Tag: poem

Poetry Ai’nt Luxury

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.

Sometimes It Is Too Late…

A petit pink fresh flower

Fell on the roadside

Just detached from the mother tree

I thought of picking it up

On my way back

As I walked ahead

A big SUV passed me by

At the end of the lane

As I turned

I saw it backing

Into its marked zone

To park perhaps

To my utter dismay

The wheels went over

That petit pink flower lay crushed

Beneath the mother tree

Sometimes it is just too late

To  behold, cherish and save

Beauty is often fragile and transient

Always ending up crushed

Under the ruthless

Wheels of the civilization

Sometimes it is too late

Most times it is too late!!

Trust and Love

Trust and Love

The kitten ran
Helter skelter
Scared, very scared
Neighborhood kids
Tried to reason with it
But it was too small
Full of fear
Confused maybe
Maybe it felt attacked
While actually it was
Being rescued

Rescuers didn’t earn
Its trust perhaps
But they were sure
It ought to trust them
The more they tried
Befriending it
More it shrank
Into the shadows

Lessons in trust
Are most difficult
To learn
It’s a language
It’s an action
That promises safety
Both sides need to be
Calm and patient
To set this dialogue stage
On safe middle grounds

What is the language of trust?
What is the language of love?
No one teaches these
We are supposed to learn them
Context, syntax and meaning
Most often we learn the hard way
After the trust is broken
And love breaks the trust

In that darkness
Tiny kitten couldn’t see
Trust or love in the eyes
While everyone saw
Fear in its eyes
When they backed off
It ran for its life
Away from the life
It took a while
For it to return
To this game of
Hide and seek again

Maybe it will survive
Maybe it won’t
Depends on what lurks
In the darkness
One can only hope
It finds its way to
To the bowl of milk
Waiting for it
Food often builds trust
So does tender care

Tenderness is rare
No one teaches us that too
Knowingly, unknowingly
It comes our way
Like the gentle breeze
That helps us breathe

Love can be suffocating
It can smother and kill
What it pretends to protect
While trying to control
We never try to understand
Children’s language
Instead we expect them
To comprehend ours

Children too run
Helter skelter
With fear in the eyes
Unsure why
Mistrust masquerades
As trust
And anger as love
Like Pavlov’s subjects
Why does it all
Have to be reward
Or punishment?

When will we learn
To back off?
And wait patiently
With food and trust
On the table
And tender love in
Our hearts?

#WorldMentalHealthDay2025

Unpredictable Life

Nothing succeeds like success

And nothing fails like a failure

Life remains a gamble

Whose cards we neither own

And not do we hold

It’s a probability game they say

Chances of one being born

Chances of one dying

Who decides the starting lineup?

Who makes it

To the finishing line?

Your guess is as good as mine

It’s a bad script

A very sad one too

Life – remains a long sigh

We will never know

If the cries of those children

Will become our worse nightmare

How does one settle upon a grave?

Or build mansions

On trampled dreams

Merchants will sell you anything

Ketto diet, protein diet, botox

A whole new you

Like a Ship of Theseus

Nothing authentic or original

But yet we ace at being an odd

Superposition of the both

Forgetting lines

Of an erasing script

We keep babbling

Nothing makes sense

None of the pieces

Of this puzzle fit

If only we could feel

The emptiness of space

Earth’s solo cosmic dance

Rarest of rare life on it

Sustained by the sun

Maybe we would learn

To value this one chance

The one shot

We actually have

To live a life

To love a life

Stranger

A stranger stares at me

Whenever I look at the mirror

A school girl with two pigtails

A college goer

A trekker

A writer

Stranger takes many forms

All forms seem

Like a figment of imagination

The mirror itself has gone missing

The images are stuck in my head

My self tries to time travel

I climb the hills

But I go out of breath

The pigtails are gone too

A writer perhaps still thrives

Who will keep record

Of all these strangers?

