To mama's home, when-ever my mister
starts acting cool, unto how many years
ever to straighten him out:
Can you promise to ensure this for me,
proponents of marriage by love?
I've been brought up like a princess by
my father, so dare not propose to me if
you cannot manage the same and
then shut the door to my mama's home!
I'll marry whomever my father chooses
aren't all ram the same otherwise-
Until de-horned and de-bearded my man
mama's home every now and then,
gifts for every festival, weddings
and merry occasions, my cradle
to fall back on, if life does rock my swing:
So, proponents of marriage by love,
dare not propose to me
if you cannot give me the same
and yet shut the door to my mama's home.

Do you realize you lost someone
even before finding them?
In your stubbornness, you never
smelled the jasmines in bloom
in the waning hours?
All life, your words matter most
yet my feelings for once
make you indifferent; The
most un-equal among un-equal
things, some relationships:
tilted the other way by birth,

Crimson shades that hang on late
on cloudy mornings, cormorants
that carry tidings from afar
reeds that roll over slow in their measured nuances:
wind roars, noon bells, distant shorelights at night.
I sought glory with love in my heart
Midas-like, glory became my gold.
Every wave carries a new meaning
for one who sees life
from the window of death;
How many deaths for honour, how many
for glory, how many more for perfidy?
Ah blessed love, that
- when the glitter of glories descends
into quicksands of darkness -
from whom nothing can ever be snatched away,
the one love that shone before my birth
as Athene, who I loved as Penelope and
who loves me as Calypso, receptacle of worlds!

Roses and jasmines. All vowels extended until you barely make the words out,
approaching, then rushing and receding past, early mornings. The flower boy;
Wake up calls, admonishments, family fights and announcements, old stories,
dire oaths, colourful threats, affected love, who, this loud mouth? Lady next door;
Squirrels that shriek like birds, competing for turns to puncture the solemn silence;
Paperboys and milkmen, school vans and church bells, pressure cooker whistles,
whish of reed broom on jagged floors wet with cleaning water, motor noise, aircon:
Two years: that vanished like a dancing drop on a hot pan: beauty hiding the pain
Ending like the slowly turning reflection of the halting fan on my breakfast bowl:
Ja..asmi...ines and ro..oses, squirrel shrieks, now familiar story of the family next
door, wash whish, silence: who is that faint spectacled figure on the cabinet glass?

Walk eyes down,
no eye contact here:
stalker who, don't
know who's a friend
here: I have things,
see, am a visitor here;
First man I ask points
a blind alley out; Turn
quick around, I mus'
hurry back to sounds!
No eye contact, now,
my sole guide bound
instinct here. Police?
Does that blue attire
mean safety or fear?
Who knows. Big city -
this dark night, life
comes cheap here;
So: walk eyes down,

That season again; familiar fragrances:
of flowers and of emotions.
On shortening evenings
graying skies paint the earth in shades of
anticipation; Snapshots,
joyous memories, of
distant years roll out of catherine wheels
and sparkle-pots, rare
treats and new clothes
for the year; rolling wheels of time, how
loves change, people's
priorities change, events
drive everyone further and farther away.
But memories awaken
from vaults in the heart;
Familiar fragrances, blessed resurrections
always chase
all the doubters away
Yes, this season again; blessed fragrances.

By the shadowy waters of the lake in deep woods,
amid owl-calls and shrill cries of crickets,
and croaks of a hundred frogs,
a kindly form speaks a word to my heart.
Clouds blanket the moon from the cold that makes
stars shiver.  On receding nights a warm
corner to bury my head in, from
advancing grey-arms of menacing dawns.
An accepting hug melts all that bothered us bitter
through the storms that raged the night
over. This was all required to begin
over, the morning after. The heart feels
what ears cannot hear. Blessings that miss the eye.

On this humid summer night,
heartbreak is even more painful:
here you lie scattered
in trinkets and baubles.
Half your name on an airplane tag;
Old diary with
hurriedly noted recipes;
A bangle whose
other in pair is now lost;
The cherished handbag,
hidden away behind clothes;
That first scarf I bought for you.
You lie scattered like this
here, in every shadow and dream:
why, Spirits, this fate for us?

