Whispered theme
of my youth and middle age.
Now
pacing my reluctant
and uncertain steps
into old age.

But who needs old age?
I sure as hell
don't.

Always the golden child
the fearless one.
Destined to live forever.
That was me.

And music -
this concierto.
Music saved my life
every day.

There's nothing you can say
about music.
It eludes the weak grasp
of language.

But I lie.
Let me try.

It is
the language of emotion
the time keeper.

Bounded and constrained
by the beat
plodding, perhaps,
yet truly free of all that
and, at the end,
filled with the last breath
of eternity.

I lived poor and died poor.
no obituary written
nowhere a black flag fluttered
no one grieved
no bells tolled
no prayers recited,
to still my departed soul!

My body was wheeled in a hearse
with a few following
with hesitant steps
more as a custom than a gesture true
the open gates of the walled cemetery
allowed a glimpse of the newly dug grave
in a remote corner it stood
close to an overgrown hedge
among many a mound
that bore no name on it

Oh, the indigent and the lonely
are destined to huddle together
in death under the sod
with their identities merged
into a single clan!

My body when swiftly lowered to the pit
and as everyone left to join the rage of life,
I pondered, how on this Earth
the distinctions of rank
extend down unto dust
and follow one like a faithful mongrel

I am thinking of the dead
who are still with us
on their way in the rain
to meet lovers or brothers
and my sadness waves back
like grain in the fields
of lost summers and summers
before that, fireflies in the dark
still young and beautiful
like starry nights, but for them
there is no moon, and for us
the same news we do not receive.

the sun doesn't shine in your world, and i wonder why. perhaps it's because you choose to write all your poems in the clouds.

Though the sun had begun bleeding in the West
With an explorer’s gait, I walked jumping over gutters
My track, flanked with knee high grass and nettles
Also wild bushes of all kinds that grew in clusters

I saw dragon flies whirring around in circles
Their wings catching glints of the evening light
As they buzzed from one blade of grass to the other
Giving a solitary soul benign company and sure delight

Strange enough, my track ended in an open space
Enclosed by cracked walls, now a forlorn territory
There are raised mounds, overgrown with weeds
I can easily make out, it is an ancient cemetery

Hush… hush is the place, here no bird sings
There is a mournful silence that deepens
Through the **** grown path, no traveler walks
The place, some morbid warning portends

Vacancy alone greets my pensive eyes
Here the wind sighs in silent pain
There is a muffled horror all around the place
Even the leaves chant a sad refrain

In these ancient graves sleep the silent dead
Their toil and trouble ended with life
They must have been perhaps heroes of the land
No more are they part of world’s victory or strife

Nor its sad commemorations or triumphant jubilees
Though released from the shackles of oppression
Each dear presence has now become an absence
Here they lie anonymous, without a single possession

Some graves are marked by crosses and head stones
But most of them are nameless, worn out by time
We do not know how or when came their end
Did they die in old age or die in their prime

Or perish in a battle or struck by some pestilence
However their names are blotted out from life’s tome
They have become inseparably one with the elements
And they lie here motionless exuding a strange calm

Generations pass and their progeny comes
Unmindful of who lived before them
Neither thankful of the legacy left behind
Nor thinking, all the comforts, from their toil stem

I stand with a heavy heart by these moss grown wrecks
Thinking I too shall lie here once, devoid of all opulence
Leaving all my hard earned possessions behind
Without a name, thoroughly forgotten by the populace

Oh Death! You are the mighty leveler of lives
With your indiscriminate hands when you strike
All differences are ironed out, all distinctions erased
Devoid of any rank, here sleep the king and the slave alike

Children aren't cruel
Because of their learning at school.
From earliest times,
They're fed on Nursury Rhymes
From Mother Goose,
Of children being fatted for the oven,
Jack breaking his crown,
Humpty got cracked,
The Duke got sacked,
And as fast as he could run,
The Gingerbread Boy
Never got home.