When I was traveling in the train,
With no strain on my brain,
Only peeping through the window,
To have a look of nature.

The flying birds, the grazing cows,
The race of trees in opposite direction,
The green green fields, the great mountains,
Lovely ponds and walking rivers.

The muddy huts and the children playing,
That was all that I could see,
My soul went somewhere else,
And I was thinking, what is life?

The gift of God, or the curse of devil,
Life is to enjoy or to suffer,
Many answers floated in my mind,
But the journey finished with answers incomplete.

Thereafter, I bombarded this question,
to each and every person I met.
A philosopher told, Life is sorrow,
A Scientist told, it’s an invention.

It’s a game answered the player.
No, it is a play, told the actor.
I went to a sage to get the answer,
Devotion is life, I was told.

Life is an ambition and dream,
Answered rich and cultured youth,
But the other youth not agreed,
Because he believes, it’s struggle.

Life is a chance, said the gambler,
No, its dance of happiness and pain,
Answered the classical dancer,
No, Life is Renovation, told the Archeologist.

Life is knowledge, said the teacher.
Life is thought, said the thinker.
“Life is a matter of self realization”,
It cannot be defined, defined the absent minded professor.

I met a roadside preacher,
That’s poor little creature,
Totally filled with confusion,
Said, ‘Life is an illusion’.

I asked this question to the driver,
Who picks me daily for the school?
He said, Life is like a bus,
Running on the roads of time.

So many answers, all were right,
But all were somewhat incomplete.
So it was difficult to compile,
And get the answer as a whole.

I keep on thinking all the time,
Deriving the answers as solving equations.
At last, I concluded as a whole,
That Life is Hope and Hope is Life.

She hugs the life out of me,
Not in that second of passion
Before the moment of death
When an animal is chased
And grasped in lioness embrace.

She kisses the life out of me,
Not with mid-day sun lips
Which smoulder dangerously
Like a dampened forest fire
Lying in wait for that first shallow breath.

She loves the life out of me
Not with the garment of childlike innocence
Lasciviously cast aside by a woman in earnest.

And with all the emotion of someone
Glancing up at the station clock
Then turning a magazine page
On a deserted railway platform,
She scares the life out of me
When she says quite simply,
It is time for me to go.

A virus lives quietly
Until one day it appears
As suddenly as a madman
Raging in the desert
In quest of methamphetamine.
Or an outlaw on *****,
Shooting up streets
And striking people down.
It has no origin we can see,
No place that it calls home,
But ravages civilizations
And adopts their clothing,
Wears their armour
And steals their ships,
Like the Sea Peoples
Of ancient times.
Feared even by god-like Pharaohs,
The kings of Knossos and
The Mycenaean warlords.
It attacks the very essence
Of its victims, becoming like them.
Walking through their streets,
Dancing as they do and
Welcomed into their houses—
Hiding in plain sight.
It drifts down as they sleep,
And bonds with their cells at night.

I heard about the sloop John B.
When I was fourteen.
I had learned to sail in a storm
And the story gave me daring,
Although I had lost control,
Tightening the sail
Instead of letting it out
In a sudden gale.
And just in time, a boat passed
With a man who shouted,
“Loosen the main sheet!”
As the boat heeled to starboard,
And I nearly capsized.
But discovered a fair wind
And the ease of a beam reach.
So my first time was the worst,
And best…
But adrenaline fueled desire,
To do this again and again!