When did it happen, how did it happen?
What lonely hour did dawn break into the
dark vaults of the firmament high? When did
the storm-cloud tiptoe across the arid sky?
Was it that night of the festival of lights,
when you nudged past the crowds to stand
by my side? That winter when the moon
shone across the desolate snow, to rhythms
of dew dripping from distant tiles? Or
the days after the storms when I discovered
that vulnerable you beneath your chiseled
cloak of practiced calm? How does the spring
bring mourning valleys to flower in the smiles
of a thousand vines? O cherished mystery,
when did this feeling, deeper than sorrow,
unmoved by pain, mightier than weakness,
stronger than the bruises from a hundred lies
that line the course of this chequered life, how
did this arise, anticipant joy of a journey nigh?
Bonds of lives past, is this how ye come alive?
That very first day when hello-eyes smiled?

In the still night, a quest envelops everything like darkness
spread across the sky. Among shadows, a journey for light.
One last time like the night lingering at the horizon at dawn
he looks back: So long dear friend, companion ever on my
journey this far; You know everything, yet I cannot bear
to leave otherwise; Know not what perils beset my quest,
Yasho, this journey is mine. Words echo in the empty silence
of this early hour. This morning after, gusts of wind remind
of an absence, yet only the fragrance of love fills the empty
chambers where memories retire by royal robes cast behind.
Too great to be bound, some men; some love too vast to bind.

A roaring event rips lives apart. Like a river that parts land into two banks. Sometimes brothers are rent apart by life, never to be joined again. Nations arise out of land that was once one.

Born of the same soil, yet separated by the rapid gusts of flowing water. At the culmination though, love breaks barriers. At the ocean, the roar of the river is drowned in the peace of the wave.

Sometimes, we must let go and let life mend itself.

When the river meets
the ocean, sands from two banks
mingle, become one

Sometime in everyone's life, withered
leaves will not grow back and one autumn
will not pass to spring. Sometimes we know.
Suffering. The constant visitor hidden
like a shadow silhouetting our life.
Every slow winding hour, we move closer
to when limbs falter and senses numb.
Endings ever lie hidden like a corner
sudden at the far end of a thrilling road.
Sometimes we are sure, we are more than
the frame of bones. Suffering is inferior,
deliverance is the greater truth. But:
we don't care, the thrill of weakness
is more attractive than the calm of Self.
One momentous journey, out of the
false-lit comfort of familiar darkness.
These that stalk us: disease, old age, death.
One man could see it all in one evening
what takes us many lives, may be.

Dark bower by the deepest night,
Not again, not again;
Songs of leaves that
whisper to the half-moon
hymn you: Señora,
Seeking you, clouds soar the skies;
You conceal all the stars
in your tresses.
Yet you look back stopping
by the horizon and I
do not see the pain lining your eyes
by dawn: whom
do the marigolds mourn, by
the valley of the drying stream
in late summer?
Who silent walks down the rainbow
whose tracks leave
pink mists on grass-tops?
Whom does the myna call to
in agony by the wet winds
of the early hour, and silent tears
of the early rose?
Señora, perdóname,
not again, not again,
this empty night,
chasm down the valley of days.

Distant clouds lining the endless horizon hurtling back in waves,
rugged trees on the blue-barren shore, courtyard of this palace-
prison: the world shrinks, receding softly like
the last light of the evening sun:
Neither Odysseus King of Ithaca, nor a captive prisoner of
my own deeds, now, the world drops from me, in this
deep night I really am no-man, now, I am merely
the awareness of nothingness.
New worlds emerge: where I ride flying elephants, a hero I am
who won without recourse to a decoy horse, where Achilles
lives and Laodamia grieves not, where I rejoice
at my home the year after we won:
Fair Queen, worlds as real as my prism-world at dawn, where
the sea-nymph reigns; Many pasts converge and onward
to many futures from this present-point, I am really
ever just the silent witness.

Far too many tides have you held him, Calypso, now let him go:
thus commands Athene daughter of Zeus, She who cannot stand his wails
any more. The fleet-footed Hermes delivers the writ of the heavens.

Does the wail of a mere mortal trouble the mighty Athene more than
the heart of her kin?  Will you Hermes not accept a bribe and tell Her you
never found me? That Calypso's home is too hard to find on sea?

The will of Zeus cannot be altered, bow or the bolt will make you kneel.
Twenty years has he suffered, let him go this prisoner of his deeds. Eternity  
awaits you: while his soul, death. Let him not regret his life in afterlife.

