Epiphany

The trek through a hell on earth
Years of darkness
Chasing a fluorescent glow that lay at the end of my tunnel
Just bright enough to expose me
To show me where I have been
To prevent my forgetting
I must keep moving
Quivering in the ice cold.
The chilling breeze that rattles bones
Frozen air that burns to the touch

A sea of victims that surrounds me
Frozen in their bitterness
Broken hearts and shattered egos
Their memories etched in stone like fossils
So that even time would dare forget
Still I press on
My marching feet resembling a shuffle
Inch by inch
Aware of the danger, sure of the pain
Still I move on

Transfixed, hypnotized by the beauty of the dark
My rare, rare glow
Lured as if I were a Siren or Sybil
Fear shall not sway me
Nor shall the hand of fate hold me
Helpless wastes beside me, so material
Cowards…. The treasure lies beyond

Love lives beyond death, smiling through the agony
Its warm grip reaching beyond the void
Desire, the flame burns brightly.
A lust that never left.
Too strong for ice and stone to withstand
The ice shall crack and stones will crumble
Do not look back
Never look back
To travel this far and to stop
To reach the end but to never finish
To see the sun yet never know its warmth
To touch but to never hold
Unforgivable…

My dream: vanished
With it, the darkness.
Still I continue forwards.
Colours fill my visions
Their beauty victorious over the shadows
Just as,
How freedom from becomes freedom for….

Yesterday...

Yesterday....
You filled me with incomprehensible awe....

By your beauty so...
Dreamy and drowsy...
Seemingly engrossed a million miles away...

Your eyes glittered so and half mast...
Aroused
To be unfettered...unencumbered...
As though corresponding to secret wishes....

Yesterday....
I watched you in your bed...
While anguishing in the wish
Of your fingers upon my lips...
And the magic of that sweet delight I saw
To be for me...and to be mine....
To be with you...
And then left it behind...
While we came to ourselves......

Yesterday......
So taut and ready to play with my senses
And spraying your fragrances
Beneath your gentle looks of love....
I floated like a butterfly
And released into harmony's play....

My god and lover
Fused and melted into one...

You....
Pierce a hole
To the depth of my soul
To love...
What is...?
What was…?
And what should be from your hands....
So tantalizing and soft to reach
For my love before you....
In this surrendered tear that stings
And swells.....
Dwelling upon my cheek...

Who have you loved before me?
Who will you love?
Were you fully sated by my love?
La combient rhapsodie?
Or empty as if a broken spell.....

Another kiss my dear
Before you go....
Into other dreams...
Or to the silent mystery
Of your memories.

Were they of sweet infatuations...?
Sweeter than mine?
Or daydreams that pleased you greatly?
Fluffy clouds...
Adoringly dotting the sky?

I ask with strange caution
As if to rediscover my own soul...
To answer it's call
Both delicious and bitter
Beneath the beckoning of joy promises
And senseless endearments.

Yesterday...
Where are you now?
Entice me again
Into your deep well
Nigh...and untold
Into the unknown dreams of my heart...
Now my love...quickly embrace me
Unfold
Before another shadow...
Dances upon my restless joy...

Sleep On...

You, who are not kept anxiously awake for love’s sake,
Sleep on…
In restless search for that river,
I hurry along;
You, whose heart such anxiety has not disturbed,
Sleep on…

Love’s place is out beyond the many separate sects;
Since you love choosing and excluding,
Sleep on…
Love’s face is my sunrise, his smile my supper;
You, whose longing is for sweets and whose passion is for lust,
Sleep on…

In search of the philosopher’s stone, I am melting like copper;
You, whose philosopher’s stone is worldly chattels,
Sleep on…
I have abandoned hope for my ambiguous brain and heart;
You, who wish for a lucid head and unsullied brain,
Sleep on…

I have torn speech like a tattered robe and let words vanish;
You, who are still clad in your clothes,
Sleep on…

~~~ I WILL FIND YOU ~~~

Tonight my verse will find you dancing alone
A hurricane of desires will pass me, unknown.
And I the anchor, martyr to your trance,
Draped, in the absolution of your absence.
You for whom I have wandered in uncertain pines
You for whom I have sacrificed myself in oblivion.
You for whom I have many names...
What delights me more this very moment:
Your laughter, salty as the rain’s chemistry
On a parched tongue, or your seismic filament,
Which gives fullness to your minted mystery.
Tonight my verse seeks you but I’m a speck of dream.
In the middle of it all, when you are not there
I always find you in the finesse of sand
In the sounds of stones, rivers, and in the clouds’ jeer
In the waves, in the foams and dunes of the land.
We will not know the day but the hour will come
In the hurricane and the dance
In the liberty of the trance
In this serration
And that imagination
All mean less than the remembrance of fire.
It is in that hour that my verse will find you
It is in that second that my song will fill you...

Just like you have filled me...

