Sleep Baby Sleep

Sleeping, is waking up
in a world of happy possibilities
that leave us jittery sometimes.

It is an escape
from the gunshots of reality.
In dreams, the bullet opens up the body
but the mercury closes in.

Blood has different color there
not warm and sticky, but shiny
and in surplus. There is no loss
of blood and ventilator is
just a plaything.

We wake up to judgements
"Bad, Heinous, cruel"
"Should be eliminated from the map"

A trance of disbelief still
hangs in the air and there are mikes
that lose their sleep struggling
to fill the mouths just like
the 47s a few hours ago.

Pills are out of stock
and there is panic everywhere
not like when there are only 15 killed
but 150 killed.

Butterfly

I enjoy the sight of a twittering butterfly.
I can never hold it in my hands
and have to let it go flower to flower.

The color of the wings is inviting
to lay a trap and just feel them
as the texture of a great painting.

After some time the wings turn pale
losing the color to my fingers.
It stops moving. I think it is
cozily asleep in the warmth of my hand.

I release it but there is no movement yet
So, I try to blow air
like artificial breathing
to get the wings into motion.

It refuses to wake up , like
a stubborn child on Monday morning.
I try in vain again.

Someone comes up to me and says
It could have been dead.
I reject it as a stupid idea
for creatures so beautiful to die so silently.
That too losing their beauty to the hands of ugliness.

I take it home and place it in a big book
that none would dare to open.
I think it is still there smearing
it's color to the story.

Hate You

You can dislike people
but hating them, some how binds you
and brings discomfort like the
chewed gum sticking to the shoe.

True hate is as common
as true love. Love is only
the acceptable side of the coin.

What would happen if one accepts hate?
Would people cry over the shoulders,
as they do in love?

It is a strange thing to be loved
And also to be hated.
Both are constructs for a purpose
to feed on like parasites
to live until death.

Love doesn't stop with death
It takes the form of soiled tombs.
Hate appears to have ended there
but who knows about the
underground tube in the grave yard?

Tombs from inside are stations of hate
but outside they are decorated with flowers
like the shining bill boards, advertising
radiantly in the nights.

Of course,there is nightlife in the tombs.

Dents

We are dented with memories
like the utensils in a kitchen.
Each speaks of it's own glory and depth
crying out to pick it up for rumination.

Recounted hundreds of times,
past is exhaustive.It is tiring to
add more fillers over years , as the
mind struggles to remember anything.

The essence in us is slowly
formed out of the new age things as
the green on bronze show pieces.

Our lives are filled with an urge
like that of an inflated balloon
containing lot of nothing
within a beautiful design.

Rumble

Watching the kitchen tap rumble away
the waters , sadness is recounted
and then emptied into words .

A withdrawn feeling transports the time
into the nights spent listening to a soulful song
in hope of drawing some happiness.

Sadness is condensed into the
little things that are encountered.
and there is an unusual warmth
in the most bland gestures.

A warmth of the welling up eyes.
Tears would be too dramatic here.

Love

Love is a head rush.
It takes effort to push it further
into a sustained compromise.

With age we interpret love
as different shades of feelings, till
we discover a comforting familiarity.

Crossing the Line

There is a rush of traffic
as you totter crossing the line
like a teenager on the first date.
some how you take a step further
but then everything flashes before you
in the glass of the running-over car.

You stop.
Not exactly dead.
Not yet.
Loosen your tie to take a breath that
some one of lesser intelligence
some one who could not figure out
the third dimension of things
stopped the wheel over his limbs.

There were no cries for help
I don't think you paid attention.
It was quick and then you crossed the road.
The crows didn't waste time, did they?
they perched on the top of the hoarding and
once in a while cleaned the road, haphazardly
like an early morning sweeper.

The Last Bench

Those were the days when
the chapter on reproductive system was out of syllabus.
But we read and re-read it
while the other lessons flew
over our heads like the paper planes.

Yes that's us. The last bench.
Our honesty was rudely raw
and it would take years to get polished
into various figures of speech.

We were famous as the clan without a plan.
People emulated us, but their
thick answer books in the finals
singled us out into the last bench again.

Wheel

Time is a potter's wheel
and we are molded by the hands of fate.

Patterns are hailed beautiful unlike the clay
which is amorphous like innocence

These patterns are created by threads
that remove chunks of clay
as the wheel rotates.

And the final piece, from the kiln
bears hardened scars on the skin.

Hinged

The window shutters flap
in a state of hinged freedom.
There is a scraping noise
of the calender against the wall.

A looming darkness before rain
blurs the day into night.
People rush to close the doors
but she is outside, waiting for him.

Children start scanning the road
in both directions. They pester her
about him. She orders them
to go to bed.

Later, in the calm of that starry night
there's a relieving sound of the gate.
The children sleepwalk to him
and scold him for being late
as she starts arranging for dinner
with a smile reflecting in the steel plate.

Winter

The streets were deserted in coldness
like the arms of a forlorn lover.

He looked one more time at the door
longingly, to hear any faint knocks.
But there was no one
except the seeping wintry silence.

Optimism

Optimism creates a beautiful image
by filling in the imperfections for now.

But things scale up
at the wrong time like a bad tooth.
Optimism then, would be a sedative.

A sedative that can take us higher up
in air and carpet bomb the cities
leaving a black smoke from B-52.

It should be handled well
contained, but still powerful
like our vote in the ballot.