Stars sprinkle the inky night sky
Like crumbs of diamonds on a still, midnight ocean.
I am not afraid to be here, alone,
In the vastness of twilight.
For these few moments, time is as long
As the space between those stars,
And as empty, too.
The uncertainty that sunrise will follow.
As sure as the sun is destined to rise everyday,
When there's only darkness surrounding you,
Pierced slightly by the silvery glow of moonlight...
You're all alone and helpless.
You only have the vague hope that the sun will return.
And as I sit here now, star-gazer,
Faceless nomad on the damp grass;
I feel immortal, and I am afraid
That I will always be alone with the stars.

It’s day seven of NaPoWriMo;
I have to write a fresh poem.
But it is also Monday
and I have no topic,
no inspiration.
So this feeble
nonet will
have to
do.

oh but my love is not
a red, red rose.
i chose to replace
every tear on my face
with dying embers
of every memory
you said you would remember.

i trust
that you must know
that i am not a summer's day,
i will never play
at being warm
or temperate.

you can berate
me for not knowing
whether i am to be
or not to be,
but forgive me
if i don't play by the rules
and exit
the right stage
in a wrong scene.

it just means
that your music
is not the food of my love.
i will continue to shove
your thoughts
under a carpet of denial.

do not throw away
any vial you might find
in my room,
you sealed my doom
when you stomped down
that staircase,
tripping on the last time
we went for a walk.

my face doesn't run
smooth like the course of love,
you should have known
this truth.

my eyes are not rose petals,
my heart not a white dove,
my love
when they say hell is empty,
they haven't been inside
my mind -
here
you'll find horrors
of a sweet kind.

hundred mediocre verses,
ten worthy poems,
one golden idea.

Pain.
It's tempting.
Hidden in hearts
That hold onto memories.
Addiction.

Healing.
It's reluctant.
The mind fails
But it always continues.
Affliction.

Many days,
Poetry will not coax me out of my stupor
with the zest of a child
on the first day of summer.
Many days,
she will not make a sound
as she runs through a house
made of my words - no anklet tinkling against silvery feet,
no soft swishes of her dupatta across the sofa.
Many days,
Poetry would like to leave me alone
- in my home of rust and rubble,
in the middle of technicolour trouble,
me surrounded by blunt edges
of half-chipped words,
half-baked rhythm (never rhyme), half-sighed syllables onto blank paper.
Many days,
Poetry sees me accept complete defeat,
with art gathering dust
in the pages of notebooks that will never need filling,
with pens that will never be picked up, with ideas that will never be strung into a poem.

And yet here I am.

Picking up frayed string ends,
trying to tie them into a verse,
to leave it on the first shelf for her
to hopefully pick up.

It might be time for Poetry
to take 29 slowstumblingstuttering steps towards me,
this is me taking the first.

There's few spaces
in this world where
a sea of faces
doesn't scare me.
There's fewer spaces
in this world where
the faces turn up
to me and smile -
real, actual smiles -
and not the fake ones for shady profiles.

I love you guys.

I see Open Eyes -
filled with a thirst
to know more,
see more,
be more,
be better than before.
Eyes that do not blink
at the introduction of something new, views that don't flinch
when given something
to think about.

I see Open minds -
welcoming the creation
of a brand-new world,
one where art doesn't
have to shuffle along the sidelines
of a room,
where society can leave
 its guidelines at the door.
 I'm sure that we here,
today,
are the first to realize
that art creates a life
beyond the arbitrary
beating of hearts.

We're children
 of the first thinking generation,
 catching on to swinging anchors
from sinking ships
 to swim up and
 breathe in the first gulps of art.

There's something about
opening a bottle of colour -
knowing
that any way it spills
won't spell A-R-T at your hands.
let's call it the audacity of trying,
and
move on.

Same thing for a lump of clay -
lying in front of you,
waiting for creative violence,
but you know that your thoughts
don't have fingers,
your ideas don't have arms.
let's call it the pointlessness of wishing
and
move on.

Don't look at the camera -
the eager buttons waiting,
glinting in the hope of your touch
a lens waiting to be turned -
knowing that your eye can never
translate your sight into art,
your vision will never equal
an image.
let's call it the imperfection of waiting,
and
move on.

My last hope is a pen.
my fingers rush over it,
finding solace in known grooves
where my fingers have settled
time and again.
i call it the comfort of a story.

and this time,
*i stay

To tell you the truth about travel, I hate it.
Someone once told me
that travel is a compromise
for teleportation.
Everything
is basically a compromise
until higher tech arrives.
To tell you the truth about travel,
I really don't want to.
I want to let you hold my image
against long winding roads,
against the sad shrubbery
by the side of the highway,
and believe
that I'll be happy
when I'm not at home.
My loud voice and excited manner
may even trick into believing
that I adore the hustle bustle of a new place,
new people,
     new traffic,
           new smells,
                sights,
                      sounds.
But to tell you the truth, I really hate travelling.

Save me from suffering the pains
of packing a bag
with the most essential items
designed to make you look like
a Prudent Traveller™ - I want to carry
only my fatigue
and annoyance
at being asked to move out.
(Some Hajmola, perhaps - the green and purple flavours)

I am not seduced by lines on a map
telling me where to go,
and how to get there,
I swear.

I would rather have
someone trace the edges
of imaginary continents
across my mind
by virtue of their words.

Cartographers aren't redundant to the world,
perhaps - but have you ever had
a laid back holiday with
only
*i n t e r m i t t e n t naps?

Truly my pleasure,

                             Like the spring sun on my face,

Writing with you all. –