Soumya Scribbles...

Timely

2012-01-28T10:17:00.001-08:00

Holding a pen after a long time, when your hand shakes and fingers betray to keep a symmetry of similar letters, is a pleasure. You feel like coming back home from a far-away place and finding that old scent that you had left it with. But now you are new. Coming back is always like that. It makes us feel new to our old places.

How old is our past? Does it start with the moment before and end with your paperboats of childhood? For some it is like the backward journey of a night train. The stations are known by the whistles, sudden brakes and old station-master's familiar voice. The green flag looks black then. But you can still take a deep breath and just know. There is no past in an arrival.

We all search for patterns in our life, in others' lives. When we find one, we rest; when we don't we call it consequence. Sentiments, deepest of them, are a lot like glue. They can not let go. They stick to one's heart and hurt the most when you try to detach them.

In coming back home, looking back at past and remembering how attached you were - there is no cycle in that, there are no triangles and no conclusion. Strangely, there is a great air of certainty in knowing, you do not even write them for yourself.

Then we realize, leaving them is as important as it was in living.

Homecoming

2012-01-28T10:15:00.001-08:00

Transition is not a phase but a wise regulation. It is what we hate and the same we love. Likewise, our life. We revolve - around a few people, a few objects and a few thoughts. They are not moon to us, we are. They are as silent as the respiration of flowers, but essential to the tree.

In between, the cohesion spreads its arms and knots a few doubts to welcome the new. There is no glory, no ambition in it. It has deep sleep and a calm. As unassuming the sea is, the desert is and the hills are at night - yours and mine, the lives of others' are too. There the ink dries and thoughts flow as it has nowhere to reach. It runs. Poetries and novels become seismographs. They bend down on all the memories that were and will never be wise but neighbours all along.

Somtimes we write because we would want the story to end in a certain way, abruptly. Certainty is blasphameous for a lost soul. It is that when the old frog jumps from the sea to the well and feels nothing has changed.

He is home.

Inadequate

2011-12-08T01:59:00.001-08:00

Trees lean against the wind,
brunches clasping, they wait like mothers.
There is no taking in chlorophylls.They are givers.
So is the sea that goes blue till your eyes meetand then a shade of green.
Like in relentless motion, colours are tradedon dawns n dusks (with sky).
Life travels through the veins of those trees at night,
through the leaves, the weak hands, feeble vocal chords of plants.
And it places itself in the loud resonance of seas -
the authority in which it is calming,
traversing a thousand sparkling salinityand reaches the shore -
quick-feet, silent as the sand crabs.
Dazzled the day is and restless the night,
it moves, prays, grows and hums.
That is, what is, we see
and there is -
as irrelevant and essential to name -

us.

We hang
.
..

[Life doesn't need a stanza, it flows. The last time I read it in a poetry, it was nude]

A Different Dawn

2011-11-12T18:32:00.001-08:00

The sun rose with introvert rays. It is a different dawn - One that comes deep and wise, saying you to look within yourself. At that moment, as you bathe in its purity, there is a song. A song of life, of its fragility, its beauty and the nothingness. With a coffee cup in my hand and standing on a terrace where one is fortunate to see the horizon from a city, I gaze in awe. Pure, ambivalent in its intention the nature teaches me an important lesson then.

The fisherman on the farthest corner of the Ganges, where She just travels quitely, is to be envied. When it is dawn for us, its a night over. There are tired fishes, yesterday's oyesters, excited snails and assured hyacinths in his net. From childhood, he has always wondered if tracing the Sunray to the distance will lead him to heaven. Someday, somewhere that journey will start.

There is her. Beautiful in frailty she lives through the better half of moon. She knows nights are like mothers - calm, restrained, quiet. And with the morning comes a patriarch. Morning is always too much knowledge to her. She remembers faces that look upto, wantingly, the ones who seek to be understood, in despair. Dawn to her has been quiet mountains - knowing her loved one is asleep in the valley. They have taught her that tears have meanings; they are the words that queued up like poor immigrants. They did not have a map to be.

And dawns are like this - from the city, to the river, to the moon. Somewhere it touches yesterday's coffee stains, shivering old fish-boat and the window by the desk where she sleeps.

It touches and leaves. Just.

