Voids

In all directions they were buried
the ancestors in the field;
And 2 bags of salt was used for each
to mark their grave barren.

That day he lies on the cot
near a barren plot
and contemplates for long
slipping into siesta.

By dusk he remembers
to light the lamp before his
grandfather's passport size photo
taken out of the ration card.

while in the field
The voids are lost in a jingle of shadows
and silently the moon light seeps in.

The flame flickers due to gust
and he watches some shadows talk
beyond the fluttering windows.

Writer

Most of his time went into writing
he looked at an object in different ways
and was always lost in a tangle of metaphors
like the electricity in the exhumed wires.

He took the safe path of non-judgment
he felt secure that way so that
there won't be that unexpected knock of protesters.

He wrote, as an observer from a distance
as an astronomer with a telescope
adjusting his focus now and then
and rarely going out of his room on the roof top.

Walls

Walls in our minds muffle the noise between us
Old ones are renovated with new perspectives.

There is crooked writing on them
in a different language
making congeniality a mere misprint.

Private and limited

Though we invented the word "infinite"
we are limited.
We often find comfort in nostalgia
like the waves rediscovering the shore.

Within each moment, we leave
a grain of sand (like the waves)
all of which are gathered again
in reminiscence.

Within a circle containing life and death
we live like the gnats around the flame
crisscrossing
and sometimes crossing over.

In the early morning mist

A touch-me-not plant closes its eyes
as the grenade lying next
is decorated in dew drops.

Innocence and the hardened compromise
savor their last few moments in that mist
feeling the fragility of their existence.

Sometimes their charred roots are left
but soon get trampled in the grand march.

Metaphors

Good, Bad and Ugly
are like the seeds
some perfect and some distorted.
I plant them within the words;

Meaning takes shape as a tender sapling
And as a scare crow I guard it
from the questions plucking it to bareness.

I watch it grow into a tree
fluttering differently in different winds
And like me
It is bent and wrinkled on it's bark.

Taking a siesta one day under the tree
I lose myself into the meaning
adding a bitter strength to the roots
And be buried, in it's shadow.

I see my village in

the beautiful soot patterns on the lantern glass
the strong taste of a wild tamarind
the gently swaying neem tree

And in that scattered hay
that found its way
To the inner recesses
Of my heart.

Silence

It is hard
to notice and unnotice silence

Briskness is a sudden slap;
But silence is an aging melancholy
that becomes stronger with time.

It is a blankness
with looming possibilities.
Like those blank pages
after the abrupt end of a story.

A poem

Sometimes, is an ugly pattern
On a satin cloth
stitched in distress.

In a happy mood
those earlier threads are broken
and restitched to same randomness.

In distress and happiness we lose
a sense of direction like the needle
and are left with scars on the finger tips.
(that fade into an equal brown)

Clay

The twilight play
was a patch of joy;
And the fine brown clay
hid any bruises under the skin.

Wounds then were exposed easily
and we would twitch
as the turmeric was applied.

Now the wounds find their way
to the grave and to red dust
which can still hide them.

In a hospital

the strong smell of tidiness
dwarfs the signs of death.

the marks of the spilled blood
are wiped clean, like the sorry on the faces
by a plastic smile

Amidst the screams and shrieks inside us
we hope for optimism and a signal of continuity
like the color of those curtains.