I have you in rein
Coz with superior brain
I tamed the wild in you,
Wolves transformed to pet
No more from me you get
What’s your due!
Now a canine on the street
With no way to retreat
No hope for you in sight,
You caused me plight
By barking with might
Throughout the night!
So it will be your fate
It’s what you’ll get
You they’ll hound,
For you it looms
Cramped stinking rooms
Of a mortuary called dog pound!

Slowly in a haze
I rise from me
Float a little up
And there below
I lie cold and white
In the thick of silence
Broken by wails
Of the ones who till now
I held so dear
Loved, hurt, cajoled
Living through a dream
That this bond would not end
But now a different me
Not seen not heard
But still lingering around
Not able to tear off
The umbilical cord of Maya
Hoping it another nightmare
Of the end!
When they set the corpse on fire
And the ashes fly away in the wind
I let go
All that’s below
To climb the rainbow!

You left me a piece of note
Many seasons ago
I moved away I forgot
It is stuck in my heart though!
When I open the window
It comes with the light
With the winds the words blow
Comes back in the dream of midnight
I have forgotten the words though!
It remains with me a musical note
The tunes of which still flow
I moved away I forgot
It is stuck in my heart though!

He moved it across but the comb slipped
Little he could do
A cruel hand had them all clipped
Leaving a strand or two!
He breathed a deep sigh
Mercilessly the times fly
Leaving him a knave
To have once boasted of his black wave!
It’s always destined by fate
For the bushy to turn to arid plate
To himself he gave a painful smile
Why not take it as a new style?

In the stillness around
I can hear the sound
Of life being born once more
A new day knocking on my door.
A day anything can happen
Some smooth some uneven
Whatever it would be
I want you to be happy!

The road bends in a serpentine whim
It’s evening and I must scurry home,
Before the chill freezes my bone
And my last words echo in the trunk hollows.
She must be wrapping herself for warmth
She must be stoking the fire a little more
She must be closing the windows
But she mustn’t for god’s sake shut the door.
The road is throwing up endless bends
It’s night and I’m frozen to the bone
The trunk hollows are eager to be filled
No way now I can reach home.
She is now warm beneath her blanket
She now hears the fire’s crackling roar
She has closed the window
But she mustn’t for god’s sake shut the door.

By now you know
Things don’t go
As you like them to,
The plans you make
Do easily break
Little you can do.
Your morn’s hopes
With the day elopes
Aspirations sink,
Your rosiest thought
Turns to naught
Loses the pink.
The patch of blue
Without a clue
Is painted gray,
The spot of sunlight
Goes out of sight
Before you make hay.
Sudden are the slips
Words from your lips
You don’t mean to,
You pick up a row
Turn a friend foe
Little you can do.

Wrenched from the depth of the blue
Where it flapped its wings
In the waves’ symphony,
A turtle landed in my stomach.
It swims in my digestive tide
And would soon reach the red sea!
A fantastic journey
Just to feed my greedy fantasy.

‘You seemed to love her deeply’
I told my uncle.
It was raining dense
As I held him back,
The evening was not one to go out.
‘Deeply enough no doubt’
His voice echoed in gloom.
‘But she wasn’t your type,
she was flirtatious,
she had many like you’.
‘Still I loved her deep,
loved her mad,
loved her till and after
she broke my heart’.
I saw a glint in his eyes.
‘Forty years and she still hurts,
batters my self respect,
taunts my defeats’.
‘But you got yourself a steady partner,
not flirtatious, never leaving your side’.
‘True but she did the damage,
she left me to seek her in all women’.
Outside the rain stopped
And the sky begot a half moon.
He still loves her, I pondered,
Her fossil he bears
All these forty years,
But had he got her,
Could he carry the cross of love so far?

Today I made love with a goddess
Before a god peering down from the wall
And I can't say his face was all happiness
God, he was the lone man that saw it all!
God was unhappy that I had him tamed
Passionately unclothed but never ashamed
But when he created he could never measure
How much it means the carnal pleasure!
My act was so unkind, on his senses a tax
To be a mute witness to the steaming ******
While we lay there worn out and spent
He found little solace in his own testament!
Or did he feel sad and woefully dismal
Passively peering down from the wall?

The woman I romanticize.
Her abode is not in my mind
She has no place in my heart
Her face is not in my eyes
Her frame is not in my dream.
Who is she then?
Where I found her?
When I met her?
Where is she?
You know it as do I.
She isn’t someplace
She isn’t someone
She isn’t part
She isn’t full
She isn’t love
She isn’t passion
She isn’t dead
She isn’t alive
She’s one I made
In my bid to survive!