SoUmY@

Essencial

2011-09-21T03:59:00.001-07:00

We all have our parts of the sky. Just the thought that we own it or no one else does is same way gratifying. There is a little soul inside us who goes to the roof every night. He counts stars and marks with white chalk, the boundaries.

Time has passed. Rains have troubled the busy mornings, drizzled and soothed in the evening and rested at night in clouds. Waiting restlessly to claim my side of the sky again, I have realized, at some nights you just have to give in. In life, sometimes you won't get your part of the sky.

There will be beautiful dawns. After long nights of darkened assumptions, there will be a time when with the drowsy, uninterested eye you will stroll to the roof and look up . The lines are not there. The stars are retiring, the counts are less. Still, at that time, there is a feeling of fondness...

... A fondness to have found life back. Rest is just a story of how you fall in love with yourself, all over again.

- SoUmY@

Elementee

2011-08-01T07:55:00.001-07:00

Winds have stories to tell today;
Silent, careless, burdened.
It all comes in stream still.
They whisper to the ears
to the eyes, to skin.

Seas have words to say.
For long they have rushed in
with quietness and returned memories
to the trembled feet.
Today, it will write a novel on me.
There will be salt and sands.

And,
From within there is a voice;
No questions, no qualms.
Tonight it will look inside
and discover the depth in black.
Getting a few unanswered is also knowledge.

Together, they will write a poetry.
There is a lot of traveling in love.

- Soumya

Tale of Two

2011-07-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

Silence had its own ego. That has been shredded last spring with the arrival of something deeper. Now there is a communion. An assured soul now sits in a blue painted room and lits up a cigar and doesn't smoke. Just the smell, and an even dwell between the fire and the ash. Worthlessness of words is not scary. You realize it when in a completely dark room, happy tears flow. Tears are aesthetics of compassion. Any word is a guest there, unwanted. One feels as if he can wait infinite moments before the tears stop and a sound is made. You can never replace a word said, even if you could, you can never bring back a slice of silence once it was broke.

An old old city in India and the crowded streets, the dirt, the dust, the rickshaw pullers, roadside tea stalls with candles, shops semi-lit, hawkers invading footpaths, the hustle and the bustle - all of this chaos is so brilliantly canvased that you believe they are arranged. Through that bazaar of life, I have walked clutching onto someone's fingers. Sometimes you wonder how beautiful it is to be the contrast. In that pandemonium, your quietness is still heard. You just look at the eyes that have all the shades of light present there and forget about time. No need to say anything. Hold her hand and mix in the crowd. At times you feel good as you were not too special to be alone.

Life - in words or in its quietude, in crying or laughing about it - was still breathing. You just waited for the face that would assure you of yours. Share a splash of your life. It is always worth living after.

SoUmYA

Finding a Reason

2011-06-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

Bricks get burned to make a house. Red, rectangular they are. Never knowing that burning with siblings will comfort many a laughter, many a tears and much more. Women burn with jealousy. There is no comfort in that. It is red, squarish - even from each side. They are like camphors. they burn to get into ashes or into airs. Men burn in indifference. They never know when their souls were stoned and they made bricks out of it in fire - sheltering only themselves. Houses never become homes.

Who is love? Feelings are funny. They have many a crossroads inside you than you know. The shortest route to reach a heart is a mathematics. But to stay there is humane. After making love, in the morning when you look at the walls and the bricks that burned themselves to let you have the comfort of a home, there is a woman who sleeps next to you wrapping herself up in a wrinkled bedsheet. At that point of time, there is a reality check. If the bricks were for that woman, that is love.

There are secrets in our eyes. Ones that ironically crave to be read but hide themselves in shyness. Someone told me you need a storm to read it. I have always preferred quietness - the pauses of it, the screaming of it. So I preferred a prism. Love is about absorbing all its reflections. Its so beautiful that you won't like to touch and feel lusty. You will be ruining a ray if you do that. we wait. That is the softest part of it.

The bricks, the love, the mind - we all are builders of our world in ways. Its a triangle that balances the geometry we choose to live for.

That whole part of it is called, finding a reason.

