burn the light of fire
and wax the ears of injustice.

chide the moon
and bid ado to the reckless sun.

count the blessings of misfortunes
and wave verbs in the air--
breathing the hopeful breaths of married sandals

Label the pains of a billion rain drops and fawn the feathers
of a nightingale over the glory of failed
triumphs known as yesterday.

break the hands of a wristwatch and make a ******* of time--
for through the God in Satan was how Earth was won.

I find that this phrase is most often uttered in a condescending, yet full of pity, tone.
After all, teachers don't make much money
and that's how you win this game of life
right?
This question is always asked after I state my major,
There are so many things I want to say
and show
to the ones who think
teaching English is an obsolete profession.

They've never seen a teenager
construct a poem
so full of power and emotion
that she get a high
no drug can recreate.
A pen replacing needles and blunts,
ink spilling out instead of blood.

They've never heard the stories of students
whose lives were saved by poetry and literature,
a book page
bandaging the wounds
that come when the stone cold world
is thrown at you
over and over again.

They don't comprehend the feeling a teacher has
while watching his students walk the stage
or after,
when the **** hugs the nerd
because they bonded in his English class that year.

English classes remove the masks
children wear
to show the rainbow of colors
bursting through their eyes.

An English classroom is a safe place.

An English teacher is a safe place
to fall;
they will always prop you up with good books
and good advice.

So, to answer your question
Yes.
Yes I want to teach
my students to love
and read
and write
and think
and dream
forever leaving
remnants of my heart
in their open hands.

As I drive past, I spy, in the sky
above the air force station of Bangalore,
two vrooming fighter jets,
three hedge hopping choppers,
five flitting dragon flies in mirth beyond words,
a swallow in love, with his lady love in tow;
fly in formations-
creations of own convenience,
(except for  the machines,
that strictly  follow rules)
against the big, round, magenta sun,
getting prepared
to set behind the mountains.

don’t you know that it was you
who like the Pied Piper
drew me here to
this cross road where
my ideas collided with you
in a state of bewildered joy
pleasant surprise
in spite of some inherent shyness;
a tendency towards introversion
would not stop
this flow of words
even as the cloak of anonymity
fell apart
like a bee finds the nectar that it is due
Stranger, i found you.

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
    12.02.2013
    Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

Beyond the feeling of distraction
I have to keep on doing what I have.
Keep on working, being serious,
keep my head cool and
make my heart beat slowly
that no one could hear it.

I am nervous about so many things but you
made me a neurotic.
You are the reason of refusing eating,
abusing coffee.

You make me feel alive,
Alive enough to die
in controversies, in disappointments.

You are the pain in my back that embraces me so warm
And cozy.

You are the every moment of reality,
The first breath of autumn.
The first sip of coffee after a sleepless night.
The whiff of the first cigarette
that makes me always feel dizzy.

You make me feel quite awful.
Enough to feel the best part of every sight I see,
Of every action I take and every mistake I commit.
I imagine your ***** past and you future, even dirtier.
And if I could be more closer to your real life,
I would not think of it.

Everyone knows how to make one love,
How to draw a beautiful picture.
What colors and objects to put over the life to cover it.
But no one knows how to protect it
prevent all the rain and alcohol drops
which soon will wash all the colors off.

I don’t know anything about life.
I don’t know anything of being in someone else’s life.

The world I’m living in is dilapidating.
I’m standing surrounded with buildings, things and people.
I’m just watching as piece by piece they are crumbling.

Falling,
every heavy piece of world turns into a dust and feather,
sometimes into snowflakes and drops of fog.
They are floating slowly in the air, being taken up with the wind
that takes them away with small impulses far from me,
mixing them,
destroying them.

I’m watching the world turning into decorations,
flat picture of it.
I try to descry whether there is another world
outside these decorations or at last another decorations.
Probably there is just a blank nothing.

I do not know if I have to take a hammer and ruin all that left or try
to collect those dust, feather and water and mix them
with something more stable, and put it into holes
to fix my world of decorations.

Still I’m standing and watching, confused, breathless.

Suddenly, while I’m standing among the soundless apocalypse,
the soil under my feet turns soft. It dries and turns
into a sand that seeps through the narrow funnel,
pulling me inside.

There are less of sand drains around me as I
keep falling into an endless abyss. I am
somewhere beyond two realities. I am
falling and hope this hole could appear to be a rabbit-hole which finally leads me to the Wonderland.

Our love is just biological and physiological.
It is too many of prefixes.
I need less BIO-logy and more LOGICal.
When our bodies are moving together you bite my neck and I say “****, I hate this song”
We are not real.
Five minutes later you’ll be texting with someone else
And I’ll be occupying my new private room – kitchen.
we no longer hear each other, we just listen.
No longer see each other, just watch and look through.
All  that remains in common between us is only dishes
and then it was me who bought it.