Thus did I leave on high-tide who steal to my own palace like a thief.
Twenty years play in my mind, but the strongest still is Telemachus's smile.
I leave her who cared so much to win my heart yet only the Zephyr -

Brought me cheer, that carried the smell of home and Penelope fair.
Here I leave the immortal who will die for me: for her who I know not if she
loves me yet. Who Athene brings don't fail me in life, even if they falter.

Somehow an internet cloud
has leaked into my room, and
I can soar the skies now:

Don't know
how long this connection holds?
chat on Gmail?
am online on Skype!

Memories return on
wet wings of the slow winds.
Old photos on this computer.

Should I
be content with photos tonight?
Separation is sweeter
on misty nights.

You said you were
reading my poems last night.
what poems did you read?

Another wave of hopefuls arrive:
a sea of humanity, on board this flight.
Wide-eyed young with dreams of a future;
Broken men from no-mans' lands,
seekers of refuge and an identity of hope;
The student of science, the Yoga teacher;
Precocious and bespectacled
immigrant kids with foreign accents;
Anxious old on the first plane of their lives
out to meet their children, or grand-children;
man in traditional attire; relieved missionary
from his conquest of souls; All escaping
to the Ark of the world, on board this flight,

Everything spreads in an expanse.
Forms like candles feathered
flickering float in glassine tombs,
Sounds like those dip and sink at sea.
Silken carpet of clouds pulled,
numb stones and numb thorns,
pain from under my naked norms.
Chain breaks and rattle songs,
oh the horror of raveling knots, that
endings have humble beginnings.
Everything's same, but nights melt  
and fans slow, flooding the days in
broken moons and shaken stars.
Solitary lamp in the damp room,
Everything spreads like ocean waves
from me in an expanse like this.

On the far corner of my hall hangs a giant poster. Janeway is leading
her crew through the unknown. Spruced up so nice, you could
mistake it for a wall. My cupboard of skeletons. Beware, uncover the secret
at your own risk! Sometimes though, I wonder why we don't just accept:
aren't we all about the mean? Good man. On average, I am. White crows,
do exist! Everyone knows but crows are black. Of course the extent counts.
Of deviance I mean. But trust, you must.  I am a monkey that learned to
think. So are you.  I learn my religion, I learn my culture. I learn to act:
my part in the Play. Life is a rule-bound game we choose to accept.
I rebel too. When the rules aren't fun no more.  Isn't that true of me
as of you? Meantime, meanwhile, mean love. On the average lets seek:

Mellow season rain slipping by the thunderstorm
oh you have come, unknown visitor,
unrecognized. Lone rose that bloomed in rain,
drenched always in tears, this morning
shaded beams of light and the song of birds
welcoming the respite bend past you.
This is the sea leading to Ithaca. Here I stand
on the shores of the land that was my home.
Who left with hundreds, alone I return like a thief.
The gentle hand that passed last from my sight
out of the multitudes that waved us bye,
A hundred whispers of chants and hymns
from shadows that rise from the corners where
I found refuge from pain in these years:
Whom do those fingers choose, honour-bound
whom I left alone those twenty years ago?
Years that rush like a river streaming past gorges.

The mother that nourishes you in the rainy dawn.
Loving maiden whose fragrance fills the spring.
Mirage that you thirst after, heartbroken in high summer.
I am the daughter you cherish at the winter of your life.
Your friend always, through ages vast.

I am the unknowable love that sustains your being.
I am the joy for which universes arise.
I am above the last that men can grasp.
I am accessible here always in your heart.

Dance of the thunderbolt in the storm-sky.
Music of the sky-river at night. I am the flute.
I am the Supreme. I am all.

Rend the clouds!
You are the rain that washes the worlds in love.
You welcome the world in your arms.
You have no one. You are everyone.

Will you become the wall and stay silent listening to my wails today?
I count every drop that wets your edifice brick by brick in this rain:
This day of prayer, the festival that comes only once in many years.
Today I stand kneeling before the skies that fumed in thunders
I have weathered life to walk up to this shore where you stand,
Your watery eyes the lighthouse that guided me lost in the sea-storm.
Polyphemus could not stop me, nor the Sirens, not even Calypso.
Here I come, your pilgrim in my hood, I who accepted war over love
The war in which I lost everything: friends, comrades and mates.
O Athene, have my sacrifices been in vain, will you not bring her to
speak? She who has gone silent like a wall, wet in this wailing rain.

