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Prabhu Iyer Sep 2013
My heart rate, sine wave usually, goes
sine squared when I see you,
sine cubed when I approach you,
woh, Dirac-delta when I hear you!

How do I heal this singularity?
Now how do I extract the real part
from your complex valued smile at me?
Euler says, it all goes in circles anyways.

So, I decide to cast a phasor P
that intersects the line H bisecting
your heart plane, such that H · P  = 0.
Can Cupid tell dot product from cross?
Some fun verse here: the mathematics of teen love...!

For those not very mathematically inclined:

1. Dirac delta - there's a good animation on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_delta_function

2. Now Euler's relation and vector products, how do I put it...well,  you've just got to know them!!
Prabhu Iyer Sep 2013
'A triangle on the mount of mercury
is certainly an auspicious sign'

Thumping percussion of a native beat
in my head, a gyrating hindsight

The evening streams down pouring
streaks of grey and mangled orange

Walking past a bicycle chained to railings
front wheel mangled into a rough square

Squaring a circle, huh? How did that happen?
two thumps and a sonant beat...and again...

I see you sipping latte by Nero.
Mangled, stream out of your eyes
many coloured triangles
rushing, wheeling at me.

Vibrant beat, gyrating bottoms.
The mercury is soaring. Ululations.

The night-witch has charmed the city in her cloak.
Stars, oh, I see mangled triangles out of her hat.
Further attempt at a 'cubist-surrealism' perspective ... ! Of course the cubism is more synthetic than analytic here.
Prabhu Iyer Sep 2013
Rain falls on the windscreen
in shades of grey brown and fogged-up blue,
car become boat in the rain-clogged road
floating away like in a Monet,
into the evening mess.

Frayed nerves, rules break, as dangers lurk.
The wiper slow tells its tale own.
Irrelevant discourse, irreverent songs,
the FM trend for DJ fame.

And we have two 'rivers' in our city,
swelling in refuse, bolstered by the rain;
And we have two beaches in our city,
soak in the surf, if you can ignore the rubble;
And we have many parks in our city
where litter garlands our heroes daily;

The last patch of green, cramped between
rising heights all around, accursed of
dump and construction junk,
steals a dying look at the moon late.

A walk in the woods, by the mist, by late evening.
A stroll, warm, through a field covered in snow.
Nice paintings on my concrete wall.

I'm told, the money plant is good for one's health.
Trees, a luxury for our wealth.

These are all good developments.
Hyper malls round the corner.
Home prices, soaring to Kepler.

Please pour in more investment into my country.
Guaranteed, riches grow in multiplication.
The markets are all about manipulation.
Earlier, countries badgered the rich with the 'begging bowl' - now, they lobby them by the 'investment bowl'; Easy money, easy rise, nasty toll all around...

Money plant: a creeper used for interior decoration - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_plant
Prabhu Iyer Aug 2013
On your shoulders, slender waisted maiden,
you carried the burdens of this earth: like
Atlas of the old, you of Amazonian strength;

Yet today you sink, weighed down by
the vanishing vestige of shadows aflicker.
Shadows that consume all, engulfing nights,
harbingers dark of conflagrations rise.

Disbelief is our creed. But enough we believe
to vote them to power, our leaders we so love.
Yet in the hour of decision, we must believe
in their indisputable dishonesty.

Yes, aliens are around, Area 51 is for real,
late night appearances on Larry King live?
For the select few, sure, for a select price.

Osama did not die. In fact, exist, he never did.
Flags felled of the towers twin ? False, them false!
How belief, when Iraqs can happen?
Whither the weapons of mass delusion?

Conspiracy. In bloodlines is our interest
but not in the man who gave that blood for us.
Alas those to preach that love vested,
too are in gossip and scandal invested.

Fickle is our love, the mistletoe occupies now
the sacred space of the matronly banyan, and
the owl upside down, for the dove beloved old
Fickle is our love, slender, our faith...and the Syrians of the world suffer from both ends!
Prabhu Iyer Aug 2013
Wondrous, wondrous is the sight:
from the front, from behind, from the top, from beneath, all around,
fulminating planes, universes, formed, bubbling out forming,
events, from all times existing as one,
beings, of all kinds, everywhere,
gods, angels, daemons, beasts, life from many systems,
including men, of this small speckle of a world,
known, unknown, and the beholder included
unfold, in this being vast, that knows no end,
that prompts awe and gestures of remorse
for having called It the friend and the other and the like,
who can tell what it is, it is inside, outside and everywhere,
our limited vision itself is not enough to grasp it.
It must grant a boon to allow the mortal man to gain a glimpse.

Such is the sight, encountered assuring fearlessness,
amid the din and the clamour of the ferocious war about to begin.