SoUmY@

A Day's Tale

2011-06-15T06:03:00.001-07:00

Early mornings have their own essence. It owns people and places. Fog that reluctantly fades away not knowing if it should come back, people who walk to celebrate life, the old chaiwala who sells tea with a nonchalant but smiling face, the red brick house from where the oldest of songs are played on a dying radio - All of it is so perfect and yet casual. It is like the essence that comes with your deepest of emotions in the beginning. The softness that percolates through the souls, resonates with others and hears itself playing a beautiful tune. The perception of the world is in its diffused happiness, then. A gentle breeze and just that.

With the day's burns, comes the sweat. Even a realization is annoyance then. You wish it will pass but it stays back. Hours threaten and hangs until the soul tires. There is no secrecy. It is a time when you lose your personal belongings. There is the sea of humanity. You go and mix. Its when the magic heads downstream. Keeps are worth selling.

Nights are extremes. Either they come with a lot of fears or sits serene. Black is a color of introverts. It absorbs and blots and hides all the feelings one has, or had. The best of romantics could dream looking at the stars and the moon. The best of fears come after two weeks. Most of the emotions are defined in their own territories of wanting to be addressed. Either you do or you lose yourself. Feelings are shy. They grow when no one could see. Touch, and you will know. Emotions die without crying.

You can never believe in a night, the lovers say. Hours peel themselves down seducing moments. One after the other. As it reaches the deepest - I have seen the glowing eyes, I have seen the wet pupils.

Then it dawns - Some slept in peace, some awaiting a morning. Eavesdrop and you will hear sobs or happy breaths. Fears and happiness have shapes. Look at a sleeping woman and trace the mark of her tears on her face - you will know.

Then there is a void. A void that is either happy or sad. The void between the dawn and the morning. The difference between your best of dreams and your shrieking alarm clock. The difference between what happened and what would. The difference between a life and another.

There is no better philosophy than to wish to live a better day. And fulfilling it.

SoUmY@

Neon

2011-05-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

With darkness comes a fragility.
Nights flatter your shell
and a human is born, from within.

Conjugal stains, marital sobs,
hushed tones, hurried breathings,
excited laughs and polar winks -
they conveniently enter at nights
and exit silently on another dawn.

That is the time we talk of stars,
the displaced, breathing moon.

We hold hands or leave them.

A strange wine that is a moment.
We cherish as used less;
More? and then we are used to.

From the wiseness of an owl,
the silent autocracy of dark
and the rebellion of emotions
comes sweet decadence.

If you have always waited for the Sun,
the life was only half full.

SoUmY@

Of Love

2011-04-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

There are islands inside all of us. Uneven in size, floating, drifting towards or away from each other they are, in an ocean. The thickness is a mystery. You never know how much is inside that deep blue water. The inches that float above the level is just a layer one would fathom. Assuring in its kind, it serves another purpose. You never let two islands come close.

Between them lies the ocean - split, convenient in its flexibility. It trespasses onto and around everything. That is why we keep our secrets inside it. Treasured deep they are. On quiet nights I dive in the freezing cold and warm myself with my pasts hidden at the center of the earth.

Now that you have an ocean inside you, there are stormy nights when the memories surface to sea level and touch islands. Curious souls pick them up and return to you, breaking or savouring. For some, the sea is rough, repetitive. For me, its quiet, its blue and just that.

For a relation, principles are like that thickness of an island. You never are sure when to use one, or to say, that you used. It is amusing indeed. But then, our deepest feelings are wondrous. They travel like clouds over a night sea when the stars and the moon observe.

Nothing is stationary. The oceans move, so does your treasure inside it and the islands that emote a thousand you into quietness of nights or the brightness of a morning. There, while traveling that eternity, an ocean is shared.

Little matters beyond. on a very beautiful moment you realize, someone has intruded into yours and stolen an island.

Sea meets a sea.

SoUmY@

Utsav

2011-04-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

23, Kashi Bose Lane, Calcutta, then.

This is about a time when Calcutta was still colonial, atleast by name. A time when hand-pulled rickshaw and its chime used to define the sounds of the city, a time when communism was still red, seasons were still interested in being theatrical. Relations were earthened by writing letters, rhymed and novice poems. Festivals then were celebration of life, first. They had souls. That was the time, more or less, all the cities like our emotions were simple, unambitious and honest. It was before options decayed life into ashes.

