Notes from a lanky old man

Hear, O' Wind, the distant hammer
ricocheting from hill to hill
its agony
silenced by a rising fog

Hear, dear brother, the autumn song
the frail voice that soothes
a dusty meadow: man had started fire
playing with flint-stones

Brothers have lost flesh & bones
in war
the lonely hammer beats overhead:
Is this the Order, is this the Law,

Where have all the flowers gone?

[ In memory of Pete Seeger ]

Anti-depressant

There's no complain in her eye. Night
fades out: she remains a stone and so do I.
Leafing through the daily pages I'm hooked
to the picture of a frigid Niagra. Cold seeps in
through my slippers and my armchair was never
less warm. The tea, my only sip of luxury, tastes
tedious.I consider telling you "Honey, this is not
a man flu!" But how do you enter a home without
being invited? - A dog scowls nearby.

I recall the tall claims made by certain "logists"
who reassured rebirth of embers
in silent rain.

Yet the camp fire is the only glow.
We watch the dance of flames: shadows grow
and shrink back to our dimension. Darkness settles in
between the stars.Morning sweeps away the ashes
leaving us in the ice-age under a future-less sky.

Valentine Day poem

i.

i wish you could hear me
amid the rattle of the pushcart
selling fresh sugarcane juice
for you i preserve
nectar from my wound

ii.

i wish you could hold me
as softly as you place
white roses upon my grave
i'd drench myself in the rain
of your nearness

iii.

how many galaxies
have i traversed alone
how many autumns
decayed on your patio
how long must our dreams burn
without giving birth
to a planet

A certain kind of love

I have this certain kind of love
for my autumn skin a skin that has been
my kindest companion since the days
of early spring I tell you I'm shredding it
unwillingly and I feel it slithering down
a limbless reptile makes its way
down the trunk of a human form
You might say I can coat myself anew
and speak softly to young buds
Yet a bruised warrior bears in mind
the battle as vividly as the victor
With an animal-gaze I stare at the branches
stripped bare and find one battered fire-fighter
taking off his fire suit with reluctance
How can you fight with the fire of autumn
a numbness grows as the acrid tang poisons
my afternoon and I tell you I simply adore
the lethal dose of love

Is Not the world, charming?

I watch luscious watermelon lips
on weekend tv shows. I admit my getting
weak-on-the-knees whenever her eyes encounter
mine. They tell you HD is a sensation; each pixel
of a petal may invite you back to your spring even though
you are a long-time loner. I admit I find this third part
of the life more hideous than the days when I was awakened

by the sound of ewes. Speaking of warmth, is not
the touch of her pashmina tantalizing? You may reason
that the essence of a season is in its passing; that birds are losing
more feathers and poets are getting loonier in quest of eternity-
why don’t I share memories with the glass case clock?

I’m unsure of the cock rising up again, I’m pissed off and I’m broke.
Yet the tide returns with the moon that casts a dream on a sleepless night,
can’t you see me flooded in my unlit room?

Scent of mahogany

He is a man of many autumns
a man who weeps for his dead roses
His roses died from an epidemic
while other trees were in flowers
You can see the sad scene looking at his
modest eyes as he looks through you
with the sagging skin that folds his grief
beneath his chin

I'm in search for my roses he declares
the Red ones remind me of faces
lost in the outbreak every time i whisper
my agonies their shoulders start drooping
white butterflies appear from nowhere
and foretell death looming for my velvety kins

A reproaching wind carries a faint smell of mahogany
He sighs and tells you about the fragrant seeds
he has kept treasured in his valise

He is a man of many autumns
a man who still weeps for his roses

Midlife

Autumn has arrived. With a look
as bewildered as a caged bear, a vision filled
with angry maples, he looks around himself.
He’s accustomed to coldness of the concrete floor
and the dry wind that brings in memories.
Of late he’s been more of a poet thriving upon
the flame colour of forest. Animals and fire
have a strange magnetism. Why must you
fear the blaze when you feel
dreams are all scalded
peppered and decaying in the mist?

Autumn has arrived a bit earlier. Some leaves
are yet to be parched. He rubs his stubble and plays
cross-word puzzles. There are more white boxes
than dark ones, and the clues poke at him like a neighbour
tapping on shoulders. The bear twinkles
and passes time with the sun that is no more a fire
in the noon.

Circles

two paths once met
in a noon glow of autumn

i have an obsession
of drawing rings
that intersect or encircle nothing

it is possibly a mind-gamble without a deal
the alibi for casting off any real hope

raindrops warble
at the fag-end of monsoon

am i passed the age of wrapping myself
with concentric dreams

i just need one last tot
of elixir

fresh circles force older ones to fade

Grasshopper

late morning in an artist's studio
half-baked clay models looking back
blankly at him as he browses through
a pile of thoughts

life is a rusty iron door
with squeaky windows that greet light
through moth-holed curtains

in his share of skyscape
he can see rabbit clouds at play
which makes him envision
a youthful grasshopper
leaping with verve from autumn
to autumn

once in a summer's noon he indulged
the whims of an Aphrodite

a mocking smile reproaches him
and he returns to the doleful hour
as he swallows the bad taste in his mouth

no locust swarms
nothing more than a helpless gaze
of Hephaestus in the mirror
one who hears none but his own hammer
in the last tinge of spring

November haiku

looking into her eye--
two tigers at war
in a monsoon

early next morning
the prick of shards
under my feet

Haiku

9-11 again
two laser beams search
for phantoms

***********

smell of earth
a green butterfly flickers
beside the grave

October

1.

startled pigeons
stop their meal
and stare at us--
she did not wait
for a reply


2.

bubbles
keep forming
in my daydream...
your split-second laugh
good enough to burst them all


3.

my garden
is in shambles
since the storm--
her head drooping
like a wilted rose

September (Haiku)

back in her eyes
the radiance--
restoration work

*

will she...?
yes...no...yes...
fireflies

*

an opening breath
of jazz...
rising fog 

Made up of fog

At a time when there were no roads
no trees, no mountains, no You and I
whoever and whatever there were
were made of fog with our ancestors 
sauntering in the haze between death
and birth 

You remind me of fossils
the ruins of civilizations the Colosseum
surely they were not vapour you argue
No we are talking about alteration of forms
each of us though fed with same ideas
are made different akin to genetic alteration

You are a riddle you say
How can possibly you and your neighbor
who follows me through the tail of his eye
be made of same material Honey 
this is absurd 

Rivers meander and so do humans
fog grows as our words merge 
with cricket-chirp

August thoughts

Tanka

eyes bulging
as a giant mushroom
blooms in the sky--
pigeons flutter
on Hiroshima Day


shivering
in the autumn chill
a wind chime
...must all things merge
into ether


Haiku


seventh time
for the spider...
she still says 'no'


sunset--
her words breaking up
into bird sounds


plop...
once more the moon
regains her face


the imprints
on a fresh page
'I'm leaving '