If it were I, a hunkered mass
Of unkempt hair and tangled rags,
Lain prone beneath the underpass,
Enclaved in chattel bulked-out bags,

If it were I, alone, afraid,
Tight-bitten lips in silent prayer,
And listless eyes, all hope decayed,
And slumped, oppressed, done by despair,

And if you cast my shadowed shape,
Would you come seek my name?
Or look as I for quick escape,
And thence to bear my shame.

Playing with words
Flirting with thoughts
Hiding behind metaphors
Seeking an expression
Prancing in the past
Down memory lanes
Reliving the joys
Relieving the pains
Painting a future
Winking at the possible
Gazing at the probable
Sighing at the impossible
Poet is at work
Creating a uni-verse.

I want to dance until
my feet go sore
my anklets break free
and I faint on the floor.

I want to sing until
I lose all my senses
my lungs tear apart
and my larynx comes to
a screeching halt.

I want to laugh until
tears pour out my eyes
the darkness around me
gets dissolved in my
laughter's floodlights
and all the existing walls
shatter and break
by the sound of my guffaw.

I want to be like that
singing dancing laughing, mad woman
whom we like to stop and watch,
shake our heads in disapproval
and then secretly think –

'I wish I could be crazy like her!'

She would
borrow
the words from
whispering winds

She would steal
the tunes from
singing birds
and would
create
a world of
songs around her

Indifferent to
the shackles of time,
unaffected by
the fetters of fate,
she would sing
many songs

Songs of hope
songs of love
songs of joy
songs of freedom
songs of songs

Today

I saw
her wandering free,
free from fetters
shackles and all...

I saw
her singing along
with those birds
from whom she used to
steal her tunes,
and kissing the winds
that used to
lend her their words...

And I heard
the sky whisper
to the earth:
'She has
enchanted
her dreams
into life!'

The fiery wind burns our skin
this simmering summer noon
but our resolve is not paper thin.

the river is all ours
I tell her
and she whispers love notes.

When we retreat under the banyan
she scans the grey for clouds
and I her eyes for a mystic hint.

how lovely it would be
if it rains now
she says.

it would
I swear by the river.

We walk away
dreaming good crop
swaying in the river wind.