On festivals like Durga puja, we would gather in our grandpa's house. I remember our parents were uncomplaining that way. They knew the quiet maturity of gatherings. The long verandah with black and white squared tiles, that has seen generations crawling, walking, running over it, was wise. Even during the summers, it would be cold, thus. Men, all wearing kurta pajama would sit on it and play cards, talk business, futures and ofcourse cricket. There was never a hurry. Technology was still pregnant with 3G and mobile phones. People were slow, quiet and understanding. They won't excuse themselves from elders. Relations were proud and respectful, those days.

Women had their own warmth and vibes. I used to wonder, how a double bedded cot could accommodate all my aunts and mom happily. Their noise was undisturbing. They will laugh, talk proudly of family, whisper new recipes and remember and resurface every tiny moment that had impacted them in the last year. Waves of emotions had a symmetry. Their sixth senses used to create the high and low notes of resonance miraculously affecting none.

The festival and its schedules and celebrations had dedicated followers in all. Us, cousins will keep memories like gifted story books, secretly. There was a heart that used to make us aware of the specialty of the moments and that they may not be continuing forever. There were moisture in the air during the end. We have seen men with wet eyes, then.

23, Kashi Bose Lane, Kolkata, now.

There are no stereo-typical comparisons to be drawn. We still get the blue inland letter from the above address, in a shaky handwriting, every year. An invitation that calls us to our roots. Conveniently we ignore the postbox at times.

We gather once in a while and play cards on the old verandah, Spouses gather and secretly talk bout their changing priorities and busyness, we excuse ourselves frequently from each other. On the last day we go to the same room and follow the traditions of showing respect to grandma.

There, just there, in a squarish room, under a dim lit bulb, infront of a weak 70 year old soul - engineers, doctors, lawyers cry silently. Guilty they are may be. That living soul puts her hand on our heads to bless. The warm touch assure us of forgetting. It assures us of forgiving.

Quietude performs a different resonance then. While leaving, We regret the times we have pretended to be busy.

SoUmY@

Erosion

2011-03-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

There is a sadness in the eyes of a river when it stealthily, so quietly eats up the soft earth at night. Inch by inch. The earth is soulful, silent. It is like that lover who welcomes his decadence on a coin. There are two sides - reluctant and willing. They flip. All in the name of love. His sacrifice is not pitiable but respecting. That is why men made earth their homes and not water.

Erosion is attached to soil. Much to the surprise, it relates to soul, too. Love is the most simple word in existence. To our convenience, it is ambiguous. There is decay in emotions too. Feelings have conflicts like utensils. They are loud even at subtle moments. And one day, it discovers the gradual unreeling of soul. The realization is as penetrating as an aggressive river to its bank. You then know, belongings were lost. What remains is a map. That stays.

Words are humane. Their sensitivity comes from a different dimension. They are used, misplaced, misinterpreted and often excessed. That is why if you don't choose them carefully, there can be strange noises. They come with no cost, they don't ask. And that is why, they are bright when used less.

Pause, reader.

Time is introvert. It always rotates, uniform in a pre-defined path. It is too shy to stop so that none notices. That is the irony. Same with the blind earth at night. It accepts its decay and wishes, someday she will realize and retract. Words wait when they will not be taken as granted, much as some quiet souls.

But the erosion continues - inch by inch, soul to soul, commas to colons. Someday with all hushed in, there will be grains dried up. They won't have eyes but you will know, there was only pity.

Bring me a rain, then.

To Dash

2011-03-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

And there will be deathless souls

Screaming and piercing the sky like white owls
as they journey to the moon.

Lovers beckon, thirsty as the dried up river
that shies below the draughted earth.
Above, they kiss holding breaths
and the unending moisture wets.

A cactus is born with red rose.

To this Dhansiri riverside, where the nostalgic Shalik
looks back with dark eyes,
you may yearn for a return to the place
that you have searched for, with a life.

If you come back, tiptoeing, unassumingly as a stranger,
that you have always been,
Poet, you may see,
they still remember a woman by her hair,
they still love each other by eyes.

Poet,
Natore is still the new bride you had seen.
The ghaats and the owls and the boats and the crows hear
the steps that had brought rains once.

Banalata waits to be loved again.