We know each other the two of us
I was in a hurry in a time of rush
He was happy his eyes joy-lit
"Spare a little time, for one biscuit".
Just then came the red office bus
I was annoyed, I was in a rush
A moment's hesitation and I boarded it
Glanced at him and our eyes did meet.
Something I saw moistened his eyes
A surprise it was he couldn't disguise
He couldn't believe, the thing of the street,
that I would leave him without biscuit.
It found me again back on the street
Someone was needed to buy him a biscuit
Other things could wait, such as office
Not for the world could I give it a miss.

Where are you now the magpie-robin?
The fleeting moment I saw you
Lies imprisoned with me
Though I never met you again!
Where are you now the magpie-robin?
I'm drunk with your innocent eyes,
Your songs of the sweetest melodies,
Your smell of the earthen love!
Where are you now the magpie-robin?
I hope having found a place to roost,
You've gone back to the greenest garden
Leaving me your whiff in my heart!

A moment of love
Turned me beggar and blind
I made my bed on moon dust
Everything else I left behind.
Love just once
Left me in a trance
I put my heart on stake
Living became loving without break.

Waking up with the first sunrise
Dreams roll on, land on my eyes
I stay alive coz without them
I would've long given up the game.
The day surely has enough in store
More than just a daily routine chore
It's up to me to go get them
If I fail there's none else to blame.
You may ask, 'What's there in a day,
other than work and a little play? '
Surely you're joking there's a lot more to it,
Enough to give you a jolt miss your heartbeat.
Rabbit out of hat, the day's magic show
Of pearly white rains and the cutest rainbow
The puddle on the street that trapped the sky in it
The fragrance of flowers and wind's soothing treat.
Surprises galore, of beauties no dearth
All for our joy, happiness and mirth
They're the dreams that roll on my eyes
Each day of living is a magical surprise!

We never wrote here your name
Lost ourselves in the rush
Because maybe we remained the same
Love never changed us.
We never looked deep enough
Got stuck on your face
Because maybe your flirtatious laugh
We construed as happiness.
We never really got to your heart
Captivating was your lip
Because maybe we never made a start
The surface was all we could keep.
There was so much that we never did
Busy as we were in the game
Because maybe we didn't want to read
And write in our heart your name.

Days are busy, so are the nights
with endless struggles, clashes and fights
time ticks away, quietly flows the tide
pining for love and one joyous ride.

Days are busy, so are the nights
a little pause would have taken
happiness to great heights.

Two walks at the park
Leisure strolls on her ground
Watching squirrels on tree bark
Before I turn homebound.
Today while passing along
On them my eyes fell
One in a bush alone
A little away another squirrel.
I wondered in my funny caprice
If they have ever had a chance
To exchange warmth and good wish
Or they haven’t met even once.
A little more daring in my whim
I thought the distance for them too far
So she roamed alone dreaming of him
And he unknowing forever seeks her.

Not a thought that me haunts,
A smell,
That in fiery times me lends
Respite from hell.
It’s no fragrance wafted in air
No sweet scent,
It I feel right there
As healer of torment.
I smelled it first
From my time in her cavern
It was to begin my thirst
For the love of a woman.

I am borrowing from you everyday
I am over head and ears in debt
Is there no way I can repay
Or I leave you with an empty slate!
O there is so much I can do
Cheer a heart bring a smile or two
Reach out to where I could
To do this world a little good!

They go around rag-clothed filthy
Born in the gutter trampled in dirt
No expectations no tomorrow
A population of the living dead!
There are more of them on this soil
Than the ones on whose mercy they live
Yet they're aliens to their own kin
Alike only in their human form!
Still you ask me to believe in god
Believe that justice reigns in his abode
Believe in an order amidst all the mess
Believe that everything happens by god's grace!

The dream hangs heavy in the air,
Heavier still is the burden on his back,
The child trudges along the dusty road
His mother in tow –
The sun rises and sets on him
A child, a boy, a man
The burden shifting between the back and the heart!
They try desperately to reach out to light,
Before the darkness wears them out.

Hope has no merciful face.
It bludgeons us harder
Than despair
To which it turns
When the result spurns
Our expectations!
Yet ironically
Most adored is hope,
A sauce for the sufferer
A spice to spruce up
The leftover
From the last despair,
Never really tidying
The ashes of shattered dreams
But staying back
Till our last breath
Goading us to hold onto it!

Inside us lurks the vice
Seeking new ways
Finding new device,
To justify its need
And fallacy of virtue
It spreads like ****
Sounds like true!
We make a deal
With the invasive vice
Of our free will
We heed its advice.
Vice has a say
For whatever we strive
We need its easy way
We need it to survive.
Vice supple and smooth
Builds with us rapport
Virtue looks uncouth
Scary enough to abhor!

