Category: poetry

Time

Time is wrapped
We move forward
But yet in circles

A new beginning
Another New Year
All dots
On the circles

Time is a trap
An endless wrap
Moving forward
Yet in circles

Histories repeat
Dictators return
But tyrant
Time
Beats them all

Let us not despair
No one colour or
One faith can
Rule Forever

Light refracts
Even through
The Prism of Religion
Into a Rainbow

All mighty forever
Will bite the dust
As children of soil
Will rise yet again

Time goes in circles
Some look ahead
Forgetting the wrap
Others who look behind
Fall in the trap

There is no way
Back into the womb
Only death awaits
Ahead

Time moves forward
While moving in circles
Maybe Sisyphus is happy
For he knows
The clock ticks…

Strange Imprints

As the night falls

I wonder what

Set the pace

Of Time

It moves

Freezes

Goes back

And forth

Yet always

Arrow of Time

Points always

Ahead

It circles

Around the

Life and Death

Beginning

And the End

I look at the stars

I look back

Millions of years

Wonder how do they

See our history

Unfolding

On a tiny

Blue Dot

Strange is the

Arrow of Time

Pointing into

Nowhere

Ticking away

Turning

Itself into ashes

Rising like a phoenix

Yet it always

Moves ahead

Stubbornly ahead

Leaving behind

Strange mute imprints

A sand dune there

Or a mountain here…

Silly Significance

With her chin-up
And chips down
With spring in her feet
She trots on the globe
Our blue dot
But she is not alone

There are billions of us
Totally lost
In the humongous mess
Of hundreds of imagined worlds
And faiths
And the great sense of propriety
All trying to be right
By proving others wrong

Kudos to us for
Throwing out the baby
– our sustenance
Along with the bath water

All self similar beings
Trying so hard
To advance their race
By killing each other
The sheer madness

We still love to imagine
And believe
It’s the sun that sets
Or rises for us
Instead of –
– that’s it’s we go
Around an axis
Downside up
And upside down
Along the elliptical

Planet doesn’t care
Whether it’s dinosaurs
Or only us
Neither does the Universe

Feeling all self-important
With bloated
or deflated egos
With the chin up
Or chips down
We continue to seek
our significance
In the grand cosmic
Insignificance

But does it have all to be
So dangerously silly?
by pitting imagined worlds
Imagined selves
And imagined gods
Against each other
And against Nature!

Blue and Red

They both argued

About glory

Red being red

Flaunted being important

Underlined with Red

Called Blue

The scatter brain

Blue being blue

Mellow in being

Simply said

I make most of my

Wavelength

And let small particles

Scatter me to the Oblivion

Thus played out

The most spectacular sunset

Blue sky smeared

with Vermillion red

Sun smiled as it set

Ah! the usual fight

Forgetting they

Both came from white light!

Strangeness

In a strange city

Trees grow

In abandoned homes

And uprooted people

Dwell beside the roads

There is no place

To plant trees

There is no home

For migrants

Trees grow

Inside old homes

And people grow old

Without homes

Both trees and people

Have become refugees

And homes are empty

Devoid of love

And compassion

Trees and people

Search for roots

In a strange city

On a strange planet

Here She Lies…

Under the Canopy

Here She lies

In Paris

In exile

At Pere Lachaise

A mother, a queen

With a vanquished dream

She crossed seven seas

A sin in the 1850s

In the hope of justice and freedom

From the Queen of England

Mocked, ignored and bribed

She told them

They could not own

The kingdom of her son

And her pride

Here she lies

Our own Queen of Oudh

Next to a bush of roses

Growing in the wild

In exile

at Pere Lachaise

Resting quietly among the greats

She sought nothing

But Peace and Freedom

 

Among all the shiny graves

If you see an earthly grave

Fractured by Time

Under a green canopy

Know that it’s her

India’s brave Queen Mother –

Janab-e-Aliah Mallika Kishwar

Who crossed seven seas

A sin in the 1850s

To seek Peace and Freedom

And fair political justice

From the Imperial queen

And did no compromise

 

Do pause

And pray

If you may

But do tell her tale

Here She lies…

 

Kafkaesque

I exist therefore I am

I am therefore I exist

I am the means

and the end

I think

so I do

I do

so I think

I stand

so I believe

I believe

so I stand

I reason

to be

not to be

I protest

for Justice

That is blind

I am free

but chained

by law

But the law exists

to free the chains

what is Right

is also Left of Right

But Right is not wrong

so Left is Right

By the Brook

There she lay

In a lonely grave

By the Brook
Unseen and unknown

Till a lonely shepherd

Stumbled upon her

And found her tale

A glorious tale of

Love and loss

Of a royal Princess

The most beautiful

Tormented soul

Soon the stories

Were made

And unmade

Shepherd loved

The dead dame

And his fame

He tended to

The tomb

Soon lovers came

To be blessed

By the cursed Princess

Little did anyone know

Six feet under

Was a sad refugee

Who had lived,

In pain,

Loved,
And died in vain

Little did she know

Her death will give

Her a life, care

And a fame

And not far away

In the grand Cemetery

In an unmarked grave

Was the real Princess

Finally dethroned by Time

The Day Freedom Was Won and Lost

They both stood vigil

Just like lovers

With surgical precision

Lines were drawn

And lives got thrown

Into disarray

One thought Nation did not belong to them

Other was too young and weak to claim or protect

The two great lovers

Stood and watched

As a Nation got ripped into two

And precious lives ebbed away

No one realised

It was the very idea of love and freedom

They had aborted that day

As the Nation bled

Along with lives

Homes

Identities

Peace

Love

Humanity

All was lost

And alleged lovers stood vigil

Arrogantly announcing

Their Nation’s tryst with destiny!!