Nameless and formless
I wish to just be
Yes I am, I just am.
To whom providence sends in my life
I am love and care.
When their time is done,
they depart and I do not grieve.
I am a fallen twig,
I fly as the wind carries me along:
In spring time I fall on soft grass;
Hug me and place me on your ideal
or don't notice and trample me over,
I don't bother.
I am the storm cloud high up the sky.
No-man lived but
Ulysses died with the storm.
Nameless, formless
Yes I am, I just am.
This fellow who appeared as me
I am the one who appears
as You too.
I have seen my own death, now
I wish to just be.

The slow winding years sliced up here:
Your birthday: that memorable year
New year O'seven,
that festival of lights,
Sulis,
Brussels;
Years that rolled like mellow waves:
Receding, returning;
Slices of joy.
Photographed here.
But pain, is all curled up.
Jarring notes, unfitting angles
caged like birds
grieving in the corners of our souls
where we return, each time
the bass is strummed at the string of our hearts.
Half-drawn breath, part-held lungs
Moist pain I see in the corners of your eyes.
Let go, let go, let us let go.
This hour of receding darkness,
let them fly away
free with babblers that ring in the day;
Freed, freed of the burdens past,
let's walk in the wind
into crimson tides
to tipping waves,
dipping skies.

Did you tell them they were from a mystery man? His heart is all
locked up, no one finds entry there. 'Coz he says, there are broken
shards there that you'll step on. There anyone who enters will see
a hundred broken pieces of themselves, soon as the lights are on.
So he keeps it shut, and he's a mystery man. You'll never know
enough of him. He's just made like that, elusive, elusive. Nights,
he's awake to some unknowable pain. He just cannot bring his
thoughts to cease for a moment. Bats rush out off hidden corners
sinking into shadows as owls keep watch. He dreads deepening
nights and shrinks worn from twilight. He curls up hugging some
silken knots that sew his broken soul, your elusive, elusive man.

Again that roar of sea dying into murmur.
Yet another splash and retreat.
Wild wind wet with the constant spray.
Sometimes I don't and sometimes, you don't.
We walk together here, this way.
Sometimes the sea, the world at others.
Yes, sometimes there's only one person's track here.
So many years now, yet everything is in those first days.
Voices that persist in the interludes to birdsong.
At noon they peep in through revolving
shadows of the tireless fan.
Forms that flit in and out of my mind
as I motor away into the ebbing evening.
Streak of light that dissects the painting on the wall
late every night. Blinding every morning.
Broken well that chimes back
your own distorted voice and visage.
Sometimes I wish I could walk out of your life.
Sometimes, you wish you could from mine.
My altar went dark the day after I set it in order.
What if I lose you, what if I lose you?
The rose plant died when the maid watered her
this summer when I was away.
What of me finding her dead like this?
Withered leaves, speak to me.
This bare silence is thorny to my soul.
Solitary pond, speak to me past the springs of teals,
rain that obscures the closed temple to the deity of love.

This is a memorable email.
Must be printed, folded, and
preserved in a quiet corner.
Long after our time is done,
its fragrance will remain.
Like that in dried petals
of an old flower.
Life of a lost world
preserved in a piece of amber.
Years that wore slow, seen
long after in lumber rings.

She is not of this world, no, not of this world at all:
She comes here on difficult visits
To this realm of deception enamoured of gratification
Like the moon reflected on the crest of a high wave:
Never certain, and assuredly mortal is her reign
Breaking apart in a hundred sprays of violent agony
After every roaring chequered ascension;
I too mistook pain for her
Pain, her distant shadow
Sorrow, her cousin who triumphs here
Deep in the woods I heard the song of the willow
And thought it was her song
It was the wind playing in the hollow reed
Emptied of all essence in ****** of suffering
Regal moss covers broken walls worn of centuries of abrading life
The deep night deceives of peace only to die in
A thousand pools of blood, every morning
When the harsh light of truth proclaims:
Listen, distances, resound in the hum of blowing winds,
This toll of reality:
Proclaim to the forlorn lover suffering in the thrall of the early night
Proclaim to the hopeful lover labouring in the field of life
Love is not of this world,
Love does not exist in this world
A moments’ exultation follows a lifetime of agony here
The vain, the ******, profferer of gratification
Is the sole winner here:
Go break the crest of the moon on the rising tide
Go break every longing heart!
Go warn the wanderer in the woods
Of the impending doom that looms over his quest

