A moment cuffs you in the face
like Newton's overstated apple,
and the evening dissolves
into sharp, steady resolve...
You think about the extra drink you should have drunk,
the song you should have sung
and the man whose touch y so missed...

The Muse had disappeared.
**** Muse.

Every time you try to find news you want to *****,
not just a little, but expel the very core of emptiness out of you,
and you picked a fine time to stop swearing
because there is a man whose feel you have so **** missed...

The stars continue to twinkle across the Northern Sky,  
oblivious to the bouncing of our big Blue Ball,
un-answering dreamful wishes;
though, there are other stars lying closer to your heart,
a fresh start and the barbells below...  
And you realize
life is found in the letting go...

And the Muse reappears, smiles an aching, wondrous, Hello.

Loving kindness
Feelings of affection
Sweet hugs
Warm words
Feeling good about yourself
Feeling joy for the other finding that which makes them happy
So easy hanging out
Acceptance and understanding
The wonder of it all

One person's breakdown
Another person's break through

Sometimes bliss finds consciousness
Sometimes consciousness finds bliss

And that's the way it is
Always ambivalent occasionally right

Riding many ribbons
Twirling in the winds
Many sunrises
Many sunsets
Moment by moment
as one creates their life.

It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

knee-deep in forest,
a wellspring of
multi-colored liquid
joy, bubbling
in frothy
peaks
my inner eye open wide
at the sacred wonder
of it all
glory of divine
earth water fire
wind in my soul
sunlit scarlet on
leafveins in this
garden feast of the senses
If heaven were imprinted
upon the runes of my body
a soulmind, shimmering
crystals in heart
then this
is it
nothing less
than spirit
coursing through blood
in untamed rush
a wild creek
teeming with freshness
and trout
deer peeping in shyness
and I am all
      lit up from within
as the hues of life
run through me
pulsing energy
filling me up
in deepest
strokes
of
air,
of trees
of mountain
here
even the stars
seem to call out
my name
and, in ever-depth
in focus of heartwave,
I listen

"Her other name must be Peace"'
Doubted  it was writ large too, on that face,
Yarns of tranquility waved her dress
In it's tight drapes her shape does express
More than expected within that gentle grace.

For a moment he held the reigns, took stock,
Deeply inhaled the scent of musk, she exudes
Sensed a turbulence, an effect opposite, yet sweet
"Need to initiate a change, a bend in the flow, quick
Amble to her and shake hands"his other murmured
"Otherwise you wouldn't forgive yourself,for the lapse
Letting slip a rare glowing moment, from your hand"

Alter ego's prompt, was carried out with such ardor,
She briskly met him halfway and gracefully asked:
"We sure met before once, didn't we some time?"
"Certainly, but in some other life time, it was"he says
She smiles as if his was a seductive move, she liked it.

But these waves that reach him has an intense warmth
"Will you give me a hug?" emboldened he ventures further
She did more than what he could expect, tight was the embrace.
Yes, that's right, appearances are deceptive,pleasant surprise!
One needs to expect the unexpected,make serendipity work.
It was too fast, he couldn't see what really was  happening,
She perhaps leads him to a timeless space , he imagined
That volcano camouflaged as a green  island of tranquility!

little remains
of my grandfather's house:
raw rafters, warped planks with hints
my uncle invested in paint

the windows all gone, time
and twisters took them, and much
of the roof--what is left of that sags,
a silent submission to gravity

a woodstove survives, cold
to the touch, with no memory
of the fire it once birthed, the precious
prairie timber which fed it

now it knows only mourning
doves' song; winged squatters
unperturbed by my presence, as if
they know I lay no claim to now

the old boards have stories
I will never hear: the birth of babes,
reading the Word by kerosene lamps,
the last breaths of men

the songbirds may know,
but they woo the living in flight--a
future of nesting and fertile eggs; they
owe no belated dirge to long lost kin

================
Life long relation
We should not cut
For the timely outburst emotion
Time will tell the difference
Who is wrong or who is right ?

Come, come relaxed
And extend the sun
On your mind balcony
To burn all the evils
Just to have nothing to loose

The trains are coming and going
But the railway station remains there
It never changes it's place
Is it wrong or is it right ?

We are going to end
By our own desired hands
Our mortal worldly life
Nobody comes forward
To give us a new life
Is it wrong or is it right ?

Time will tell the difference
Who is wrong or who is right ?

Written by
~~~Jawahar Gupta~~~

From the framed picture hung on the wall
Two faces look nobly down
The faces of my grandma and grandpa
Taking me to the times gone by

Smiling at their wavering progeny,
They retell the saga of their blissful life
A life of selfless share and care
Inspiring generations in their travail

Curling back to times and climes primeval
I hear the sound of their footfalls aloud
In a humble dwelling, joyfully they lived
As children of the soil with hands full of toil

They worked together from dawn to dusk
Greeting every new dawn with fresher zeal
Their hearts were securely fastened in love
And had needs minimum and complaints nil

Two fountains that sprang from sources different
Had merged together before their early teens
Through wedlock they had been customarily bound
At a time when they hardly knew what it meant

Had played together as buddies for long
Until instinct made them man and wife
When fledglings were hatched in their little nest
They worked together never knowing rest

Hit by adversities hard, at times they sank very low
But with resilience, bounced back
And frugally saved every nickel and dime
To meet the needs of their growing household

They tottered together in the evening of their life
Serving as prop to each other when about to fall
In their twilight years, ambling the corridors of memory
They reminisced sweetly the joyful events of life

Now they lie together in the same churchyard
Two streams that evenly and tranquilly ran side by side
Never once been shattered on the rocks and shoals of life
Making one wonder if their life is History or Fable

In the swelling magnitude of our life
Though trivial was their share
Yet they stay as beacons of light
Leaving a trail of light to blaze our paths

I found a poem
it was packed away
in a box in an attic is where it lay
dormant in the dark
unable to say
the words he had written
his final day

the attic has light now
he heard the switch click
come to me come to me
hurry! be quick
I've waited for years
for ions to be read
then the sound of turning pages
danced in his head

he awaited the light when he heard paper turning
and the smile of a face would have his heart burning
closer and closer as the pages were freed
then stopped at the title and did not proceed
did not proceed but the eyes he could see
through the thin journal paper the eyes he could see
and the tears ran down cheeks of a child all but 3
Daddy, he said, 'Can you read this for me?'
'Perhaps you can read it some other day
when you're old enough to know just what it might say
Off now my child, we can't be all night
lay down the book and turn off the light

and from that day forward he waited for me
the child to return
to set the words free