The sadness of stories

Deep in the abysses of memory,
Fragments of stories lay mute.
Characters and episodes,
Flung about the chasms as if caught in a storm.

The conscious,
The sub-conscious,
The unconscious -

The memories,
The thoughts,
The fantasies -

A hash of all this
Breeds the storm.

If every second were weighed down so,
the times would never be happy.

But why,
Why the hell,
Do I take the hash to be so depressive?

It might be gleeful,
memorable,
savourable,
favourable,
anything.

Prayers get answered only if you pray hard enough.

When the body takes over

I stand in awe as my body lies in another's arms,
I watch in wonder how it rests in another's curves.

There ws a dream once,
Of a firm shoulder and a warm breast,
But like everything else,
Dreams shifted in their place.

Like the tree that welcomes four seasons
And the river that carries new memories every day,
My body embraces fresh smells and skins,
Shedding them like snake-moults every night.

It delights in the contractions of lust,
Unabashed, it screams in joy at each hurt.
It becomes a saint for the day and the whore of the night,
It laughs at the moral farce and flirts with carnal desires.
It challenges the heart, beats the logic of the mind,
And like wanton breeze,
Slides through faces and deep-seated drives.

All the while, I stand in lost thoughts,
Unknowing whether to admire or despair.
When my body walks ahead of me,
What can I do but follow it lamely?

And yet, we come together for a while,
Before the nightfall, before the taste of sweat n blood prevails:
She tells me that she loves me,
And I say, so do I.

One comforting hug, and we fall apart,
But I know her feelings well,
And she knows mine.

Journey of a poem - a poet's ramblings

I
It flowed from a pen like tears down the cheeks.
It came from the heart,
It rose in the mind.

Words and images,
Metaphors and metonymy –
The mind wrote a tribute to the emotions,
The heart sang a hymn to the thoughts.

A poem took shape,
Young and beautiful,
Carrying the burdens of a soul
Captured in the prison of a body.

II
It wafted away from the soul,
Gained various forms,
Made friends,
Gathered enemies,
Bantered with some and chided others,
Became one with another,
And playfully slid away from more….

Like the wanton cupid it struck hearts,
Like the impish Satan it defiled the minds,
Like the glorious angel it comforted some,
Like the morning mist it touched many lives.

The little poem cuddled
On a sheet of white paper,
A leaf of a book,
A page on a blog,
A pane on a website,
A scribbling on a note,
A memory in a bosom…

III
No name, no face,
No credo, no race,
It came to you
And it came to me;
It became mine
And it became yours;

And in that one poem the world found
A relation beyond boundaries.

All I want is to be held,
Held in a long warm embrace;
An embrace that hides all tears,
An embrace that clears all fears.

A hand to hold on to,
A shoulder to lean on to,
A life to sustain,
A breath to maintain,
A pleasure to return to.

I smile at the winds,
Chide the nasty sun,
Pet the restless dog,
And clean the ceiling and floor -
All as I wait to be held.

Carnal delights

A breeze of calm
surrounds me.

Where am I,
What am I?
and why?
The existential questions dissolve into thin air and waft off.

The thoughts
of those rotten love affairs
and grotesque career dreams
Take shape and break up.

Culinary delights,
Pampering,
and sleep are all I know now.

The smells of chicken fry
and coconut oil,
The taste of payasam
and crispy pappadums,
Take me away with them.

My senses are chasing
A lap of comfort,
A shoulder to lean on,
And some lullabies.
Carnal delights are all I need now.

Let the thoughts and dreams
of arrogant rationality
Suffocate themselves in the overbearing mind.
Let them die the brutal death of repression.

And when their ghosts come fleeting by in dreams,
I shall scream out in delight,
My carnal delight.

Rabba…

Tired and loveless
Is not what I want to feel.

I thought I was stronger,
I could stand a little longer,
But the feet give away,
And the heart takes time to heal.

I walk the lonely shores,
As the fishermen wind up their chores,
The sun sets in the horizon,
And the world seems all right.

But my mind is a flood of thoughts,
Like a basin full of clanging pans and pots,
And I hate being so ruffled
Over what I thought I conquered.

Nothing saps the brain more
Than loneliness after a phase of cheer.
A Bollywood song runs in my mind,
"Aaye jo koi to kabhi jaye na rabba",
And when I look up at Him,
He seems to be hiding in the dark clouds.