Crumbling

The soul,
Shredded,
Fell apart from me.
I stood,
Staring,
Helpless as it scattered away.

The wind was strong,
My will all gone,
And the soul
Too light to hold on.

My body,
like an ancient ruin,
Stood soul-less and grave.
I watched,
as I withered away
and crumbled into oblivion.

Another leaf
from the giant Banyan
Succumbed.

Worship

I.
My body is a temple
You are my idol.

My soul, an offering at your feet.

I welcome your worshippers
with divine charity;
I elevate myself through your service.

The unspoken and the unspeakable
Cloud my life.
I offer everything unto you.

They touch me,
Grope around my curves,
Squeeze my flesh lustily.

They worship you,
and hungrily devour me - your prasada.

They melt in me,
And I, in you.

Take me higher,
show me my Paramatman.

II. (May 19, 2010)
Men offer their prayers at my shrine
And move on, not thine nor mine;
They wash their faces in my tears,
Their lips speak all my fears,
Their prayers tainted by lust,
They mutter and mumble and lazily chant.

I wonder at their farce,
I cringe as they touch me -
their vulgar fingers coated with greed,
I laugh that I am their deity
I cry about all lack of piety.

A little temple, a little idol,
A little unknown and yet sought after,
I seek those days of total anonymity
I wish I had a mortal death, a bout of insanity.

Letting go

To think it love was foolishness.

I knew the signs –
Restlessness, elation, the moods.

The nature was bounteous,
The days all bright,
And God the most beloved.
My smile was the best,
Our bodies were in insatiable thirst,
And making love was nothing lustful.

We were made for each other,
and fate had brought us together for a reason.

What could be better than being in your arms, my love!

But nothing lasts forever.

Like the smoke of hashish in the air,
Or the echo of a sparrow's chirp,
All beautiful things perish.

Our love was beautiful too,
Beautiful while it lasted...

An old song would call you heartless
And me unfaithful.
But we knew the depths of our love,
The blind comfort of warm bodies.

I don't want to be mentioned in the annals of relationships
Like Romeo-Juliet, Troilus-Cressida, or Heer-Ranjha.
I don't want to be praised for sacrifice in any poems.
I don't want to be cited as examples in school textbooks.
I know you don't too.

Colours of the rainbow fade away,
A hair strand once broken cannot be fixed,
A soured love is lost forever...

Chipped nails grow,
And so shall we move on.

But I hope,
My memories remain in your heart
like the words of the song we composed together.

The melody of our breaths
echoing against our skin,
The silent moans we shared;
The graze of our skins,
The smell of whisky in your mouth as we kissed last.

The parting sigh is still on my lips.
The words stuck in my throat.
Sweat down my chin
wetting your shirt.

We still don't want to let go,
maybe,
But have no courage to say so.

Things on my mind

A strange wind blows my way -
Of melancholy, inertia and dismay.

I want to cheer up,
I want to be bright,
But an ennui stains all the delight.

The tales all ended in hope,
The dreams were all colourful;
But I wonder why, like the rainbow,
They always disappeared so soon...

No.
The images are too cliched
to be woven into a poem.

I wanted to be different.

To glide in the winds and not fly,
To flow through the ground and not run,
To melt in the rains and not play...

But now,
The limbs have dried up,
The brain has dehydratred,
The heart has coagulated.

Like sheets of rain,
I just fall on and off...
Flowing down the tarred roads
and into gutters...

Smiles become mere memories
for a page in an autobiography.

A word of affection,
A touch of assurance -
I die for them every moment.

No.
I cannot ask for more,
I am guilty of greed.
But still I crave...

I pass my time looking at Ravi Varma pictures,
Reading Shakespeare,
And aiming at stars.
I look out of windows, thirsty for a chirping finch,
And think of whether stars are aspirable.

But a lizard clicking above the kitchen light
Brings me back to the ground.
The rotis are burnt to cinders, and I am hungry.

I go back to the dreams, inertia, and strangeness.
I go back to my world.

Dirge to the chemicals

They slipped, fell, declined, dropped, plummeted and tumbled;
And then rose, went up, climbed, jumped, and soared.
They saw downtrends and uptrends, fluctuations and mixed fortunes;
With trades finalised, disrupted, or simply ended in stalemate.

Those industries - petrochemicals, plastics or aromatics,
Survived the frustrating global recession cycles.
Prices, supply and demand - they were troubled;
Sometimes they sank or otherwise they doubled.

Week after week, month after month,
CBI China wrote and PA Mangalore polished them;
Month after month, time and again,
Vanessa and co. sent feedbacks and pruned them.

And now, some of these petchem friends,
Are leaving us, with no one to buy them.
Is it our fault you're going, dears?
Or is it destiny tearing us apart?

Adieu to you, O Acrylonitrile,
Adieu to Acrylic acid and esters,
Bye-bye dear Toluene di-isocynate,
Bye-bye my Epichlorohydrin!

The soul is in tatters now.
It used to be the heart,
But the wounds have relocated,
because the heart no longer exists.
Rationality has overtaken.
How else do I explain this stoicity?