Impulses| Broken

Impulses| Broken

Goal

My poems,

Fresh monsoon rain,

Original in a way clouds are,

Elementally ancient, visually immediate

Forgetfulness of a Sad Evening*

Yesterday, when evening left my garden

It left behind a slab of light lying in a corner

Melting quietly

I picked it up, opened my courtyard door

Walked to the wall where the pram was parked idly

I dropped it softly into the seat and pushed from behind

We went out for a stroll under the moon and the dark green canopies

Fireflies followed us all the night

Pointing yellow LED beams over the bushes and grooves

A siren kept blaring in the background

Till the east caught fire

Then they spotted me near the brook

In a clearing with my pram

And my tears that didn't deter them to call a shrink

Why I went out with a pram,

How can I explain it to those who knew nothing of the evenings?

The evenings that forget to collect their incandescent lumps

While packing their tents for the day

It was a sad evening yesterday!

*This poem got first published here and then I shared it with Poetry Foundation; they don't accept any poem that is published in any form beforehand so by their rules it had to get rejected. And it got rejected but I don't know if it is due to the aforementioned reason or it is because the poem is simply not good enough...anyway, Poetry Foundation has pretty high standards so I would not be surprised if it was the second reason though I am no good judge of my own work hence any comments/ opinion are welcome.

Incomplete Impulse*

I covered many miles more than I could count

In the dark, in the rain, with the gale and against

On foot, on my horse with or without a mount

Combing western prairies in the search of a saint

I met a fellow Indian, old man, wise eyes

He gave me a pot to smoke and find:

How does time loop when the spirit flies

How birth is nothing but a record-rewind

*It will someday become a complete poem, now it is just a fragment of an interrupted impulse.

Planet Earth on My Mind

Planet Earth on My Mind

Relativity

A metal net
Wraps the entire universe
But a caged Bulbul



Copyright: Robert Genn

Violent Time

An escalating roar
Hidden below the glacial silence
In the heart of a summit

 

 

 

Copyright: Robert Genn

The Long Winter 

An ancient totem jury
Deliberating without passing judgement
On the cedar story gone awry

I just stumbled upon an old post by Robert Genn, 'Titles of Paintings' and found a Haiku hidden in the titles suggested by the fellow artist readers of this post along side his painting 'The Long Winter'. I requested Robert and he has been kind enough to allow me use his painting here in my post but you can better follow this link to his post and enjoy the Haiku moment yourself, your own private Haiku moment: http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/painting-title.asp

Kaal-Chakra: Loops of Entropy

A proud wall
Standing tall amid the ruins
Painted over a hundred seasons of rain
The wall of hundred frescoes
That together with fellow walls
Used to be the boundary of his home
A childhood home
Of which remains nothing
But the gravestone with flaky murals
Where he stands searching
Those long forgotten images
That a child once teased out of the stains
A damn fast stain
Defying attempts to wash off
A sky scrapper with a hundred flats
Resting on a design paper
Ready to replace the grave
The fate he sealed with an old sale deed
A noble deed
After a careful deliberation
Weighing hundreds against hundreds
The hundred pieces of art or
A space for hundred families
Pocketing many hundreds along the way
A long way
It will take to know the gains
A visit after another hundred seasons
To meet the same sky scrapper
But finding an eerie deja-vu instead:
A hundred better frescoes grinning from
A proud wall...(loop!)

It was a Zen moment, I was sad while thinking about my chilhood home that is falling apart, what all memories still dwell there, will it be good to let it go on like this, will it be good to sell, or shall I rebuild it and so on. Then I decided to write a couple of lines and after those two line, all lines appeared on their own without my active control; then I read the poem to know if felt all right and what I found was a revelation, a Buddha moment: what I was sad about, what I had come with and what I would take with me...so I decided not to revise it or correct anything, even the repetions of the same words.

Drifting Along

Drifting Along

Sweet Torment

A dripping tap, somewhere;

Jealous sleep finds ways to torment!

Waiting just for you…

I: An Incorrigible Gambler

Fireflies on a moonless night;

Folks at Jantar Mantar may mean nothing but

Let’s bet on the contrast, still!

A Haiku by Basho (1644-1694)*

In the cicada's cry

No sign can foretell

How soon it must die.

* I just copied this one from Basho who is the real master. I really love the depth; more you think about these three lines, more layers of fundamental truth are revealed.

The Last Joker: A Story

A Joker with a lantern is as much a joker as the one without it

But is the same true for a joker without a ball on his nose?

Consider a joker with no make-up on the face,

No funny dress, no pointy boots, no long hat.

I saw one; it was a dead serious face

But for a glint in those expressive eyes

A signal that relayed a shared sense of mischief

A cue for the observant children across the circus tent

To fill their lungs with fresh air ready to blow the canopy

With a blast of synchronized laughter

But it was no tent circus when I saw him this morning

It was a newspaper and his story it tracked.

Still a joker that he was, what a last joke he cracked!

He hung himself from a ceiling fan and the roof came crashing down

Paparazzi, full metal, impregnated editors who went into labor, anon!

The next day on the streets were crawling countless versions of ‘The murder of a clown’

As the clamor grew, the mayor had to do something, so he did:

He awarded his brother-in-law a contract

To build on public expenditure a memorial for ‘the last joker of the town’

In the lazy afternoon hours, the rains comes pouring down

I am drifting and drowning and grappling with something profound

Marking the contours of the story along the burnishing river of time

How an era faded, tastes somersaulted and the crowd vanished

Taking circus tent with them, leaving some luckless bellies exposed

How that fat belly survived and to keep the comic alive what not he tried

How contexts eroded from the consciousness and jokes died

How those serendipitous moments of laughter got rarer

And how after winning those moments the joker cried

He was a hard fellow but he went on living too long

He died long before the ethereal scythe could come along

But he kept carting his wares around the town to sell

Until all his longings and belongings gradually but decisively fell

Then one day feeling too light, he tried one of his ‘Hangman Tricks’

A funny man he was, he did it, probably, just for kicks

I can only propose a theory: why he did what he did

But a more disturbing question the rubble from the fallen roof hid

A rock on the sea shore is a rock but what about all the sand?

