poetry

In the persona of a flower
Standing proud in a flower pot
On an urban apartment’s balcony
I can only cough and try not to suffocate
As smokes and toxic fumes drift over to me
All day and all night long!
In the persona of a fish
I constantly struggle not to nibble on wastes
Floating, like me and my shoal
In this vast ocean which was once a haven,
Why, from plastic objects to chemicals
Death lies in wait for us, in disguise!
In the persona of a cloud
I cringe as smokes, toxic and pricking

Destroy all the bombs in the world
and war will still exist,
for war exists internally,
covering the core of humanity,
clothing the poor in tragedy,
Satan’s strategy, divide the classes
divorce the family.
The roots grow deep down to the dark of earth,
the sword in the soul is nothing more
than the mark of birth.
Machiavellian politics dominate
the calloused consciousness of mankind.
This uber ego separates the people
like body parts in a land mine.
War will never end until the war ends within.

We flood others spilling
Every space exhausted,
No room for another
Exam time when library ought to be fortress
Many of us from it get exiled to the lawn
Because the library is small for us
Because the library is small for us
Under the burning-biting sun, we are cast
Our skins scorching, our eyes soring (sickening)
Ants crawling up into clothes, disturbing!
Dust rising as it pleases, shoved to the ground we sit to study
Because the library is small for us
Because the library is small for us

Far removed from the society of man,
She tucked herself behind a dank and dingy night,
Behind the sound of eager muezzin;
Clad in mascara
And a black disenchanted chador;
a broken frame,
Governed by fears and extremism.
She loves her groom but hate the war.
Lumps her weak and slumped breast
Into the mouth of her infant baby,
that beg a question of the world.
Always led through monstrous indignity
Of sexual molestation and violation:
Tortured into compliance and complacence,

Storyteller blows hard on the embers,
throws conifer branches on the blaze.
She evokes crazed spectres who leap
wrapped in shadow from tree to tree.
Our hero finds himself in dire peril.
Weighted with amulets he cannot just fly
away like a spark from the crackling cedar;
nor, bow in hand, can he emulate the snake.
He must woo the hag who recites his fate,
she of the dread-inspiring countenance,
she who once tossed him on the pyre
to rouse his ardent spirit, or so she said.
They grapple till the flames die down.

An ironing board set up in a bedroom
with old slacks draped across it,
a sliding glass door to nowhere,
this is what life has come to
inside the sheltered rooms of a refuge,
more like a shrinking womb.
Lost memories piled high in a basket
like last week’s laundry,
while confusion roams the lonely hallways
of blinking fluorescent lights,
being afraid of what is ahead.
These are the rewards for old age.
Time spent inside one’s own mind,
living out past adventures,
while rocking away in a rickety chair,

River Shabari flows through the Dandak forests. Along its banks live people from many tribes, the Adivasis – Gond, Kondh, Koya, Koitur, Shabar, Soro… so many names have history given to them. The epic Ramayana tells the tale of Shabari, the lady from these tribes who had turned into stone. But this is another tale. Below the bed of river[Read More...]

Hate Taj Mahal as ' Muslim' mausoleum
After visiting it applauding as India's ' priceless gem'
A wonder!

Cerco un paese innocente
(“I am searching for an innocent country”.)
— Guiseppe Ungaretti

That ‘Puncture Wound’ no longer weeps…
but, it aches, like rack-broken bones
stretching past life regression-like
through the dawn of each new, cold morning
and out onwards into incalculable eternity.
The ‘Cracks’ of your soul are too deep to fill,
the ‘Hollow’ and ‘Hunger’ of your fractured heart
will never be sated by the tricks and lies
of ridiculous bedtime fairy stories.
Whilst the truth of common sense and reason
battering-ram your consciousness
into a bleak and stark acceptance.