They grew up with me

And then abandoned me

Or maybe I abandoned them

It’s not just them or me

The world has become a stranger too

Victims have turned perpetrators

Little children no longer grow old

To stare at the mirror

To remember their many strange selves

As we go further to discover

Ever expanding edges of the Universe

We seem to be collapsing

Just like those stars running out of hydrogen

We are made of star dust after all

Stars taught us to go nuclear perhaps

Just like a habitat with prey and predators

We continue to live in a concrete jungle

Though roles get reversed in every epoch

Predators become prey

Hunted turn into hunters

How long will it take for us

To be humans?

Mirror has no answers

My many selves and versions

Collapse into one too

The one that is trapped

Behind the mirror or screen perhaps

A virtual self…a stranger

Stares back at me!!

Killings

Senseless violent killings

Never make sense

More so

Killing of young children

They don’t deserve

To be targets

In a failed world

With failed morals

They don’t

Need to die

During morning prayers

For our failings

To build a safe world

Senseless violent killings

Of young children anywhere

Doesn’t make sense

Far too many children

In far too many countries

Are laying their lives

For humanity’s moral decadence

Be it in Gaza, Ukraine or US itself

The more weapons you build

The more innocents will die

Why do you wish to rule

Over corpses and graves?

What will grow there?

Your riches are scarred

And tainted with bloodbaths

We have scarred children

Who grow up as adults

To kill more children

Vicious cycles of deaths

They are on you

Though you have

Traded your conscience

To guns and drones lobby

And your religion too

How many more small graves

Need to be dug?

Don’t you realise

You are ending your line

The line of inheritance

Riches and homes

Build over little graves

Will never last

Should not last

Forever

Forever is a strange faraway land

Where eternity dwells

The word itself

Hides a promise, an irony

As well as a dread

People want to 

Live forever

Stay together

Forever

And those who die

Are gone forever

Forevers are the promises

That we never keep

Forever is a sand

That slips through our hands

Yet we cling to it

Just like we cling

To life itself

We wish for forever

Peace, happiness, health and wealth

None of which ever lasts ever

Forever is the best illusion

Created by humans

Just like Gods

Even sun and stars

Don’t last forever

Forever is a greatest irony

While we want to hold it

We don’t desire

Forever grief

Forever wars

Forever poverty

Forever inequality

Forever is the best false promise

We make to ourselves

In a transient world

Where nothing lasts forever

The best moments and joys

Are often short lived

Beauty lies in their brevity

Think of those flowers

Or our lives of our pets

While chasing forevers

We forget to live

Those precious moments

Which perhaps make our forevers

Our memories too

Don’t last forever

With time they fade

Grief and pain often

Linger and last longer

Sometimes forever

Inevitably Inevitable

Neither birth is our choice

Nor is the death

They are all accidents

Intentional or Unintentional

Serendipitous it is

Two brothers losing life together

In a car, perhaps they loved

Driving towards a destination

They never reached

A mother died while making

Her final cuppa of tea

Which perhaps she

Never got a chance to sip

A father too died years ago

While waiting for his evening tea

Which he too never got a chance to sip

It all happens in a fraction of a second

That’s all it takes to breathe in first time

Or to exhale for the last time

I hear a piercing wail of a new born

Perhaps still missing

The safe cuccoon of the womb

I hear the lament of an adult

Watching his mother’s hearse

And then we get the news of passing

Of young footballers who faced odds

But with talent that got recognised

They could afford a Lamborghini

Whose tires unfortunately gave up

Just like both the engines

Of that ill fated aircraft

Which crashed not too long ago

On the roof of a medical college

Whose students deaths

Never got counted

Just like the deaths of innocents

Which have fatigued and numbed the world

Does million have an extra zero?

