Vignettes

I

It’s late at night, and I should be asleep,
But I’m thinking of you.
What else would you have me do?

I’m staring at the ceiling,
And looking around in the dark,
Listening to the ticking of the clock,
Slowly winding its way to a morning.

Tick-tick-tick-tick,
I’m not sure of the day of the week,
Or of a time past or present,
But only those that begin and end with you.
It’s chilly, but I’m not cold, “The spirit transcends
The body”, I was once told.

And now I can see myself hovering overhead,
As I fly above my roof and look around at the vacant
Night sky. Its strange to be alive when the whole world is numb,
It’s a feel, a thrill that is exhilarating, it rushes through your throat
And blossoms poppies in your stomach.

I’m reminded of your smile, the twirl of your head
And the sparkle in your eye
As you run away with flowers
That are like little secrets stolen.

I behold your gait in slanting sunshine,
How you tincture it with your prescence
Such that I never want sunlight again,
But only to remain in the musk of your shadow,
That falls on shallow brooks and verdant greens,
And the moss that leisurely stretches itself across the ground.



II

The boom of the aeroplane that soars above
While I sit mute in my cramped little room
And listen to that late night flight
Destination bound:that mass of noise and thunder,
As it rends the inky firmament, starry knit
And eclipses the moon, moving its shroud
Over naive rooftops and sombre tenements.

That dreary howl of that lonesome mutt
Is drowned to that drone, as is the ticking of my clock-
Of Chinese make:tick-tick-tick-tick,
Destination bound and of a maddening wound lick.

DYING FALL

I’m an old guitar-
A tuneless invalid,
Broken-stringed,
Moth eaten to the core.
Leaning for decades
Against this destitute column
In this destitute corner.
Kept just for old times’ sake.
Some shoddy memories attached,
And the Sanctity of Music.
Why don’t someone just
Chop me up and throw
Me in for firewood?
Instead,
I get ritual dustings
After four score years
When spring-cleaning
Visits the attic.

I have listened to birds’ songs,
And the clasps of thunder,
The patter of raindrops,and
Felt the genial rot all around.
Lizards have crept over me,
Spawning in my hollow.
I have withstood the birth of generations.
No anger is directed towards me.
I have no story.
No warm-lit halls for me,
Nor the cheers of performance.
Wine has never trickled down
My polished mien in callous mirth.
No one wrecks me up in anguish.
Returns me to whence I came:
A mass of deadwood.

I hate my artistic cut,
The purpose thrust on me.
I would rather the log
That lies strewn and
Hapless,beating rainfall and sunshine,
Ant-hills and exfoliations,
On the soggy forest floor.
A life before a Life.

On the first rains

The first rains yesterday fell
Out of season, without a reason,
Blinding the city with clouds of dust,
And violating the weather man’s trust,
It riding came the whiplash of lightning,
Making cats scurry with a-frightening.
Falling in quick bursts, short and shrill,
As hushed lovers kissed by the window sill,
As the balding old man sat sipping his tea,
And the wise beggar woman cackled in glee,
To see a young banker, all ship and shape,
Race across puddles for a quick escape,
To crowds that gathered below dripping shelters,
As the rain slowly grew to a real belter,
Pelting the lonesome city street,
With all the force of a long lost meet.
The street and the rain, the sky and the earth,
The bonding in pain, the heavens and the hearth,
While silent spectators with awed eyes,
Witnessed this embrace of the earth and the skies,
And felt the joy that shook them within,
Turn to odour of an earthy spin,
That rose from grass, puddles and pools,
And rushed to hot nostrils, soothing them cool.

THE DEATH WISH

The dream that slowly rose in soft vapour
Was caught up in the ceiling fan
And amidst 240 rotations per minute
Torn to shreds,descending fluff-like
Back to the cool mosaic.

But phoenix-like,it reforms and rises
Up again for its slow transcendence
From amidst the cluttering furniture
To the rarified air of the night sky above
And again the fatalistic embrace of that swirling killer.

The flickering tube light groans empathy
Do its neons buzz with feeling?
The wheeling terrorist constantly swishes
In its menacing trance;the sole overseer of this little room.
The poor upholstery is crouched dumb in meek obeisance.