~~~ EXCLUSION ~~~

My soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

My body grows outside, --
The more convenient way, --
That if the spirit likes to hide,
Its temple stands away

Ajar, secure, inviting;
It never did betray
The soul that asked its shelter
In timid honesty.

That’s a meditative spot,
Fresh bloom over the volcanic gush
With awe my solitude.

Awakened by your love,
I flicker like a candle's light
Trying to hold on in the dark.
Yet, you spare me no blows
And keep asking,
"Why do you complain?"

You smile and say,
“Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, suffer the pain.
Your desire must be disciplined,
And you ready to be sacrificed.”

My soul has learnt to strive to discover
The mystery before life is taken away.
If while living she fails to uncover and discern herself,
How will she comprehend and appreciate
The secret of her divine existence when I die?

Continuities

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form ~ no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere
Confuse your brain, my friend.
Ample are time and space ~ ample the field and nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold ~ the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible land returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corns.
With conduct and altruism infinities
Mother Nature adorns her divine continuities

An unvoiced ode

In the silence of the world,
I was afraid,
The quiet seemed ever so noisy to me.
And then I heard a faint heartbeat,
Your heart beating within me,
A sweet pleasant sound,
Like a lullaby easy on the ear,
It drove away my fears
And lulled me to sleep
In a slumber ever so pure.

In the darkness of the world,
I was afraid,
The shadows seemed like monsters.
And then I saw a bright light,
Your love overflowing for me,
A beautiful heavenly light,
Like the sun mounting from the horizon,
It drove away my terrors,
And filled me with new vigour,
And a desire to live again.


In the noise of this world,
I was afraid,
The clamour deafened my soul.
And then I heard your dulcet voice,
Your soothing words of reassurance for me,
An angel’s promise that all will be well,
Like a nightingale in the midst of a burnt forest,
It drove away my sorrows,
And made me face with valour
Challenges ever so many to the world.


No matter how much I say this,
I could never be able to repay you in full,
So take this as but a part of my offerings,
I love you, and I can say no more...

Tell me I pray, who am I?

I had bolted my door
From within
I had shut myself in…
Yet you have entered my Temple
As if burgeoning from within

How soft is your touch
How silent your footsteps
How poignant your presence within
Melting me like a candle stick
I dissolve, I merge in you.

Unravel the knots my love
Tell me I pray, who am I?

What I am?

What I am?
A confluence of epithet
That defines my identity
Discernible with relationships
Giving me a semblance of
A daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt
Colleague, friend, enemy, neighbour -
An earthling, Indian, Hindu!
Or just another somebody
A mere nobody!
What really I am?

If it is relationships
Then why they are seemingly there
But not available when I need them!
And, am I available when they need me?
The proximity and the distance
Of these relationships is also
Mind boggling
Some so close
That I can even hear
The sound of the beating heart
Or is the beat my own!
Pounding and echoing in theirs'?
A feeling that affirms
That "I" exist!
Yet some so far and away
That I seem to communicate
Only with thoughts
That keep coming and going
Without any effort on my part
But I seem to be entertaining
Some of them
What really I am?

An entity through which
Permeates the flow of thoughts
Apparently giving me freedom
To dwell on some
Or is my dwelling too
Related to the force and energy
Of the thoughts that pass by
What really I am?

A naked self
Clothed by masks
Of thoughts, relationships
Projections, emotions
Attachments, detachments
Aversions, diversions
The dual of opposites!
What really I am?

In a vast canvass
Of unending chain of relationships
A "Speck" - trying to balance
And complete the picture
Or, being helped
By everything on the Canvas
For me to discover
That I am bound, captured and caged
Or, liberated, Free and soaring
To remain in the end
A silent spectator
What really I am?
Is there really an "I am"?
If so, why!