While the raging fire burns down the earth
I cocoon myself beside an imaginary hearth
Dreaming of rains to douse the fire
‘It won’t be there’, my hopes aspire!
While the tides sweep lives away
I imagine I can forever stay
Hidden from the tongues in lashing motion
Beneath a placid and protective ocean!
While the storm roars and the gale hisses
I pray for God’s grace and good wishes
To save me come what season
‘I must live whatever the reason’!
Living thus in an imaginary land
Building castle in the drifting sand
I turn a ***** selfish and mean
A hollow nothing beyond bone and skin!

On a dead dull night
When the moon goes hiding
And the barn owl hoots for its love
The fireflies romance the darkness.
The glowing beads dance to celebrate
The nights of long past buried for good
With the treasures of lost happiness,
Wind sings a dirge for transience.

In the dark labyrinth penetrates no light
Sight like all else is out of sight
There’s no virtue no wrong or right
Nothing but evil and evil shines bright!
It’s the breeding ground for the darkest of thoughts
Putrefied stinking around it darkness clots
Where is such place where can we find?
It’s lying within us, it’s our mind!

Pelican
Slurps on
What its
Belly can
Put stay
Whole day
In the sun
On the run
Just wish
Big fish
One stuff
Big enough
It can pick
With its beak
That can hold
Manifold
Bigger than
Its belly can
Wonderful Pelican

When at my lowest
I hum a tune
It sends my spirit to crest
I’m once again immune.
Music
Does the trick
Like magic!
It never pales
Never fails.

The dark wood resists the light of progress
Lives there for thousands years an introvert race
Here they are born here lie their sepulcher
A few withdrawn people with a fossil culture!
Needs they have little, a little bit of food
All that they want they get in the wood
What lies beyond they don’t need to find
These folks of a tribe with plain thinking mind!

Those civilized outside thought it otherwise
The poor tribe suffers is what they surmise
‘Rare as they are they are really prized
Let’s groom them to become civilized’!
So long happily away from a farce called mainstream
This intrusion broke them, shattered their dream
Why turn them out and not be left alone?
The question is unresolved the battle goes on!

A short sweet rain
Washed clean the sky
In the emerging moon's lust
Glowed the splendent dust.
The earth begged for a drop
Said the soil "it was my call"
Their joy would not stop
The leaves drank them all.
The rain was without might
Feeble its spell was brief
Yet it revived a summer night
As life's succour and relief.

We are living in war times
You can't see the blood though
The air is thick with it.
We are right, we are better
We stand for all that is good
We are in no mood to listen
Tolerance is the last thing in our mind.
People say there's so little war
There's so little bloodshed.
The war now is of terrifying silence
More ominous, more destroying
Cutting through love, endurance
Eliminating relationship, humanity-
Perpetrating a bloodless coup
Where blood is not seen, agonies aren't heard!

We are amidst war each against the other,
Silent, bloodless but more macabre!

You might as well say
if a mail could aver
you needn’t have come her way
you needn’t have come this far,
to knock on her door
dying to tell her
how much you adore
how without her
even the stars don’t blink
happiness goes afar
rose is no more pink
all beauties macabre,
if a text could ever do it
you needn’t have traveled far
to drown in her your heartbeat
and feel yourself richer.

Amid the dense foliage
You’re caught in my lens
Your eyes that me amaze
In them the innocence!
My lens seek not the plumage
Nor their colors in the light
Your eyes that me amaze
Their goodness burning bright!
As they quietly close in
My hungrily probing lens
To shoot you spotless clean
With a laborious patience,
Amid the dense foliage
My senses taut and tense
It’s your eyes that me amaze
Holding a sparkling innocence!

The sparkle in her eyes
Time-trampled dies
Her visions fade.
Ceases all surprise
She needs no disguise
She is heaven made!
Devoid of youthful width
Her beauty has reached zenith
The skin though is pale.
Through her stressed breath
Breaking all myth
She is a jewel!
She has taken on her stride
The rough yet joyous ride
Bearing no malice.
She doesn't need to hide
The life's other side
She's in perfect bliss!

You came
At the 5 o’clock dream
Sat with me for sometime
Touched once with your lips
Left a wet imprint
It was still there when I woke up!
I asked, “Can’t we meet once more,
Just once? ”
You moved your head
A smile passed your face,
I couldn’t decipher,
“I’m always there,
And you always think of me,
Always, not just once”.
My eyes were wet
When the world woke me up
From the 5 o’clock dream!

There are three horses pulling your life
Attitude, want, and of course your wife
The first pulls you through life's high and low
The second pulls you to where monies flow
But it's the third that pulls you the strongest
The other two horses must run at her behest!

