None would imagine,
a benign imp,
blithe, light footed
triggers a surge
of aesthetic spasms
******* of the brain,
moves incognito
on this high podium
beside your chair
when you
read your poem
just like when you're
in a creative reverie

Every time it's a mystery
how she sets music
within every word
how then a rhythm
in progression
is unleashed
flowing in to your
poetic musings
to create an image concrete,
correlating to the wave
beating in your brain

Heart, soul and spirit
merge in to one
poetic words to mark
what your being gathered
from spring flower fields
and scorched earth alike

all the poet  gathered
at the receiving end
of the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune,
is set in tune,
all of you gathered here
for the poetry session
walking through the labyrinths
inebriated by poetic wine,
munch yourself bit by bit
in the cadence of poetic beats,
as past, present and dreams
in many small instalments
pour in from the beginning.

What the poet offers
takes, each one listener
to a world different,
one begets many
images proliferate.
They will relish all this
and be born again
within themselves
later on, leisurely with light
peeping out of their eyes,
an alchemy none can explain

1
   **My dad suddenly walks in,
  as if nothing has happened,
   and he hasn't gone anywhere, leaving
six of us behind, notwithstanding-
all these years of absence and
pain unimaginable that changed us all
to see life in a new light that gets dim
without the lamp he held in front of us.
       A shadow transparent gets in to the room,
he stands near mom sitting inside her cocoon,
lost in an ancient evening, pensive, forlorn
as if she feels an absence, tangible right there.
Dad's absence stands silent, perhaps
curiously looking at her with loving eyes
that's how he was, after a period of absence.
The pantomime, tears my sense of reality
                   in to shreds, I sit upright,
with my hands pressed against my palpitating heart.
Do I see it really or hallucinate him looking,
wistfully at the coconut groves dancing
beyond the extending rice paddy billowing,
in front of our farm yard, sleepy these days,
for a moment I think time has
taken liberty to flow back
and everything is right there
where we'd love it to be.
             2
The absence was a hollow,
in the middle of everything,
breaking the mirror of reality
in to smithereens, the dark space,
in between sprang-
opening its mouth to swallow,
wherever one turned,
it stood in front defiantly,
posing a challenge at times,
it came behind hollering noiselessly,
bringing unbearable memories,
from moments hard to forget
spent in his company,
in my palmy days of yore.
                    3
Absence was fire within,
that needs no fuel to burn,
flood waters without a source,
that can wash away,
till one becomes nothing;
then little by little,
one comes in to terms with the absence
and at last it too is laid to rest,
and that eats a part of the soul,
causing bleeding in slushy green,
transparent white and blobs of sad black.

On a white conch shell
like flowing teardrops
her name was written,
in his heart's blood;
this is the only record
hitherto, of his sacrifice.

On a coral reef
with every imaginable color,
his name was sculpted;
a real marvel that belies
the labor of love of long days,
her final dedication to the love of her life.

A deep sea diver, exploring
a long time after, strayed
in to this chamber of love secrets
by chance and finds
the relics of a mysterious love affair
that got lost to the human world for ever,
but  found an abode deep down
in the ocean depths
amidst crowding scallops, calamari and mussels

The explorer's eyes brim
a stream of tears,
though do not know
for whom, it was shed
adds salt to the ocean floor.

Love makes heroes out of
even timid and docile persons
let me tell this. it is difficult
to predict the ways love treads.

You are rare, an iridescent coral reef
of uncommon beauty , emerging
out of ocean blue, with an appetite for sun;
he has fallen for you at the first sight.
I am the setting sun, with stunning
rays of praise that keep you thrilled,
for the while I last, and would make you
                                           crave for more,
Darling, listen
story of our love is immortal for this reason:
it would be a burning, searing pain,
not destined to be lost in fulfillment,
it would make the stars, brimming
with emotions, sob, sob till it all dissolve,
shedding light, like drops of   hot wax,
till the candle lasts and the wick fights
                                              the dying of the light.

You, the secret code
of a ship wreckage
inscribed with my name.