- Soumya :)

Jibanananda Dash will be very special to me for more reasons than one. He was the only one who could have his own route despite being somewhat contemporary to Tagore, for being the lonely poet he has been, for being reckless, ahead of time, tremendously passionate and same way poor. For he never had happiness but the yearning to find peace, in rural bengal, in insignificant things.

Dhansiri - a small river. Shalik - a bird, Banalata - Dash's love interest in literature, Natore - a small small place in Bengal.

Lives of Others

2011-03-10T10:10:00.000-08:00

Summer night. The footpath lies in an awkward posture and keeps conscious like a newly married bride rehearsing her dresses, but casually. Upon it, like many layers of a metaphor, are shoes. Shoes of people who are walking with a purpose or not. There are no last lines of philosophies. Its only a disciplined rows of bricks pitifully cemented with each other without a choice. You never knew if they could fit, but none cared. A lot of lives walk on them.

There is a black spider that weaves its web meticulously on the street lamp that won't glow again. That is convenience. The concentration on the spider's eyes is something to learn, to envy, to fear. We have some in our heads. They create webs when the purple shades of understanding meet the green compromises. Chemists say its dangerous in normal temperature. We still mix, being proud, each. They explode and/or they are called love.

The ferry driver is a lonely soul to his last trip. The deep dark river holds beyond the emotions he can fathom. And there are a few reluctant people on the boat who avoid the river, the present, as they would, their dark and questioned past. Everyone wants a closure then. Hurried smiles exchanged, the ferry is run, as fast. The driver only knows he has to come back alone. He fears the dark. It has the memories of strangers.

Three dots, incoherent. They celebrate life by seeing others', by living the shares. Sometimes, while walking up the sea shore when you see snails and the transparent water that washes your feet, a thought ponders, you are but a part of the lives summed up,

just a part but an important part of lives of others.

SoUmY@

Travelogue

2011-03-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

There is an uneven shyness in unknown stations. You can relate to your deepest emotions with them. They are hesitant, withstanding the obvious and still oblivious of definiteness. Trains come, the starving lights blink at an uneasy corner. An old station master comes out from the dark and waves with a green flag. It's almost as not required as the train's presence there. But still they meet. Two inconspicuous characters breathe life, only then in the whole day.

Traveling is beautiful, Journey is more wise. There is an independence in being a traveller. Self imposed duties come when you are doing the latter. There will be expectations of better places. The former is more bohemian of sorts. Its like the essence of love without the sense of future responsibilities. Traditionalists may curse.

Riding a train at night is unassuming and so absurdly romantic. You look out of the window and there is nothing visible. Still there is a strange attraction as the moon sneaks out of the cloud sometimes and gives you a peek to the root that lies like a snake and reaches the heart of the village. Or atleast you can not see where it ends. Anything incomprehensible to us, is either interesting or curious in itself. You will see stranger stations with abstract names fast approaching and departing. They are less casual than the unknown stations where trains stop. There is a surety and nonchalance in them. Life doesn't stop there. You feel sad, a little.

At dawn, when the Sun rises, there is an undoing in a traveller's eyes of yesterday's sleep. The miles that you have crossed, you discard. The moments you have seen the lost roads in faraway villages, you remember. And as the train shouts and runs towards the young Sun, you fall in love with your life for the first time. If it rains, stretch your arms and feel the rains as you meet new members of the clouds' descendants each moment.

Someone said, she could marry a station. I dream, one day I will wake up inside a train and there will be no tracks.

SoUmY@

Smelling Salt

2011-02-10T08:33:00.001-08:00

I dream colours.
They come and create collage
while I sleep.

There is a nausea
in not seeing black.

You won't miss it
until it is not there.
It's almost as people who stand there
in our lives, as shadows;
And we forget them at nights.

The mosaic in my floor teaches me
the philosophy of life.
In all this shine, I see
my opaque face and feet,
together in one square.

I keep coloured scraps, glitter pens
and emotional hues.

On a rainy afternoon,
when sadness is a guest
To old bricks' house,
I will paint on the roof.

Mix oil pastel to rain waters then.
It smells a lot like life.

