There he is

A Poet only now living to the brim
suddenly bursts into writing about
death in various forms.
Like a hard-pressed magician
he pulls up this mean trick.
When confronted, he will argue
it is the fact of life.

Spring has long left him and his words.
But he still tries to break some lines
about the morning joys.
While the dark muse
looks on inquisitively
for a foothold between them.

Homecoming

The fear of mortality is constant
like the dial tone in a telephone
Till the crackling voice
Full of life, says something.
Pleasant or unpleasant.
It doesn't matter.
The voice that had gone out
to work, to win bread
to fetch vegetables
to run a random chore
Has to come back
With a sprightly tone.
If not, what else will?

As I write this

As I write this
It happens again
Snatching the few lines
that I have in mind.
It guides the striding foot
of the pen, to a vagrant scenery.

There is, in front of my eyes
the yellow-black zebra footpath.
The waiting ground
of our growing up years.
And today, now, yes, presently
We are waiting for the return bus
and the girls are walking across
after the school, with their heads down
counting the pebbles, but smiling
for all the attention we give.
A friend is following his crush
on a newly acquired bicycle.
Others are cheering him to go-get.
She cycles faster now
into some by-lane of memory.
We start teasing each other
till the bus lumbers along
and squeezes another day out of us.

Past gets away
with all its tricks
while I try to make sense of it.
Knowingly it will misguide me
and land me in a new neighborhood.
It often laughs at my familiarity of its scape.
An old prison it is for me.
With a long enough chain.

A Good Place

Is this a good place to be
you will often wonder
and wander hypothetically
around the possibility of "What if.."
That road which life never took
will always throw up questions.
Though it is a much taken one.
Beaten to death by others.
Mere passers by, you would agree
Not so special like you.
You could have made it big in that line.

Simple happiness would smile at you
from the boring road that you had foregone.
A sweet and simple sadness
might wrench you into looking back.
The road not taken is a dangerous thing
you would remind yourself and the world.
It might have lead you into monotony.

Now that you can fold your ordinariness
into something appealing to yourself.
What is it that you are looking for?

May be a right question
that might prove epiphanous and
get you running for the other road.
Without searching for an answer.

I have a voice

But, what voice?
When you use words
like "silent scream" just as words?
When you impersonate the voiceless
and write of their suffering.
Unknown and unfelt
A rain withheld.

My only assumption: They have communicated.
To your imagination.
And prompted you in a strange way
To voice their absence and narrate
the true scenes of distress.
But I suspect that you'll soon
be out of touch with this distance.

I suggest you go back to your rhymes.
Yes, they are much better.
Reality there is without its pangs
And everything else just hangs
flapping like a calendar
in the windy Time.