On a chariot of wind
Wearing a T-shirt saying
‘Sorry, I have vexed you’,
I’m sending you
a floweret form the sea,
Whose petals in-sync
with the waves in the seas.

When the chariot returns
Please do send back with it,
An acceptance footnote
for my apologies to you.

Like a bulb illuminating
on the speech bubble
of a cartoon character
I will find the map
en route to the land form it.

It's hard to explain
how this heart feels.
Like laughter lost in echo
and your warm touch
now long gone cold.

Anxious, breathless;
something lost I need
so desperately found.

Empty perhaps.
Abandoned like houses,
broken like silence.

These hands can't reach as far
as where you lay.
Somehow I feel like I burn at both ends;
the flames now reaching their meeting place.

But it's always better to burn out
than to fade away.

A forest fallen flat
in to the water bed,
of this extended lake
gives him a feeling of surreal
and yes, an immense sense of peace.

he sits there alone, quietly
peering at his cold narcissistic face
now, broken in to pieces by fish
curious to look at his face
by swimming around his reflected one.

After many cold winters
when at last one finds out
that mere reflections all are,
the face thought to be real,
and the reflection on water plane,
on the pool waters of time
that drains little by little,
liberation wings in like
a white dove, the harbinger
of the last good news.

The cuckoo
in the bamboo grove,
swaying from one side to the other
as the bamboo moves in the hands of wind,
on the clod water sheet, sings without sound,
the forest that grunts
like a wounded animal,
observes grave silence
in the other reality plane-
water spreads.
He watches in alert silence
a recluse in parallel realities
           he has awakened.

The rolling hills in meditation, stand still
under the ultramarine blue skies,
they brood over ocean depths
see visions of dolphins' dance and sword fishs' fight;
in a flash, the hills dive like a blue whale
in to the deeps of profoundly tranquil.

marvel, isn't it? not even a note uttered,
the symphony of cosmic music
spreads its waves, embrace
heaven and earth in one sweep,
motionlessly in a dance within.

In tis universe wide
In its unknown glide
from the cupids bow
stiriketh the arrow of love
eyes sparkled with tear
Uncertain in its fear
yet tis pleasure to melt
beating heart of love felt
striketh the arrow of love
from the cupids bow

He captured their love
in essence, in an intense
moment of joy
within an oyster, in depth
for keeps;
secretly hoped
he would adorn her neck
with it when it ripens
in to a pearl, so brilliant
transmitting the rays of love.
A monument of their
devotion to love.
Days
like flocks of white herons
flew to far poles,
ravens of dark nights went
to far horizons and came back
without fail.
Sea change makes Tsunami
strikes in human lives,
she never found her way back
to their love spot
to bill and coo and dream
as before and drink moonbeams
together for nourishing love
as she promised him before.
The oyster he kept safe
in a secret corner of his sad world;
whenever he touched it
it was a moment of pleasure.
Then it became
an irresistible urge to open it
and caress the pearl,
the reminder of his love nonpareil,
though failed to spread wings.
Eager were his eyes,
for the only consolation left;
but he feels cheated once more
on seeing a drop of tear
the size of a big round pearl
tasting salt of a love gone bitter,
dark and brooding, like her heart,
inside the crumbling oyster of his soul.

Will, makes the body a fiddle, every string vibrates with music,
life continues to be a bacchanalia, for long, from teens to midlife,
the weakening of pleasure seeking streak, brings spirit
to the center of thought, meditativeness brings connect
with the all pervading spirit, then poetry of the universe seep in
ecstatic moments of body, mind and soul, one is convinced,
are soaked in poetic cadence, oozing from the divine spring within.

The woodpecker wouldn't reveal,
          the secret kept closer to her chest,
but the telegraphic messages
          meant nothing else I gather it thus:
"Don't you give up midway
           slog, till you are fully satisfied,
that you've reached there
        where, what you are searching is found"

In wooden notes, she proclaimed thus,
          goes on pecking making,
the noise louder and louder,
         it's now more and more clear-
that in standards she'd never compromise,
        never would she lower her esteem
even if her sense of urgency sometimes
              creates some discordant notes
       that she accepts as her fault
and keeps her ears perked up for tone and tenor.