Is it still a rock but for us who see it only a trifle grain?

A Joker with a lantern is as much a joker as the one without it

But is the same true for a joker hanging from a ceiling fan?

Colors of Hate & Love

Colors of Hate & Love: 

Purple Drought

When the purple umbrella flew from her hand,

I knew she loves to get drenched in the rain,

And I jumped over a puddle with glee.

What a frog can do when a princes doesn't see!

But what is to be seen in the ugliness of a frog...

I kept mulling, clouds kept drifting away.

A cyclist sped to retrieve purple dove;

She thanked and smiled and the sun came out.

Meteorologists since then declared it a drought!

Taking The Lake Side Road

He works sometimes for long hours in office.

Then rambles back home that’s not far away.

After-rain hours of a late summer evening

A movie was played in the dark open space.

With Swamp-Pool Philharmonic’s background score,

Crickets et al. playing to the beat,

The beat of beating a body with a mallet

Staccato of shrieks: a shrill human note

Silence of a dead, momentary then gone

A frenzy of voices briskly receding

A rustle of grass towards the lake

A splash in water and a burp of gas

 A way of the bog saying bon appetite

The dark was enough for the cast to hide faces

And everyone dispersed as if the show ended

The title was saved for the end of the show

Broadcasted as an afterthought in collective consciousness:

SHARED SOLITUDE!

In his terrace garden, enjoying morning tea with his wife

He picks the local morning newspaper

‘Front story is horrifying! Oh god!’

‘What’s it? Read it, won’t you? Or summarize?’

‘A crazy man after an altercation with his wife

Went out to burst the head of a sixteen year old,

A girl in neighborhood who needed to be saved

That’s what he says and believes that he did;

Saved a pretty angel from turning into a hag

That his wife was, that they all become one day,

He says, he is the savior!

His wife says he is nuts, didn’t do it,

He is simply upset, when he is, he makes things up.

Upset that he saw the girl fished out of the lake,

And a Jack the Ripper lurks somewhere in the dark, freely,

But police took an honest man who has not eaten food since last night.

She requests news men if they can help her,
Smuggle to her husband some oat cookies.

The crime has happen sometime around yesterday evening

Or so police surmises from the post mortem report.

That’s when the road adjacent to the lake is quite busy.

But policy has found no witness but a man

Claiming to save the girl in his own weird way.’

‘The man is really a devil, hates his wife so much

That hurting her is not enough a revenge!’

‘Case is not closed yet, why to presume.’

‘The city is going to the dogs!’ She says.

He hates mallets, he thinks, while his hands imitate the grip

And his eyes drift to the wrist watch. ‘It’s eight!’ He Jumps.

‘And I am going to the office. Its eight o’clock already!’

‘Don’t take that lake side road or don’t go walking, take the car’

A timid hello!*

A timid hello

To a furious friend

No excuse or

Familiar rant

Broken promise

Shaken faith

Rising temper

Incandescent

Explanations

‘I’m notta fool!’

'Unintended...'

‘You’re no saint!’

Drooping gate

Cowering gaze

Sorry face:

‘You-turn-I-faint’

Hope my pal

Will forgive me

My aloofness

My restraint

Passion roars

Behind floodgates

Cache of love

Red effervescent

Opening key is

Your command

Gently, softly

O’ my friend

*This old stuff that I suddenly recalled; people write all sort of things when they are drunk in love, LOL! So Here I am, posting such a sentimental stuff, unabashed :-). Call me pachyderm, but I am just counting those who are madly in love, so they may willingly lower their guards and enjoy it. ;-)

Sunny/ Somber

Sunny/ Somber: 

Cul-de-sac

 A tree, Jasmine, waits at the turn of a road

with its fragrant blooms fidgety under a load,

a load of expectations:

that bees will come and so will a myriad butterflies

some curious children will join; gleeful din will rise...
some will climb over the branches, squirrels some will chase,

some will pluck flowers and some will cherish the shade...

A JCB comes and shakes the reverie out of the tree: 
the road is going to add more lanes; 
a time for you to wake up and see;
wild bees are extinct outside gene banks, 
no tame one anymore escapes apiary

butterflies are gone too, 
rare ones to museums and common ones to gift shops

pinned in the mahogany boxes beneath the clear-glass tops,

children are grown-ups now so wrap-up your show,

city is expanding, J'mine, time to go.

Mother & Me

Sunflowers.

A pair of twinkling eyes

following her mother through blissfully long hours.

Shame! (Mayflies of Rajasthan)

Mayflies!
They ransack every womb;
spotted, she dies.

If you don't find these three lines revolting then you don't know a shameful truth of India; scores of newborn girls die every day and there is a huge industry of illegal medical services that thrives on it.

A Beginning

A Beginning: 

A Long Route

Shooting star...
catching an evening train
to the frozen woods afar!

A Bias

Cestrum Nocturnum blooms.
That wicked lady...
he assumes.

A View

Summer solace:
golden mangoes, molten days,
evening showers, Grace!

Remembrance

Lost winter!
Warm smoke cuddling up the thicket where two huts lie
against a flat grey plain and a broody blue sky...
late evening chill, crackling peanut shells,
and some bonfire banter...
Not a slice of memory,
a splinter. (It stings!)