Unliberated

Met few mothers

Minding their children. 

Bound and blinded by love

They pitied their husbands

Who were off to their sports

Contrast

There was a time when I scurried

Books of poetry as I worried

Through the corridors of youth

Trying to get to the truth 

Now  I carry the lines in my head 

Noting the worldly ways instead

My words were plenty earlier

But have now become wearier 

Life has taught 

the most trite lesson

That like everything 

poetry is not everything

Earlier, poetry bloomed everywhere 

like the giggles of newly weds 

Now the lines lie next to each other 

in tired marital beds.

The Boundary

I draw a boundary beyond which

I have only indifference to others' suffering
I wake up and think of the universe
And this boundary stretches to the slums of infinity.
By mid day, I feel lucky that something horrible

has bypassed me and my family.

It has struck others beyond the boundary.

Clearly, my boundary has shrunk.
By night, the boundary only extends to the immediate vicinity
To someone whom I can touch and hold
And in the darkest hour, the boundary shrinks

to a point deep inside me. 

It is indifferent to my own sufferings.

Lectures me on the why-not side of probability.

Limited Vocabulary

An unexpected rain enthralls.

A lapwing repeatedly calls.

Its speech surrounds my nest.

I think limited vocabulary is the best.

Thorny side up

Sometimes I say things I don't mean 
At times I mean things that I don't say
You may have realised by now
That it is difficult to get away. 

I hide smiles behind tears 
and tears behind smiles 
You might have already perceived 
These are my prominent styles. 

Without me reminding so late
You know that life is a bed 
of Roses with thorny side up
But there is nothing to dread. 

It is all temporary 
till it becomes permanent. 
It is all body
till it becomes parchment. 

To my reader across the seas

I can rain somewhere near you 
Make a point that is less distant. 
But this is not how gravity works for me
It forces me to search, with a cursory lamp 
in the narrow passes of inspiration 
Leads me across thoughtless plains
into the forests of silence where 
I hear only the sound of my breathing
Before I suddenly reach a magical place 
Called the ending, which could be this 
Or wherever you stopped reading. 

Mrs. Cinderella Prince

Now she needs kinder shoes

That comfort her like never before

She doesn't let the prince choose

But leaves a note outside her door. 

She puts her faith in the fairy elves

Waits patiently in the kingly castle 

For the shoes to walk by themselves

Without carrying a princely hassle. 

She wants shoes in which she can stay

Not the ones that'll take her away.