That thin smile
Of the growing moon
Highlights the night sky
Even more
Than the full moon!

Between dim lights behind and
the streetlamps below, here,
shades of darkness where
my shadow mingles with
those of the chairs and the vase,
the lamp, and the cyclic rhythm
of the shadow of the fan
that slices moments to pieces,
to the music of  the gushing waves;
As you are busy illustrating slices
of life down there, you Señora,
stand illustrated, in these loving
shades of grey and black;
Now the wind travels far
beyond where the sky in her tunic
adorned of stars takes a dip
in the sea; These clouds, like me,
travel miles to weep by this same sea
that washes their native shores.

amidst the chaos
he gazes with stony eyes
stillness in movement

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
   15.01.2013
   Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

There are no stars in the city.
The street lights are bright like the bright lights illuminating the night as the steady stream of cars pass by.
Steady like dreams.
Dreams are the wishes cast from the deepest window of your soul left ajar,
The kind of wish one would never dream to admit upon a star.

Kids with guns
playing hostage outside
my kitchen window
trapping their sister in the chicken coop
behind the tenement house

Kids with funds
riding scholarships to Harvard
saying someday I’ll be the one
who pushes that little red button

Kids with needles
saying at the end of all this
I will wine and dine the devil
to persist my own mess
they go off so silently

we all turn to memory
and fade to the black flickering
insides of eyelids and run out film reels
the bottom of oceans and the bedrock of glaciers
the whole earth will hum for half a second
before the next bang hits

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,

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.