Sometimes the heart is heavy
with things left unsaid,
We wait for the appropriate moment
Hope that the words come out right
That we really are able to say
what has been swirling endlessly
between the heart and the head
But that moment waits, alongwith us
As we look at the future,
the future looks back at us,
As we wait for the person to connect,
somewhere that person stares
Until that thunderclap within
alerts us to the real meaning
this action to be taken
is not for the other’s sake
listen to your own heart
write what it wants to share
who knows what is really happening
at the other end?
Is assuming safer than relying on the unknown?
I break this spell of silence
write to you for clearing my chest
Like the telegram in those old days,
I don’t know what is on your side
And for now, I am embracing this boldness
of stepping up to say
what I had learnt to keep as a secret.

 

ball of flame,
rolling in the open sky
watching everyone
with spaces so wide
flaming and burning
she wants to explode
breathing heavily
she wants to let go

rebel child wakes up
next to a man
who could lead her
into a glory path
but oneness is all
on her tiny mind
a peephole into
a universe so wild
she spits in anger
rattles the saviour
wants to tear her hair
go bald feeling the wind
on her naked head
and yet she wants
to stay masked
thinking she loses
her only weapon
if she let’s someone in
undoing the mystery
for when he leaves
she will be empty

meteor tamed
is the story broken
he must drag her
to the pain of truth’s snare
let it snap,
let her fall,
and when she gets up
let her be
the strongest of ’em all.

Dear sweetness of life

Whispering to me as I walk by

Pirouettes of memories

held by my silent mind

Yet this insane urge

to break through it all

Keeps me coming back

to discover your true face

 

Shadows come by…

Cowering with fear

I somehow get by

But yet in those moments

When I am still

Dissolving like warm vapor

In the cool morning breeze

I find a strength no one talks about

To transform it all

Into a glittering pool of light

 

Rainbows here and a balloon of a cloud

Held together as strings

with the body of a fiddle

Playing a harmony I’ve often heard

But a new version that realigns

A different semantic everytime

“Yes I’m coming back”,

I hear me say, to a lover left behind…

 

It’s his presence

In an infinite mind

that holds a wide space…

Now a tidal wave splashes all across

To leave me only emptiness –

with a speck of his love

To dot the landscape

And as I watch…

It was just a gaze settled humbly

Oh the sweetness of life…

Beckoning me from the other side.

Just one spark,

one connection,

to start the lines

and break the fences

into your land,

strange and yet so known,

familiar face that you are

a high star

but I don’t yet have the wings

to rise that far

maybe it was an accident

that our paths crossed

but now the knowingness

is indelible…

as untouchable as it is

in my own heart

you have carved out a space

that I don’t have the right to invade

just watching it from the distance;

I have to find the way

to make it my own

as you end the line

saying, “don’t hope”.

Some treasures must be left within

to let them leave behind traces

as I work, and wish, silently,

for a reprise.

 

“Dear star, come back

when I have something more to give

than my humble self

to live out your dreams

through me,

and the voice that I seek

that could turn into the arrow

you pierce into many hearts

to make them yours;

Until then, leave me a humble space

of a brick,

wedged in one of the pillars

of your grand kingdom,

that allows me

to put my ear close,

and listen”

~ Thank You Lezz Sir for lifting me up from the darkness

I dreamt last night I lived by the ocean

In a huge mansion atop a cliff

With strong winds and seas shaking its glass frames

I could feel the rattle and I was scared

Scared to look at the ocean that lay so bare

So naked in all its glory that I shuddered

Though I was with my lover

My arms were bare…

My feet empty…

Neither did the house feel mine,

Nor did I have the courage to face the sea

I wanted to leave…but I felt trapped…

by my own sorrow to leave the loved one behind

He didn’t need me I know…

But far in the corner of my mind I was afraid…

who was I if not for him?

He had clothed me and put food on my plate…

Though he dearly loved me I felt “kept”…

My Spirit flew like a ghost howling all around the house…

It was not the winds really but this everlasting spirit

Which beckoned me to go yonder…

Told me I didn’t need to belong here…

I whispered back, “Hearts would break if I now left”

And it simply howled away

back to the oceans from where it came

Leaving me to figure out my own way

I knew I wanted to turn to the sea…

To be done in by its eternal charms…

To be free as a nomad with a life

That could turn any minute into dust…

Rather than letting it corrode to rust…

Living in the set limits of unbroken hearts

I wished for courage with a silent tear of longing

I slept away.