Yet, a realm exists, eternal, where joy is a term unworthy,
where bliss is a term unworthy, where ecstasy flows
out of every pore of the very fiber of existence,
to prompt the poet to say, ah, suffering I can take, but
this my receptacle is too weak to take in your bliss:
where delight takes the form of a radiant blue and plays the flute
having heard which once, all other joy pales in experience known
here a hundred thousand coloured plumes flower out of darkness,
here the ardent souls,  sit numbed by the bliss of love,
not winking once, so not to interrupt the moment.

The portal to which is guarded by a simple faith.
Even a passing desire and a glimpse pours forth, of the river of love
dancing away to the flute, in the depth our being.

Oh, to be a mother, and glimpse universes
in the mouth of one's babe, calling it forth exasperated
to open up and throw out the eaten mud.
Or be the Creator, befuddled that
his proud creation is but one puddle among the millions
this magician conjures up, who smiles innocent as a five year old.
Or be the simpletons guarded in awe by the mountain held up
as an umbrella to the deluge ordered by the rain gods.
Oh, the bewitching smile, that rended the hearts of the maidens,
to which sworn enemies cast their bows and arrows
and fall down in obeisance.

That the lord of all existence, can be a prankster
delighting in butter and frolic, who knew, who knew?

He is the unseen charioteer:
steering the ignorant soul, seated in the heart; Aeons pass
and we know not, even as He carries us in his arms across.
Oh, we can work, and approach him by work.
Meditate! Yes, sunder the knots in the heart.
Sacrifice too, is acceptable as offering, and renunciation ascetic.
See Him in any form, or in no form at all,
offer Him anything, even a leaf, a blade of grass,
He submits but to the ardent soul, this lord of love,
this eternal teacher of the ways of union.

And yet, it all began on a rainy day, on a day
when evil reigned and the rivers were in spate,
in a prison, where righteousness was consigned.

Yes, Truth, the weapon to put the guards of delusion to sleep,
and He slips out, when the rain goes mellow in her hymn,
when the river parts to the babe guarded by the snake,
when the jungles sing to the ecstasy unfolding,
when the world is asleep, ignorant and lost,
assured in its uncertain knowledge
and rival claims and fearsome philosophies
and numberless rituals and lifeless creeds,
unknown to the wicked kings, here He arrives,
to the muffled joys of a pastoral village erupting in celebration.
Krishna is the most popular hero of Indic civilization, whose life and message wove together in a brilliant fusion, the ascetic message of the Buddha and the Upanishad with the flowering genius of the orthodox Vedic system. If Buddhism could be called the 'first wave' of Indic civilization, the message of Krishna is still permeating the world with its bold proposition of emancipation through inaction in action and renunciation in life...
Prabhu Iyer Aug 2013
Gospel truth. Obsession.
Structure. Assumption.
Life path, revelation?
Bokonon, redaction!

Creator. Nature.

Existence?
.....Relevance?

What about peace?
What about it?

That passeth understanding?
Precisely. Oxymoron.

Reason, confusion. Religion, delusion.

Footnote, background, legend:

Small candle: beautiful shrine.
Put it out, darkness and grime.
While this debate rages on among the giants and the titans, destroying everything we built, the still small voice in our hearts, the small candle, still guides the many Mr X's in their little lives.

Peace that passeth understanding: reference to the Bible (Philippians 4:7), e.g., http://biblehub.com/philippians/4-7.htm.

Bokonon: the 'religion' in Kurt Vonnegut's cult classic 'Cat's Cradle' which proposes that its dogmas are all lies, but believing in them gives peace!
Prabhu Iyer Aug 2013
By night, these figures mute, in the whispers
come alive, guardian deities to ancient shrines:
tonight, though, after aeons by the gates, alert,
they begin to wonder, who do they guard?
Gods no longer visit these their abodes on earth.

Tall statues, of somber stone, much garlanded,
dusty, layered in withering flowers of neglect;
Out of season now, but the shadows at noon
are wet in tears, this longest day of deep sorrow
who did they fight for, to be remembered for?

Long has she suffered, matron, deity, enthroned
in the shrine, but trodden of the earth, cuffed
at her home, weighed down of custom, wearing
tradition on her bangle and ankle and bearing
honour in her veil, invisible shadow of the race.

Like the mythical stream of the distant lore,
has this ancient river, at last found her desert?
To that man holding the book in his hand,
thundering to the empty skies, I ask, what law
do you uphold when the jungle invades the land
This is a dirge dedicated to the victim of the Mumbai gang ****. Yet another horrifying crime, in a country where corruption is polluting the very groundwater of the social contract...

Mythical stream: the river Sarasvati, one of the 3 sacred rivers of northern India whose banks cradled her civilization; supposed to have gone underground in the desert.

Man holding the book: Reference to the popular posture depicted in statues of Ambedkar, the architect of India's constitution.
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