This is the time I cannot bear: this silent evening hour
As I shut windows and the balcony to prying nightsong:
In the trance of dim lights, I ride the incense plume
Across whispers and half-thoughts, slicing through
The canvasses of time: that unforgettable house of love
Perched by the lakes, circled by the stream and canal
Where worlds and time stopped to catch a glimpse
Many shades of grey silhouetted against stormy skies
Of swans gliding past fresh ripples across reeds
Drenched in a hundred hues of ethereal moonlight,
Hum of the wind surfing on the waters, drunken voices
Of assorted lovelorn: thrushes, finches, hidden warblers
Majestic storks and herons guarded the secret doors
To eternity, pitched right in the middle of the great city
By the home that housed love in precious embrace
O the cold of the winter that screened for damp corners
In our souls, through meditative shades lining the view,
The home that I squandered, I who love ruins and rubble

My girl don’t like
To read these line,
You see, she like me
To talk straight,
She like to see rain
Not jus’ cloud dance,
Me – am not
Impractical,
Though, cloud, are
Beautiful:
Rain, no rain;
But I need to write,
‘Coz I mus’
Anguish soothe
Love stir and heart
Overflow,
Emotion: I pour
My heart out
In these line –
Nobody read’em
But:
Beauty in echo –
You gotta see,
Yea, silence smile.

Accept in return, the eternal fragrance of the unfading flower of love.
It shines even in the moonless night of dark fear. It is what Hope
Chooses as her form when she reveals herself in this mortal world;
It is beauty and attracts to itself, more varied, many-hued beauty:
The butterflies gladly do its bidding, conveying the flutter of joy to
More forlorn twigs and leaves making them dance in the breeze
I don’t have to say I am happy, because love is joy and joy is self-
Evident, like fragrance that wafts across and fills vast empty spaces.

On the banks of the river of time, I walk alone,
On this journey of life; Sorrow is my staff;
It gives me strength. Long ago, on a misty day,
I spotted you, your beautiful eyes visible
Through that veil, looking at me, across the river.
The fragrance of the promise of love wafted
Through the air, across the banks and even
Touched my heart; But I was impetuous. Too
Uncut my heart, to recognize that soft nudge,
I walked on, on my ‘mission’ alone, myself.
Alas, faith you did not have, in the power
Of your own love; that fragrance of love did
Overpower me, moisten even my hard heart.
But I lost you. When the mists cleared, I found
You nowhere; vanished, like a shadow. With
The haunting music of a joy that was not to be
Playing on the waves and my staff for my
Company, alone I now walk, on the banks of
This Endless River of time, on this journey of
Life, to some destination unknown, unknowable.

Torrential downpour-
Dry, morose, barren buildings;
solitary tree.

You die every day, like this: you choose a life of slow
Death: through long nights, you burn away
Like the slowly fading lamp
Mourning some sombre memory,
Does it matter to know, you love me?

The mist dripping from the roof and the slow
Wind of the deep nights play to the dirge
Of a buried life, buried behind
Walls of smoke, unfathomed crypts,
Does it matter to know, you love me?

You sit for hours like this, silent like the moon
On an unwavering pond on a windless
Night, your eyes express so much,
But say nothing, like a valley of flowers
On a silent summer afternoon:

Does it matter to know, you love me?

The clock ticks away, little concerned of the absence of attention
The tender morning silence that was unaffected
By the sharp chirps of myriad little birds
Quivers a little as waves recede
In the wake of the first morning train

A soft smile acknowledges a nudge and nods for a kiss
Thoughts crowd the wakened mind like the returning
Waters of a receding tide; long does it take
For us to see: a highest joy is spread common
Before our eyes, yet unrecognized.

These moments of calm reflection,
Undisturbed peace,
Quiet acceptance of all that is to be done

Like the first golden rays of sun
Sweeping the face
Amid gentle summer morning breeze

Like the brief lightening of the
Blueness of the sky
On a grey winter London afternoon

Love gushing into the heart
Soothing, like a spring
Silently flowing away in a deep forest

Makes all this living worth it!

Lost to everything around me, rising in myself like vapour,
Listening to Purcell and reading
Neruda, thinking just about you, I could melt away like this,
Burned so sweetly by your love,

Speaking in many voices the day knocks at my closed doors:
But the hammer, the drill, the
Traffic noise, din around me, all seem to just play like drums
To the effervescent dance of my spirit

I will burn away like this, lighted in the fire of your love,
I will become one with the fragrance
Haunting the depths of existence; everything must become
Like mist to my ascending spirit as I

Burn away
Consumed by the fire of your love:
This will be the frankincense I light at the altar of love