And what of that dream,its insatiable attempts?
Its torn shreds,its shards and shrapnels?
O cruelty!Is it to be locked in this constant death role
Of being born to be torn,of being torn to be born. Let rather tears embalm it with their liquid wreaths and follow its quiet death.

If only once it could soar like Icarus
And bask in the ephemeral ether of freedom
Spreading its wild waxen wings to float in immensity
And greet the new born sun in its eastern baths;just once.
Such that its mortal wings melting,it dashed to the earth
In sunlit glory. .

LOVE IN A DEPARTMENTAL STORE

A Sonnet


Her slight frame like a candle’s flame
Quivers at my sight. I feel the delicate moment
On my palette, buzzing in my ears,
Smudging my sight, growing into something immense.
I sense she reciprocates. She feels it too.
It is strange. My pulse has risen.
My heart beats within the hollow of my ribs
Like an abandoned dinghy,
Drumming the shore from
The menace of a troubled lake.
Alas! I have no heavenly bow to string
To the applause of thunder.
Weighing my burdens, I approach
Her smiling face and that courtly greeting – “Next!!”

PANGS

1.

"Have you ever seen a dry leaf,dead,
Amber,crunchy to the touch,in
Folds of devouring flames?
Lapping it up,licking it forth,
Within and without,working its infernal tongue?

A fatal embrace,crackling and electric
Subsuming its veins;that once had life
With another life,a life lived immolating to final nullity.
O yes,the fire has a forked tongue,
Hissing,smouldering,caressing,inviting.

Like a forbidden touch to a forbidden place,
A tenor of waves up the spine,
Up to the brain boiling in its liquids,
Passing through to scalding flesh.
Flesh.Flesh that reverberates,quivers,
Tongue,flesh,touch,lustily pure,absolute
Defiled by nothing,all feeling and
Sensation.

The withering,moaning leaf
In the arms of its nemesis,ripped apart,
Exhumed,exhausted,ravished,ravaged.
"O it is nothing",you smile and say----
"A forest fire in the Andes;a common geographical occurence".
Ask the devastated vegetation,going
Up in so much spiritual smoke."


2.


The parched earth painfully awaits,
Scarred about with cracks and fissures
In arrested stillness : agonizing to the eyes.
Scarcely moving,an infinity of fixity.
Waiting,biding for that one drop
Crystal and luscious to descend from space
Charged with the force of heavens
To fall and scatter its graveyard silence.

Invigorate,Infiltrate the creaking crevices,
The arid torpor pervading the choking stems,
Chunks of clay that have clung together with morbid terror,
With the nectar of life,the element of evanescence.
Rushing through,reviving,replenishing,
Revisiting,resusciating,regenerating.
One drop,a single stellar speck
To remind the earth that it is thirsty,
Oh! so long,so tantalizingly thirsty.
One drop,an infinitesimal dot to set
The wheel in motion,Create,Impregnate.

The labouring earth awaits : a puny sapling,
Grand and green stretches its crumpled shoot."

HUNGERFORD STREET

The light is red.
Traffic stationary. Purring. Waiting.
Tension mounting. A precipitous moment
Of apprehension. Tension.

A few honks, a blare, here and there.

A tribe of wildebeests muted on the savannah,
Making their way through the grasslands,
To the next water hole.
Wait. In apprehension. Tension.
On the banks of the swamp with quiet breath,
To the dance of hooves and cruel death.
A tussle of horns, here and there,
The irritation of flies in the air,
Wait. To wade across the stream,
Of crocodiles in a gleam,
Playing hide and seek,
And little bo-peep.
A time for fangs and claws,
And wise saws. Apprehension. Tension.

Their leader emits a snort.
The light turns green for the right.
The rest start their engines in a diastole motion,
Smooth.
Like a moisturizing lotion.
The glistening bodies swerve right,
In a screech, like leeches slithering down
A mossy beech.
Like relaxing elastic,
In plastic perfection, the cars strain right.
And the gaping lane swallows them.
In large mouthfuls, gulps and gasps.
Swallows them in
To the last tyre and axle,
The last face peering out the window,
The shopping bags at the back,
The puppy on the lap,
The smiles, cheers, tears and fears,
Of lives lived and deaths doled,
All swallowed, wallowed into the waiting road.

Across the stream, their leader turns back to see
His community. Of what’s left of those eyes keen,
And the what-might-have-been.