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Prabhu Iyer Apr 2014
There's this doll you know:
got delivered to my home today,
it's all part of a disturbing game
and I found a key in its mouth:
it starts by sending
what we lack  most in our lives.

Broken illumination
as the fan flits;

Two naked girls started it all:
except for bikini bottoms,
knitted in national flags,

waving down a truck
on a bridge across the Dnieper.

Roll over the tanks!
nobody wants war:

Except our masked friends,
my maidan hero
your naked Fascist,
self-defending Lebensraum?

Gas them, gas them,
coz, we don't want war.

Got some butterflies to catch;
Tryin' to catch them since
the good ol' hippie days.

It's them naked girls
that started it all:
Havana girls,
there's pipe loads of gas
that's at stake,
drill drill off Alaska, Palin!
Euromaidan revolutions are not about war, but about peace and self-determination :)
Prabhu Iyer Apr 2014
I will walk away tonight,
to the far beyond:
beyond shadowy corners,
and beyond the clouds where
gods gather, witness;

In the shadow of the oak,
where we play, my sister and I:

catching a butterfly, now,
digging into the smelly earth,
it's a worm then curling up my finger
that I go chasing after her.

Laughter breaks into a kite
severed, and flows away
into the distance.

Gods come alive in clay,
that we gather after rains
and give form to and
colour as we like.  Disregarding
where tusks should
and shouldn't lie.

Wild fires were not fun.
Not least for those twins
******* as embers crackle in the rain.
Did the pups die?
Who will answer to their
mum, weeping through the nights?

The sun set fire to the entire
horizon every lonely night
before retiring.

As we gather into our blankets
hearing tear drops dripping in pots
and crickets dance.

Far beyond the skies
beyond the heart of darkness,

I will walk away tonight,
beyond shadowy corners;
beyond the clouds where
gods gather witness;
Prabhu Iyer Apr 2014
It used to live on the hilltop
where a lone bell tolled
by the temple:
but the Deity is long gone
and the bell mourns
in the valley wind on empty
afternoons, now.

I went searching for it:
in late summer, the koel
would sunder open the vaults
of heaven and bring
some down for us mortals
haunted by death.
The koels are long gone now.

Peace,
peace.

Lady siting silent in the evening
staring vacant into the sky,
after a day of labour:
can you give some to me?

I thought it was in education.
But that is stored now, in
almirahs where moths
eat way what humidity cannot.

I thought it was in a position.
But they don't matter, now
a ladder ascending
to nowhere,
vanishing mid-air.

Old man, smiling past hope
that has broken like
your lost teeth:
can you give some to me?

I asked the urchin
playing in the ditch after the rains,

he said: 'follow me, I know where
it lives', and he led me to
a ***** pond lined with plastic
and all our civilization's refuse,
and jumped in.

I returned, disgusted.
peace please!
Prabhu Iyer Apr 2014
It is a morning like no other
when hope is smeared across the skies
Among the mourners I am alone
death cannot bind, when life could not.

A law binds us of old, to kinsmen
and clansmen, and the court
of law can be crooked
where evidence is omniscient.

In the chamber of faith
elevated on the altar
where we light pious incense
is the decorated image
of disbelief - for death
here, is the final word,

and who knows if there was
one in the beginning?

In the heart, the answer
where a wave knocks
of love, daring storms
and disregarding falls,
waiting to wash our feet
and cleanse our lives.

So are we here for a time,
on a sojourn we meet awhile:

Now darkness is overcast
and shadows grow on the walls
Now time is distant
and memories pale
But the miracle of your advent
never fades in my soul.
'They say of old...' an echo washes the mountains: '... but I say unto you...' and he spoke as one with authority
Prabhu Iyer Apr 2014
From ever the time
we can count, this is the lot
of the artist, of the subtle
and unseen, the lover
who sees with the heart:

withdrawal

from the workings of this
insensitive world,
where violence rules, and
vengeance is justified.

A wheel set in motion
of long that has
no end in sight,
of which, no solution
but to

renounce.

The only way, one who feels
may hope to do anything
is by self-transformation.

In the hour of solitude
by a brook or the tide
when the wind turns a page
in the wild, the eternal can
whisper to the soul:

and in this, the deliverance
for one who
sees with the heart.
there's just too much wrong with the world, and often, the choice is between the bad and the worse...
Prabhu Iyer Mar 2014
Twelve are the months of darkness:
twelve the months of perennial winter,
in this world immersed
in the arctic of the Spirit;

Forty are the days of penance,
forty of fasting, yet our torment lasts:
is mortal sin washed?
of the heart, not carne?

Light, here we have, but
Light is what we need, lost our lives
frozen and dark,
in the penumbra of the Spirit.

And grace comes knocking -
but when David rises over darkness
we are with Saul, comes
ben-Joseph, we are with David.
Thoughts on Lent:  And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast (Matthew 9:15, KJ Bible)
Prabhu Iyer Mar 2014
Far ahead, beyond the horizon
is the pillar of shadow that
I set out in search of:
Past waves drenched of gold
and silver nights, I rode on, beyond
islands and signets.
I dreamed of worlds of light
past the winter of faith where
prayers freeze and the days still-born
But at the edge of the world
the shadow is still long
and the light-house I imagined
of shores beyond darkness
remains distant. In the deep
the shivering sky mourns
an ancient loss. What language
does the teardrop speak?
Beyond the horizon, there is a
pillar of shadow that rises
in the firmament of my soul.
Clenching a song in my fist, tonight
I rise, drawing out like filings,
the magician of my world,
conjurer of truths, I am
the magnet for secrets, onward!
I have a shadow to resolve.
For my brother and sister, both of whose birthdays are falling this week.
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