Her wings not willing to fly
Her heart heavy
She gave it another try
It was her baby.
She looked at the frosty surround
Herself covered with snow flake
As in groups they flew homebound
To leave a deadly silence on the lake.
She was praying for one flutter
To bring alive the wings of her baby
So it could soar far away from winter
And with its mother could be.
She held it close to her breast
Uttered a shrill soulful cry
Then from the graveyard of nest
She launched herself into the sky.
The chick gave a painful wail
Its eyes brimming with dark cloud
Downy flakes from up ceaselessly fell
Weaving on the baby a shroud.

You could not ask for,
And I dared not offer you,
the small inglorious flower of cactus.
Instead I brought you tulips and roses,
to fill our lives with transient happiness.
In the darkness we hid our face.
Thus passed years,
Times we shed silent tears,
For having not dared the most precious -
A small inglorious flower of cactus!

After playing lover to her
He left her for another woman
She was left with the wasted years
Couldn’t try another man.

The moment her lips open
I start talking nonsense
I know how the women
Can’t bear men’s silence.
Her face in anger white
Mind benumbed of sense
She would sorely miss the fight
If I stubbornly hold patience.
I know what she craves for
Her eyes so clearly foretell
Something I deeply abhor
Pairing up with her in quarrel.
But she won’t bear with silence
Wants the heat to be on
If I keep quiet as defense
She can't fight it alone.

One last time I drive past the pinewood
On the fogged road washed with rain
My eyes misted up in melancholic brood
If here I would ever come again.
The winds passing through pine chains
Bid me a whispered farewell
Sulk in silence the clouded mountains
In parting grief somber and pale.
In time afar on a forlorn night
If my dreams soar on wings
Bathed in milky moonlight
They would fly to Darjeeling.

Veiled in the night’s mistiness
Her rivers flow wispy white
The earth shines in her grace
When the moon comes at midnight.
Our years have drifted out of sight
I have gone out of your mind
If we ever meet in the moonlight
If we ever once again find
Each other as strangers on the way
Unfamiliar souls burning with desires
To each other we would say
Let’s rebuild the lost years
Once more in our hearts aspire
A love of youthful spright
Turn back cinders into fire
Burn with the moon at midnight.

If I could go back
32 summers
to the hallowed soil
love was to be grown,
I would write there
An epitaph
“love died here
unknown”

From the honks of cars and smell of fumes
I slip into a small green patch
with birds and their wafting plumes,
moments I would die to catch!
A calm that filtered the noise
let me listen to the rustling leaves,
the birds' chirping and such joys,
in their briefness the heart grieves!
As they frolic and in air dance,
I softly trudge as an alien,
one who is there perchance,
and can't for long remain!

I waited for the poetry to come to my life.
Meanwhile the spring came and went
Flowers blossomed and wilted
Fragrance lingered and melted in air
Autumn brought a golden azure sky
Winter came from faraway land.
They all tried to stir my soul.
Poetry was all along there in my life!

Under a dull gray sky
I suddenly felt happy.
It was a winter morn,
There was little to be happy about.
The trees were shedding leaves,
All around deprivations groaned,
Tears of agonies wailed,
Yet something in me swelled!
In the famished landscape,
I discovered an escape,
The drowning found a tip of rope,
Inside me glowed a beacon of hope!

When the prospect of food is slim
Hunger is no more a dream
No more the philosopher’s pastime
Or a poet’s subject for rhyme.
And they only know hunger
That starves for lack of food
With empty bowels suffer
A hunger raw and rude.
We must’ve seen them
Emaciated half-dead from famine
We must have seen them
The stray dogs of our city
Chance alive by scraps of pity,
But we, assured of the next meal,
Can’t ever feel
The pangs of hunger
With no food to heal.

Come for a little sum
I’ll read you your palm
Lend me your hand
I’ll read the rivers of fate
Tell you where you stand
What’s the future’s state!
Know from me life’s each twist and bend
Like your chance of going farther with her
How things will turn out in the end
They’re all designed by your star.
Grab this one, this golden chance
I’ll tell you what you’re dying to know
Marriage, children, fortune, finance
Know them all from me blow by blow.
The engraved strands on your palm
Hold hidden the troubles of your life
To which I offer remedial balm
For children gone astray, unfaithful wife!
I can read your lifespan and Saturn’s effect
Jupiter’s blessings and planets’ impact
Misfortunes on your way I can deflect
To make your future absolutely intact!

Desire to live, love and dream
Desire to desire more
Desire is the flirtiest whim
It's an ever open door.
Desire to touch you once
Desire to break into a dance
Desire to hold your hand
Desire to build on sand!
It's an ever open door
You desire and desire more!