010

STRUGGLE FOR DETACHMENT

Detachment – it hangs as the status

Of my virtual socializing site,

Mostly with me out of sight!

It hangs as my status - the state of my mind.

Hangs like a noose, exclusively blind.

It rolls from my eye, struggling, stifling.

Like a stone, on a dead, silent, street.

A stone, a tool, a weapon

Not merely a pebble.

But suddenly a laudable commodity.

Yet a stone, like cold icicle,

When gushing over my pale cheek.

To evade, to cut, to severe

Is not detachment

But to obstruct, to de-construct attachment -

All obtrusive and conclusive.

To construct detachment is a fission reaction

Its is more willingness and less stillness

It is more about the free flight

Than those nestled dreams.

Detachment sings more of Freedom

A song dipped in bitter-sweet confidence.

Of a gala insanity, very desirously inked

With blood in one’s will

A Will, incapable of inheritance by any heir.

A Will, earned, if need be, by a revolution.

There is utter denouncement of all bonds.

The vilification of all that restiveness.

It is movement in all directions

Culminating in amorphous Dance,

Neatly splitting the body of this nomadic soul.

Detachment is a puzzle

Which sets free each jig from every saw

Part by part, entity by entity, atom by atom.

"BEEP BEEP"

Hello I am an sms.

You know what they call-

The Smooth Mumbling Shine

I love to mumble, murmur,

Moan, mutter, and also mediate.

Like bridging gaps and

Filling the vacuums.

Heart to heart, Phone to phone,

Soul to soul.

Whoever said our youngsters

are cold and lack skill verbally !!

Hah! You would be amazed

Of how highly they regard me.

Of my value they pen poems, ballads.

And hail me on the idiot box

Or in newsprint,

Superimposing my invincibility.

Oh, and go ask those distant lovers,

How much they await me…

Night after night, conveying complaints,

Dreams, Hopes, desires all unabashedly.

Ah, this almost makes me blush. Sigh!

So, this is how I mediate. And

This fortune of delivering Shine,

I inherited from my great grandfather:

The Postman. Hope he rests in peace

In his grave of lost, undelivered letters.

What pride would swell in his heart for me

Making the world smaller by the day!

How amazingly I became the catalyst for

The invention of the new “txt lingo”.

‘shrnkin’ all emo talk in2 160 chrctrs’,

I tell you, It is no mean task.

But, sometimes I also Meditate.

In the ‘silent mode’

Only vibrating my soul a little,

About who am I

After all, it is so fashionable

To be ‘existentially damned”.

Thus, I think I am suffering from

The “Mid-life crises”.

But of course I am so much loved,

So much needed by all.

Then why would someone want

To ban me, me of all!

Barb my freedom in this land

Blindfold my Shine in this land,

Fracture my constitution in this land

This land – the furnace of revolt.

Dismiss my existence all in all,

And rub away my traces however frail.

Yes, such a deep crisis to me it is!

They, some of those heartless, tech-less people,

Who oppose “azaadi” – basic freedom,

All that those vengeful demons do

Is kill people and impose Armed Acts,

Acts of inhuman obscenity,

Which disarm me and

Rob me of my only fortune

Of delivering Shine,

Unbound and unobstructed!

How I long to roam in the

Veins of that deranged Valley

From one phone tower to another.

From one heart to another.

Sending across signals of

Intimacy and what not!

I have known of texting carnivores

Devour all sorts of ‘interesting anecdotal’

Jokes about anatomy and the ‘bird n bees’.

How often they have evoked giggles

Frowns, and loud roars of curious laughter.

I have listened to those amateur poets,

When no one else would have dared to,

Impart their fragile craft of words.

To be honest, when I fell in this valley,

I fell straight into Love.

I have known all sorts of people,

Businessmen, housewives,

kids, students, unemployed youth,

Retired elders and lovers blah blah.

But in this Valley, angels reside.

Cooing and echoing their hearts divine.

Somewhere sobbing, sloganeering at other

Shedding streams of tears while

Somewhere Showering trails of stones.

These are people of wonder mysteries.

Their bereavement, their agony and eagerness

To mumble, murmur, mutter, and moan

in the smoothest and the most suave ways,

has been banished and causes heartache.

How can I not mourn then of my exile?

This separation, this abandonment.

Such coldness, such struggles of the land and heart!

I no longer dream, but see gory nightmares…

Of those lovely people asking Agha Shahid Ali

To reinstate the dead Postman out of his grave,

Into the existential Post office.

And in another I saw, young boys and women

Hurl their hearts filled with cold emotion

At the oppressor, again and again,

Conveying in blood all of their sadness..

And then another, in which I get my tongue

Trimmed, sewed, clipped, stomped and burnt

Only to be left as deranged as this Valley.

Able to “beep” but never able to sing of its joys.

Muted, gagged, silenced and hushed

Sobbing still in sleep, awaiting the end of

This long daunting slumber. Maybe

Till dawn breaks and ends this spell,

Mumbling smoothly its Shine into

Every demon of my nightmares.

Dreaming Of Sleep

I decide to defy sleep.
And I decide to defy the caffeine
Gushing in my veins too.
Ah, why must lullabies
Rant in my ears as if bucketing in me
The mystery of this dark night.
My limbs tremble in rest.
They ache to tread further...
Till the eternity of this tunnel.
Oh, I hear trinket bells.
Are they a part of some conspiracy?
Or is it a symphony my earrings sing?
I collapse under the sway of this noise.
It scatters over like fine dust,
And then inhabits itself on the remote
Contours of my awareness.
There is a vital stir,
A rhythmic quiver.
And this dust dances and
Shimmers into gold.
Pronouncing the arrival of eternity,
Bathing in severe yellow,
Shunning away all mysterious vagaries.

DUSK, THE BLUE DUSK

The dusk of your complexion spilled,
over me just like Kohl.
Slow, Silent and Pitch dark.
this Kohl seduced every moan of my eyes...
But tears set you awash,
and yet you manage to linger,
with lost sheen but with a
peaceful hint of presence.
somewhere around the corner,
of my eyes.
these moist wet eyes of mine.
Ah this moisture, these fine dew drops,
on which you walk bare feet.
how blessed its existence is
to roll under and kiss the skin of your soles.
Oh let me be this frivolous drop of dew
And not a mere trickle of a tear
Or the kohl, proud and blackening.
Let my presence not be imposing like them.
But do let my soul wither under your soles.
let me simply loiter like a lost koel in dark.
Under the glowing dusk of your complexion.