A Noun?
A Verb?
An Adjective?
Human value?
Emotion?
Attachment?
Attraction?
Respect ?
Friendship?
Kinship?
Dopamine?
Oxytocin?
Validation?
Affection?
Admiration?
Desire?
Conditional?
Unconditional?
Affection?
Romance?
Platonic?
Narcissism ?
Passion?
Adoration?
Devotion?
Compassion?
Sympathy?
Obsession?
Lust?
Greed?
Love encompasses all, takes various forms… yet no one understands it…
PS: Have I missed something? Do add..
Once upon a time
I would lie under the starry night
In utter darkness
To do a Messier marathon
I knew those magnificent
Beauties of the night sky
By their first name
Out of nowhere
They would appear
Once sun disappeared
We would behold them
In the field of view
Of our small and big
Telescopes facing the night sky
Just like the sun
Constellations would dip too
Below the horizon
While new ones appeared
Nothing compares to the
Silence and darkness
Of the dark night sky
Which has inspired
Countless artists and poets
I trust the night
It removes the blinding lights
Both sun and moon are absent
We can peer much deeper
And beyond
Going back in time
14 billion years is the age of the Universe
Along the way multitude of stars
In the billions of galaxies
Are burning away
Fusing atoms together
Forming newer elements
Elements that make you and me
And every being on this planet
We are after all atoms
Trying to figure out atoms
A scientist famously said
Annihilation preludes creation
And vice versa
Creation of new particles
And elements go on
Till the stable ones are born
Nature loves stability
But then entropy is a reality too
In the great cosmic churning
Life indeed is a miracle
But then…
One day after millions of years
The sun will die…
It will engulf the earth
Growing into a red giant
Till then we will play perhaps
This game of war and fear
While sending missions into the space
Such contradicting realities of our existence
We needn’t end it all here and now
We are self similar beings
Made of same cosmic dust
It would be such a pity
To cut this fabulous story short!!
PS: Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s book – Poems to Night
As the whole world holds its breath
As the threat of annihilation looms large
As brave people brace themselves
For the final showdown with death itself
Bunch of men proclaim
“Ceasefire!!!”
Such an easy convenient word
Why did it take so long?
One just has to cease
And step back
No one needs to call off the war
This game is paused for the next level
After all it increases views, stocks and profits
And weapons industry sells quite well
The biggest reality show of current times
Boom!! Just after ceasefire
There was much fire elsewhere
While the negotiations were still being read
There has to be a twist in the war drama
Well, the whole bloody drama is twisted!!
No one knows who is winning or losing
I guess it doesn’t matter anymore
Let the game go on…
While the desolate moon, sun
And a bunch of astronauts
Behold the beautiful Earth
Blue and white…pristine marble
Moving in the dark empty space
Silently miles miles away
Human life does seem a miracle
Till it turns itself into a curse!!
Tonight I want to talk
About the courage
Courage of those who are
Facing imminent fatal threats
As fear looms large
No one is talking about leaving
Or fleeing the war
It has been a pattern
Among all the nations under attack
No one is leaving to make conquest easy
Tonight we need to talk about this courage
Courage of common people
Who take the batterings
Who are easy civilian targets
Yet they refuse to leave or flee
They bury their children and kin
They live in refugee camps
They return back to the rubbles
To rebuild again and again
As long as the ceasefire lasts
They stand up to
The truth and power
While every powerful nation chooses silence
They don’t leave or flee
Their ancestral land and home
Despite all indignity and threats
They keep showing up as human chains
They keep recording
And collecting evidence
In the hope that civility and peace
Will return again
And one day wars
Will become redundant
Tonight let’s talk about the courage
The courage of four astronauts
Who flew furthest from the earth
To the dark side of the moon
To watch unseen craters and an eclipse
Perhaps knowing well
Their mission will be eclipsed
By the war and fear mongering
They saw our beautiful blue planet
Knowing very well how bad the things are
Yet they speak of One Earth
Tonight let’s talk about the courage
Courage in the face of the fear and death
Tonight I don’t want to
Write the saddest or angry lines
I want to stand in solidarity with those
Who are being relentlessly attacked
If they have the courage to hope
To bear it all and fight back
And have guts to die
What we think or do is inconsequential
Their land, river and mountains
Will remember them
As a resilient civilization
I will just hope
Hoping against hope
This exemplary courage will win
It has to win against the evil
Fear is not even a choice
Fear was never a choice!!