We no longer count

The unaccountables

We know and accept

Death as fate

Inevitably Inevitable

It all depends on the moment (and nation)

Where you are born

Or destined to be

Or the place you are going to

Or where you are coming from

I see the news of a white student passing

In a white rich country

While looking for that dear Asian kid

Who died while trying to beat

The unprecedented heat

A river waves took him away

Then they tell me of passing

Of someone whose lungs gave away

Who chose cigarettes over his odds

We all are the risk takers

Our births are risks

Life is a risk

And so is our fight for it

And against it

Without choice we are here

Living, breathing it all in

The foul rotting smell

Fills our nostrils

Along with wafts of fresh fragrances

Of the new bloom

That’s how it is perhaps

Inevitably Inevitable

Both Life and death

A fraction of a second

A breath separating the two

A fraction of a second

It takes for the bombs to explode

Or a sniper to shoot

Those ill-fated hungry children

Who didn’t choose to be born

On that ill-fated land

Whose fate was decided

In the name of the imagined god

Gods who are yet to prove their existence

Do show up for these births and deaths

Between blessing little ones

In the name of God

And absolving the dead of their sins

The priests of the land thrive

While labs toil away

For that perfect elixir

To save us from ageing

And dying

An actress too died

While trying to be

Young and relevant

In a show business

How bizzare it is

How inevitably Inevitable

It all seems to be

Living ones getting on with it .

Winging it with AI, drones,

Botox and meditation

Adding new iterations

All in a circle

Of life and death

I stare at my nearly dead plant

Hit by the morning newspaper missile

Symbolic isn’t it?

The newspaper that carries

The news of death, wars and funerals

Nearly killed my plant

Inevitably Inevitable

Accident it is all…

We still cannot fully comprehend

That one grand design accident – Big bang

And then how down the line

Intelligently stupid

Life evolved

On this blue planet in the universe

A life that tries to comprehend itself

And has also turned upon itself

In a suicidal self sabotage

Inevitably Inevitable?

The rigged game goes on

So does poetry…

Future?

Future?

They ask me if I think of my future
– have you ever thought of…?
I tell them – I take a day a time
And future as unknown with numerous unknowns and possibilities

I have stopped dreading the future
Out of sheer shame
It is a sheer privilege and luxury
To be alive while many are dying or
Being killed mercilessly

It is not just humans I am talking about
Those are always the collateral
Quid pro pro you see?
No, no – not just life for life
But life for land, minerals, rivers, seas and power

I also mean the other species, climate, air
Trees, rivers, mountains, glaciers, 
Ponds, lakes, forests,.estuaries and wetlands
The planet under the great threat
The land sharks are on the loose
They are worse than the sea ones

And they point out to their political masters
Who they say have a cut
They serve the greed, lust and perversity
They point to you and me too
Our flawed dreams and aspirations

We all want an immortal home
In our mortal lives
We pretend to do it
For our future generations
By killing theirs and rest others

We don’t know where the Owlets went
Or the fledglings
Or the big cats, elephants or the tiny ones
When that wild fire raged
Or the bombs dropped

Future? You ask…
I don’t think it’s gonna be any different
We would be perhaps hanging on the walls
In lovely framed photos taken by best cameras
Which would be vintage ones tomorrow

Those who will survive, will ask
Like we often ask –
Why no one acted to end the war?
Or save the planet?
And life on it?
They would perhaps
Live the tragic consequences
Of our inactions

Being gone, is being free too
Eventual absolute freedom
From the degenerating bodies, ailments
From the cells which start dying
From the day we are born

Being free of the conscience
Free of thoughts and guilt
Not having to bear witness
To ghastly progress
Where we prefer algorithmic voice
And intellect too

I want my plants and trees and rivers
and nature to outlive me
I want to dream of a future that will
Breathe in gratitude
And not curse their past where
Everything was normalised and livestreamed

I just want the future to breathe
I want possibilities of the future to exist
While the present is hell bent on harming it
Just for its own imagined ‘collective good’
For the collectives which are exclusive clubs
Of the powerful, greedy and merciless

I know I don’t have a future
One day dying cells will win over
I know I will wrinkle and wither
Just like my flowers and leaves
There cannot be any other way

Perhaps I am already dead, so are you
We watch it all live streamed
Wildfires, melting glaciers, dead rivers,
Erased forests and the lakes 
Bombs and deaths of the little ones

We still go out and buy those ACs
Cars, new flats and their abundant lies
We think we are part of the exclusive ‘collectives’, the chosen fittest species
With exclusive passes
To the grand party on the plundered land!!!