I dreamt tonight I was walking in water

In a sea of raging waves that was mother to me

Wading through bejeweled corals

I had nothing on me to protect me

I had let go of the shame that had clothed me so long

I had let go of the safety of another’s love

That had for so long bound my feet

I opened my mouth and only bubbles came out

And I realised I didn’t know any language

But the one that raced chariots of thoughts

In my mind…

I was alone. I was unattached. There were no signs, no roads.

Just whereever it was I wanted to go.

I seemed to have freefallen…

I seemed to have let go…

And just as I was about to ask “How…”,

I saw a flash that my feet were no more…

There was just a fishtail instead…

I was awake.

 

Life gives you so much time…
time for babies…
time for new houses…
time for all-night parties…
time for rollercoasters
time for love…time to reflect…
time of quiet moonlit nights in the rains…
time for sunny mornings on a sun-drenched balcony….
time for pain…time for heartbreak…
moments like sea shells washed ashore
time for writing quietly…
time to write the hundreds of mails to so many through a life…
time for so many SMSs…love-notes on a fridge…
time for Post-Its on monitors…paper-boxes on desks…
time to paint toe-nails…time to paint walls….
time to build fences…time to make calls….
time to make castles on a holiday…
time to write your name in the sand….
time to watch the waves…time to spoon sand in buckets….
time to do nothing at all…time to meet enough deadlines…
time to lose money….time to run after fame…
time to go inward….time to seek God….
time to lose chappals parked beneath the temple walls…
time for so many muezzin calls….so many early morning hours to watch the sun go up….
time for yoga pants….time for tube tops and rock….
time to try Levis….time to live out Zara….
time to rearrange closets….time to live off a street jacket…
time to breath gently…time to go breathless under a waterfall….
time to watch time go by….in an endless train of see-scapes….
time to watch the world in flights….time to see a world collapse in headlines…
time to fade into the warmth of so many beds….
time to search the faces of strangers in transit….
time to see the spaces in a house….
time to watch the sky through spaces in the leaves….
time to see the spaces filled with clothes….
time to touch their emptiness in someone’s absence…
time to rest before another lover comes by….
time to build around a lover’s fragrance….
time to like whites….time to finger greens….
time to indulge in blacks…time to zest oranges….
time to dress in lavender….time to sit in yellows….
time for sunflowers and taxis…
time for random sufferings….
time for surprise wins….
time for shocked defeats….
time to heal the heart… time to defend lusts….
time to go down winding roads…
time to date older men and younger girls…
time for brothers…cousins…crushes…
time for grandma’s afternoon lunches…
time to undress…time for quick showers…
time to tickle the feet in a bathtub…
time to experiment…time to sight-see….
time to live in a world of languages…
time to struggle in a world of silences….
time to encounter cats…time to encounter goats on a hillside…
time for old musings with Dylan…
time to dance on Abba….
time to turn down the volume on Metallica
time to sing Hotel California in chorus…
time to cry “Are you Lonesome Tonight”
time to long….loathe….and trust….
time to measure faith….
time to break away…
time passing through every breath….
as infinite as grains of oats, wheat and sand…
time you would want to clamp down on….
as time just passes you by…
time to take stock….
and before you know, time is gone.

I follow the rules of fashion

And the insensitive contracts of a corporation

And when MS-Word changes its dictionary

I obey and quietly change my childhood grammar.

I wonder, smoking outside my window

If twenty years later any of them would exist

I wonder, if they die faster than I,

then why do I care about them so much, beyond my own life?

I am on auto-pilot, now waking up out of routine

I am trying to be what my dreams urge me to be

And yet there are times I exhale and forget,

Switch back to an old theory of how I must wait for fate.

I am not a boat moored out

gazing at some beacon afar

I wonder, putting out my flatscreen

If twenty years later I want to find myself

On a couch more modest than the one I am on

Still waiting to be rescued, from my own laze?

