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No Mean Feat

I woke up with a sigh

To meet today

Today is what

Today has always been…

Unpredictable and moody.

It’s a child of the seasons

A fickle temper is coded

Into its DNA.

And so, it will provoke me

(Like it always does)

With something or the other…

With the memory of a lover

Who it swallowed up

Insidiously on one such today

That I can’t recall having seen or lived

It must have slipped by me…

And who now remains with me

Partly because he’s a committed man

Who’s met and lived through

Many todays

And like me

Has endured the weight of every today

With its accompanying aches and pains.

We’re here now

Still together

Because we saw through

It’s whimsical ways

And chose to ignore its treachery

This today is no longer mine or yours

It belongs to Us.

This gift of a conquered Today

This gift of familiarity,

Friendship and forgiveness

Is really the gift of having met

And survived

Without escape, without excuse

Every Today

Everyday.

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A Good Night

When the lights go out

So do all differentiations

Everything gets absorbed

In a rich velvety darkness

 

The night is a great leveler

It swallows up all distinctions

The day’s convictions dissolve in the night’s cabernet

And everything that was something loses its grip

 

The expectation of the night is total surrender

It claims from you your all

All the sparkling acquisitions of your day

Stand shrouded by an austere night

 

And it doesn’t seem to care

About all the things that decorate your existence

As it falls like an ink blot

On the script of your life

 

So while the day adds to your life

Things for the mind and things that matter

The night subtracts

Reducing your prized possessions to mere amusements.

 

I stand in the darkness of the night

Strangely redeemed…

As light exits and things lose their ‘edge’

I find that ‘I’- am still there…

 

In and through the absences, I prevail…

My only gain… my total loss

My only strength… my vulnerability

My only society… my solitude

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So much effort

To possess requires so much effort

To enjoy all that there is-

none.

 

To become rich requires so much effort

To be enriched-

none.

 

To solve a problem requires so much effort

To watch its passing-

None.

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Unanswered

You asked me why I ask

So many questions

When the answers are so few

 

What purpose could it serve

Asking so many questions

And will new answers

Stop me from asking

The same old questions?!?!

 

Why can’t I accept

The answers already given (or perhaps hidden)

For centuries…for eons…since eternity…

 

Aren’t willful ignorance

and elusive enlightenment

riding on the same adventure?

 

I don’t know…

 

I guess I find no silence, no repose

In the posers

you call answers

 

For the same twisted reason

 

 

You get so disturbed, so diverted

By the posers

that are my questions.

 

So there we are

All gesture paused

By an exasperated silence

 

Thought defeated, we now just are…

Sitting vis-à-vis

Sailing together, I realize,

In the same clichéd boat

To a destination known only to silent destiny.

 

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An Ode to Softness

A waking blue sky

An invocation to ancient gods on the radio

The trees sway to a soft and gentle breeze outside

And my baby sleeps

Her head nestled and caressed

in the nook between my neck and shoulder

She strings for me this precious chain of moments

With her soft and gentle breath…

In an embrace of re-assuring silence

All of life so readily offers itself

And everything speaks

Softly…

Gently…

Eloquently…

Simply.

 

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Unintended

Pen, book and intention

A haiku seems like a good idea

I need to know even though I know

Is this temporary, fleeting?

How must I apprehend it

This totality in existence?

How do I classify it

For the sake of memory?

‘Contemplation?’

‘Boredom?’

‘Living out my purpose?’

‘Existence?’

‘Being?’

‘Becoming?’

‘….none of the above…?’

 

And now I know

Acceptance is active and creative

And now I am

Excited, happy, alive!

Free of all lofty intention…

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The Free and the Fugitive

I sat still in my car

Incapacitated by the traffic jam

Unable  to inch forward

My eyes moved up…

I saw the metro crawl…

Above it, a plane flew past

In an open sky

My mind travelled

I visited a childhood memory…

And then a book shop in California…

And then to a time when Kiara would be vaguely older…

And then…

” Door na ja-o… Door na ja-o… (don’t go far away from me, don’t go far away from me…)”

My traveling mind was arrested by this voice crooning on my car stereo

I paused…

Cut short my mental journey through time

And listened out of a sense of obligation

(after all, I had turned on the car stereo to listen to music…)

I brought my mind back to where I was in the traffic jam

With the metro crawling above

And yet another airplane flying above in a vast open sky.

 

In that moment I knew

My mind was vaster

than the vast open sky.

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A Momentary Drift

I caught your eye

For a brief moment

Looking at me piercingly

Trying to make inroads to my soul

To get a sense of what lay beneath

My clothes, my skin, my mannerisms, my small talk.

 

Our eyes met

For a brief moment

And then you quickly looked away

Picking up  (where we had left off) the threads

Of a familiar design

Predictable in pattern

Impotent in possibilities

Saturated with meaning

But meaningless beyond its existence.

 

For a brief moment

When I caught your eye

Uninterested and bored

With familiar designs, patterns and meanings

I wondered

About the possibilities of meaninglessness…

 

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Lost Property

How dear is my present to me!

Even as it stands imperfect

And flawed

 

I know it. It’s familiar.

I’m drawn to it because it so effortlessly

Becomes mine

 

My present is the culmination

Of the hours, days and years I’ve devoted to

Become me.

 

If I lose it, I will lose all the vanities

That I had with great complexity interwoven with

My being

 

I will stand a ridiculous lie unto myself!

 

My heart will weep not so much

For the loss of people, places, property

Or poetry

 

But for standing disrobed and diminished

Before all that I dressed up

And decorated.

 

The present is rich in the meanings of thoughts

Whose enslavement I have come

To enjoy.

 

Who am I without them?

WHERE am I without them? They’re all

I’ve known.

 

My tormentors have been my only love…

 

And even though I know

That life is a habitually

Late messiah

 

A sleeping savior in a dream state

I can see now that I’m nothing more than

Its dream.

 

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A Beautiful Ritual

I see it now as an idyllic moment

This ensemble before me

Unfolding its meaning

Undressing like a new bride

As I sit and watch

As is ritual

The world move by

Outside my window

 

Rains lashing

My silence hitherto undisturbed

is seduced now

By the strains of an effusive piano

Playing in the soul of a CD

…somewhere in the distance

Of a love felt deeply

As deeply as feeling will allow…

 

Men, women and children

Hurry past my frame

Creatures of free will

Now like puppets on strings of rain

They seem beautiful in their vulnerability

Simple in their motives

As they run on surrendered feet

To familiar sounds, spaces and rituals…

 

Is that really true?

Or is that simply my view?

-An idyllic view…

The sum of a subliminal math

Of a memory recalled by a sentimental piano

And stirrings emancipated by an unbridled monsoon

And people running as the rain wills

Randomly. Intermittently.

 

Maybe that’s all there is

Maybe that’s all that takes

To see the world as beautiful

Sometimes all you need

Is beautiful music

A beautiful memory

A beautiful window

And

A beautiful ritual.