Flame

The closing shower of winter brushes city-towers.
Gray-haired clouds stroll with soberness; they’ve joined
one seemingly continual funeral procession.

On such a day the poet loves his inner voice.
His each whisper quivers a famished leaf, each sigh
gets more pronounced as the intensifying drizzle
while the day heads toward its destiny.

Along with a sudden whiff, one Clouded Yellow
flutters in through his window half-opened,
tempts him with lyrics of a faded storm.

Rain, more rain blurs the clear glasses -
his flippant guest settles itself
on an aeolian chime.

[Clouded Yellow ]

3 Haiku

1.

aquarium--
I’m adding up
threatened species


2.
a monk parakeet
slants its head--
my inner voice


3.
the ending pages
waver--
rusty butterfly

Quicksand

Look more towards your left-
don't you see my protruding eye-balls
fervently plead for the hand of a Samaritan?

Can't you perceive my stifled voice?
You seem to be too distant to care

As if you’re arduously conferring with those egrets,
deliberating (your) suitable place for a haven.

I've been vomiting my anguish
my elegiac gibberish musings
and that's how the litter has piled on,

given birth to a plot of quagmire to drown my soul-
and you think I'm regaling a sand bath?

Banana leaves on fire

The other day I passed by the old man's house.
Its garden is in tatters, weeds growing like his grey
tufts which used to follow the direction of breeze.
He'd seat himself on his armchair and enjoy the droning
cricket-chirp; we'd wave at each other from either side
of his great iron gate, corroded yet tolerant to spider webs
and to occasional drizzles of memory.

On the western side stands clustered banana plants,
once a verdant, sunny cluster, now turning auburn and gold
as if its up in flames in the aftermath of acrid autumn.

At times in his delirium, he used to mutter a poem
with some of its lines dropped on empty shores.
The poem talked about a spring, some forty-thirty years old,
about jasmine fragrance and sandalwood-scent, and how
once a virulent storm plundered the deftly-woven dreams,
the dexterous designs of an embroidered fantasy
that remained elusive for ever.

The fire rages, with the empty chair, and the gate
bolted from inside.

This month of February

A stocky cockatoo, prominent for its wit
scrapes its perch and habitually repeats:
“For my Valentine, I've plucked a plump rose!”

After preening, examining its own existence
like a besotted lover lost in a cloud,
it reverts back to a meditative silence
as clock declares the fall of an hour.

When a crepuscular sky fills its eyes
with cherry-hues, it resumes its crackle,
this time, in a sobered baritone:
"For my Valentine, I've dumped a plump rose!"

Getting submerged

There was an unusual breeze
that whined through my curtains
and escorted me to a beatific archipelago
a silvery beach lined with balmy trees

My footprints dug deep into the sand
oddly enough
and I was left wobbling in a trance

And then there were some sculptures
created artlessly out of rocks, each resembling
decaying human forms

Moaning, except for the couple
busy with a last lingering kiss of earthiness

Unassumingly, the island started to sink,
and a blue mist arose to cover us

oak shadows (Haiku)

oak shadows
enter my room --
a chickadee's song

Northerly wind

In the room crammed with senile chronicles
a clock hangs like a hungry buzzard

Marigolds arranged in circular queues
lend a golden blush to a bland balcony

Pinnate leaves and wispy petals quiver
fondled by a chivalrous gust

One bluebird inspects the wavering "Y" of a tree
and each evening my long-known envelopes

become more auburn
 
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