Hycean was a hypothetical
A theoretical exoplanet
Made of Hydrogen and Ocean
The exoplanets which
We now know exist
Thanks to the presence
Of essential bio markers
Evidence of life elsewhere
Far far away
Whose signature spectra
Can only be seen
By powerful telescopes
It is exciting to know
We are not alone
Life can be elsewhere
Ah! Life is elsewhere
Maybe not be the kind we know
It may not be earth-like
It may be completely different
But here we are
Living evidence of
Existence of complex lifeforms
In the entire universe
Also having intelligence to
Decipher it all
From smallest to largest scale
A sea of evolved beings
Refusing to look inwards
Very reluctant to look at
Darker side of humanity
While we send missions
To the dark side of the moon
Absurd humanity
Which wages wars
With itself
We have pushed
Our pale blue dot
(Also made of 70 percent water, hydrogen and oceans)
To the brink
Maybe it will survive
Once we eliminate ourselves
Future will perhaps remember us
As dichotomous beings
Glorious ambitious ones
Who turned into blood thirsty beasts
And as beautiful intelligent ones
Who saw signatures of
Far far away exoplanets
Who were delighted
To figure it all out
To create knowledge
Ask and experiment relentlessly
We did live, they will know
We had our own sun
Our year was made of 365 days
They will find it all –
Evidence of our existence
And extinction!!
Image courtesy: Artemis II mission, Nasa
Intriguing migratory birds
With tiny magnetic compasses
In their tiny little being
Navigating with perfection
They travel miles and miles
Across from Siberia and elsewhere
To find their little green oasis
Their islets, wetlands
To stay and nest
Till the fledglings are strong enough
They are so faithful to
Their geography and biology
Tuned perfectly
To the Nature of their very being
I wonder how they perceive
The climate change
And the erratic weather
Also the flying drones
And fighter planes
All set forth by humans
To take over land and resources
That doesn’t even belong to them
Migratory birds
Are quite enviable
They don’t need papers
To prove they nationalites
They fly high above
Man made borders
Who knows maybe
They will be
Saviours of life on earth
When humans go extinct
Every Peace treaty
Every marriage
Every relationship
Every dysfunctional family
That fails
Has a history
Of Unkept promises
Promises which did not
Pass the test of time
There should be
A proper closure
For unkept promises
Or else they turn into deep wounds
They grow like cancer
Occupying spaces
Leaving no breathing room
They are like unseen
Elephants in the room
Which are never addressed
The room where
Where adults play
The game of pretend
Lies and amnesia
While teaching their youngs
Lessons of morals, values
And promises…
That promises are meant to be kept!!
I became you
And you became them
All boundaries blurred
Between predators and preys
Every role flipped
In a role reversal
Victims turned into proud bullies
Preying upon helpless victims
Me, you, us and them
We keep changing our roles
Going in circles
Irony itself has become ironical
Like never before
I has been replaced by AI
Human by machines
Humans have turned into
Well dressed mannequins
Frozen like zombies
Doom scrolling away
Devouring themselves
Life has turned into monstrous death
In the finest of all role reversal
They feel most alive
When they kill
A movie showing severed flying head
Gets all the screens
While life affirming Space film
Finds hardly a space
Addiction to violence!
Ironically life always wins
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Didn’t change anything
Cherry blossoms do bloom
And paper cranes are still a craze
Ironically the victim nation
Never built the bomb
It ended the cycles
Of trauma and violence
But the bully nation
That built and used it
Is back with the same flex
Ironically bullies often
Call themselves victims
What scares them?
Addicted to violence and power
They refuse to give up
Their carnal desires
While Artemis II is on its way
To the darker side of the moon
Humanity has plunged
The planet Earth
Into one of its darkest phase
How diabolical
And Ironical!
It is a good way of beginning
The ‘Cruelest Month’ of the year
A poem a day!
How else would one survive?
The daily calamities, killings
And mournings
The sense of worse times ahead
For Entropy always wins
The beautiful flower of yesterday
Is wilted, fallen and forgotten
Just realised I did see the Halley’s Comet
And then came the afterthought
I won’t ever be seeing it again!
It will come irrespective of everything
As sun beckons it every 75 years
Plants thrive on sunlight
Maybe they bloom flowers
For the Sun!!
A return gift maybe
For all the free glorious light
Plants know gratitude
While we seem to thrive
On regret, hate and revenge!
#GloPoWriMo
If poetry were a luxury
Afforded by only few
The world wouldn’t have known
Realities of poverty, hunger and war
That lament of loss and grief
Poetry ain’t luxury
Thankfully
A little girl hiding in an attic
With just a paper and pen
Multitudes of thoughts and emotions
Finds an alternative realm
Realm of words and emotions
Those damn slaves, those blues singers
Poetry freed them from slavery
Songs and poetry of protests
Gave language, words and idioms
To the oppression and violence they endured
Poetry gave the moon and stars
Silver linings another meaning
Metaphors for hopes, love and loss
There wouldn’t be lullabys
There won’t be haikus
Long and short
Lyrical and free verse
Had poetry been a luxury
It belongs to those who own it
A craft they are willing to hone it
It says much even in its pauses
Brevity is its expanse
Poetry is a friend
Who walks along
Encouraging one to face life
It is like those fallen and trampled flowers
A true evidence of life lived and unlived.
Mad Decadence 