Unruly hair
Unblemished skin
Untouched by the world
Bathed in innocence
The morning dew is her companion,
The flowers are her confidants...
She uses the sky as her canvass
To carve shapes with a sprig of grass...

Brilliant eyes
Beautiful lips
Blossoming youth
Learning, feeling, sensing.
The rising moon is her guide,
The setting sun is her secret-keeper...
As she reaches for his hand,
In a starlight symphony as fireflies strike a band...

Withered limbs
Weathered face
Wounded heart
Awaiting autumn...
The darkest night brings hope,
But every dawn brings fear of another lonely dusk...
As she stares at the garden, her youth's spirit-
And makes wishes of eyelashes longing for another visit.

n  u  m  b. . .


My      
                                w   a   l   l   s
                                a                  l
          ­                      l     cage      l
                                l                   a
                                s   l    l   a   w

                                                              ­                                                                 ­                                                 solitary

      ­                                                                 ­                     obdurate  C
                                                                ­                                          S       Y
                                                         ­                                              E     C
                                                               ­                                            L

circadian,
inexorable. Crimson orbs see every-

thing. Flaccid thoughts lay helpless

                                                               ­      on my bed.

                                                           ­                                                                 ­     The
lovely
                                                                ­                                                                 lull
                                                                ­                                                                 ­of
blinking

f fl fli flic flick flicke flicker

                                                            f  ­l  i  c  k  e  r  s       f  o  r  e  v  e  r.

Waiting for him,
Was like a,
Mindless abyss.
I thought,
This time I should give it a shot.
Add plus venture,
Into a realm full with pleasures of flesh.
Rather waiting to lie  in sepulcher.

Thence came the wooers,
On horses, chariots, planes and cars,
Courted me to the foreign lands of brand new emotions.
Greasy, exotic, curious  and even obscure ,
To satiate my hunger,
They poured,
And I sinfully devoured.

Ooooh!
A whip here.
Ouuch!
A tickle there.
Aahhhhh!!
The sheer unfolding of their classy work.

Every night lusciously they came,
Wrapped me in an awe of satire, skepticism and imagination,
Not to say of the bruises they gave,
Tears I shed of Anger,Pain ,Love and Hate.

Still I  followed them blindly and agape,
Because a new world in me was taking shape.
Of Shakespeare, Freud, Tolstoy, Eliot, Byron, Wordsworth and my then fav,
the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
A medley  of fantasy, fact-fiction, comedy, realism and romance.
Oh!
What not I chanced upon.
All emphasizing emotion, imagination, scientific and natural thought.


There was no stopping of these gnawing hunger pangs,
None lasted more than a one night stand.
The foolish me, unaware, cascaded in the fatal encounters,
Not knowing the pangs are of soul to reach the supreme ******.

Thence came a Seer
The Prophet,
The Wanderer,
The Forerunner,
It was as if he can rip me with his thoughts,
And see my soul through that tear…..

I distinctly remember that divine night,
The moment I held him in my desirous hands,
I was no more in dual fight.
Things started falling into place,
Was no more in that abysmal space.
Still I would say,
It’s a current phase.
This soon would also evade.
New Lover ,
For every new night…

To cut a long story short,
Just so,
Because of your low attention span,
The lover, the poet , the wooer
Was the great
Khalil Gibran.

I
duck into tree light
while this red earth field,
seven years ripe,
germinates small answers
to questions hard planted.

You,
Shroud in silence,
drink the silver night air
while the elusive slips
silently by.

We
stand sky-high
weaving through
grain threshed
wind swept fields.

Suddenly,
awakened by the capacious star's
rising yellow ardor,
verdant implants of dewy life
lift skyward and scatter untrodden roots.

His feet* – they walked upon the waters of untarnished truth,

His knees – kneeled to no man for He was a King amongst mortal men,

His legs – always journeyed to the valley overflowing with warm wishes,

His body – was the embodiment of all that is rich and wholesome,

His arms – embraced both me, you, him and her, young, old, black or white,

His fingers – as smooth and supple as the skies before summer’s soft rains,

His neck – lifted high not in pride or anger, only tilted upwards towards the Beloved,

His lips – spoke yesterday, to me today and to you tomorrow, to all everywhere,

His nose – inhaled the scent of newly born flowers on the eve of Spring of yesteryear,

His eyes – saw the miracle of life, and sleeping death held no fear or dominion,

His hair – every strand curled to form a heavenly glowing crown upon His head,

His message – it will live and sing longer than the executioner’s silent song,

His love – is the lyric of this life, it is life everlasting and in it lives our Lord.