Looking good, she talks well,

her mind is obstinate and she’s curious as a child

All of this they say of me, but I still wait to impress…

myself in all this vague search for something to connect

searching for magic in this world split apart

one preaching the pleasure of forbidden in tones of sin

one breathing life into the death it has been.

I can reach for my large circle

of tweets and statuses only to grope

at something outside me that fades

faster than the arid, cold nights

I’ve stood battling in my head

At the door of closure I’m afraid to let go

Searching for magic outside my fake colors

I am just whispering in the nude

Wanting to feel the bare skin on my back,

as I rest myself against the same window

As twenty years ago…

With the lights passing by…

exposed to the damp wind that blows out my fire

the streetlights finally fuse…

And I turn away, searching for magic…

Inside.

Sometimes my life is gray
I am lost in thoughts…
you know…
you still know…just what to play;
Sometimes I am in my clouds
and want to shut out all the street sounds
and you still know how to keep me
on my own solitary ground

Your pale moonlit softness
Shines through the darkest lanes
You keep me aroused for hours
when my heart longs for rhythm
And when my fingers know no melody
you stir up my hidden treasure of words

Under the umbrella…
in the crystalline rainy nights…
Under the banyan tree…
in the quiet green sunshine…
Under the covers of longing…
for a home left far behind…
Under the spell of heartache…
in the shades of deepest blues…
You’re playing the perfect tune…
You’re with me…and I’m with you
So simple the world can be…
When all I need is your company…
and my world is left to its devices…
life can hide my wings for a while,
but with you around there is always a dream
Shine on me…my crazy companion…
for you are my apple for every season…
My jukebox to stir up my soul…
a reason for me to smile once more.

*** R.I.P Steve Jobs *** 05-10-2011

~ An old man’s love story…

The cool breeze stirs me awake at midnight
There’s just me and the pigeons quivering on the branches outside
The leaves whisper among themselves too absorbed
To notice my silent gaze of love held by your picture on the wall

A kiss is now just a musing on an empty easel
For a heart grown old as Jesus in a cathedral
Now I can fathom sweet love of distant memories
Doesn’t take a philosopher to admire the moon rippling on the lake anymore

Butterflies chase each other across a demure meadow
As bees suckle the idle flower bossoms
I’m just a spectator with a youth forgotten
Lost in this serenade that’s moved beyond my ears

The evening has soaked itself
Like the cork in my old wine bottle
In the mouldy comforts of the rains
That’s preserved for these tranquil moments
When all I do is watch me turn mellow
As the autumn does…from gold to yellow

Thoughts just gently slide..
Like tips to young Johnny at the bar a tired Friday night
I laugh inwardly at my private joke…
I’m left favored by the very love that left the man next to me broke
As I finger her fading smile in my wallet
My heartstrings tug in that disconcerting way
Rousing a teardrop that longs to run astray

It’s not too late they say now
To walk away to that bridge across forever
All I have to do is leave my spirit to wander
And wait for it to surrender…

The angels comfort me quietly passing by
As I gaze at the stars fade away in the morning sky
As the doves preen their feathers in the dew
I pray I be reunited forever with you

The hills rise above the dark mist
A net of stars nestled in a city below
My rugged vision passes over
the obscure weeds bordering the highway

My breath will turn to dust in the passages of time
My lover shall lose his distance and pass over by my side
Like all roads that must meet in this vastness of eternity
The stripes of crossings being walked upon merge discreetly

Tunnels of gray illusions can blind me
The watch and walls seem to enslave me
But awareness clears the horizon lying ahead
As I realise I am the pawn…and I am the player

The salty sands of Morocco beckon
The spirit that animates you and I
Though the hearts we are wearing look in different directions
My mind has lost the sanity of separation

My jaw holds silence as stiffly as the windows
That rattle as the bus meanders the oft-beaten way
Through impositions of stone and tar and strange faces
Sporadic trees laboring sweet flowers in the harshness

I lend some space to my weary mood
Just gazing at the glistening moon
Endlessly..stirring ripples of ‘you’ness
I sense is grander than my solitudinal existence
I can’t define…
…like a timeless ritual my heart engaged in secretly
While my mind seems to be lost in translation