SoUmY@

Inconspicuous

2011-02-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

There will be rings, and more. Perfectly formed, puffed with meticulous crime, they will burn out eventually. There will be the filters, blackened, hesitatingly finding newly made relatives inside the ashtray. And they will be washed off with detergents someday. Smokers won't care. They never did. There will be newer brands, colored filters, mild nicotine and taller specimens. They will walk away.

No you and me in this piece. No 'I's, no 'WE's. Togetherness is something that pulls the strings in wrong places, or in wronged places. The times are never right. The most hated and used member at home is the clock in the living room. It reminds the four walls of screws that pierced through and are feeble now. It reminds others of the time they are always short of. It remembers that his engine is weak now and needs replacing. And starts getting slow, slowly.

There will be old flowers. Sometimes adjectives sound strange. Never associate flowers with age. They die of shyness. Even if you find them in the garden,embarrassed, naked with petals betrayed, mellowed with losing fragrance, still, smile. With precision one has to grant euthanasia to the hopeful lot. Until they leave, there will not be a bright morning next. What goes around never comes around. Its just that, we are used to see-offs.

Then sparrows. They are like those tenants who make a family whole, fonding. At times their sense of understanding surpasses the boundaries of human flexes. They chirp according to the mood of the house. They will feed their children when the family sit around the dining table. One day, when someone breaks a sad news and all cry, they fly away. They sense the unwelcoming eyes, annoyed fists. Communist sympathies never reached the aves. Ventilators flow North and south wind again. Not that anyone ever cared.

Should there be a conclusion? There are no such words called Closure. But there is a word, resonance - The ticks, the chirps, the puffs and the colors.

SoUmY@

[Note: Dedicate this to someone who has always inspired me to write on, no matter what. Has insisted, persisted, succeeded.]

Diary

2011-01-25T07:29:00.000-08:00

Today is Tuesday.

Other days, I will write a poem perhaps. A prose was almost derogatory. I had fixed loans from my memory. Seas, trees and rains. I will mostly write about them. In an old Kolkata road, where I was born, heritage was sibling to cultures. A burden at times, too. Through the narrow lanes of neighbourhood, people will divide skies amongst themselves. Then at night, a romantic will sneak onto the roof and intrude into yours.

Stars have always made me wondrous. They are far. We all gaze a distance by assumptions. There comes the consideration of space. It is almost like loving someone silently. You are on that feeble thread at the end of which the person stands. You do not know where to stop, how to space, when to get close. You do not know, if you are allowed to scream when you fall down. You may chuckle. 'Allowed' is indeed a funny word. Likewise, life.

In the old alleys of childhood, there used to be a shop where antique perfumes were sold. The shopkeeper was as archived. With different scents inside colorful glass bottles, they used to come out and dissolve in the air with every curious customer. Loyally they will be diffused in and around the ceiling and soothe and haunt. Every bottle had a lot of past in them, like ours. They will mix with each other and be never forgotten.

While walking across these lanes, I still smell the wet bricks from the last rain. When I sleep, the far away stars twinkle, invite me to measure the distance between us. The seas roar quietly. When I sleep, the roots of the trees around my house grow and meet each other. They make love.

It's still Tuesday and I have intruded into a stranger's sky.

SoUmY@

Forgotten Woods

2011-01-15T22:02:00.000-08:00

There was a time when this woodpecker used to go to the Rhododendron trees and make holes to find insects. Then they will make a house for themselves and live. It never mattered to them as trees are uncomplaining. It never mattered to me as I used to find a much lower skin to peel and write my stories with white chalks. Finding a shelter was easier thus.

Some winter, when an untimely storm blew my old friend, we both got homeless. I have wondered before. I was concerned about its ageing. Sometimes me and the woodpecker will look into each others eyes and read minds. Perhaps the mute companion of ours had a wave of understanding that he generously granted us. We would talk about our lost days, idle summers and explain our hearts the worthiness of it all, though vague.

My father used to say, when there is no beauty in your sadness, go to a tree and wrap your arms around it and cry. Uncountable times, I have. It was inexplicable how it has soaked all of it. They say, grief has its own waves to reach others. I have not mistaken the woodpecker's sparkling eyes in a dark night for anything else. We three have cried, together.

At times when I have had reasons to laugh, I have run to the woods. There you laugh once and they join in. Physics was always mundane. It used to call the generous, an echo. Sound reflects, so do the emotions that you could never distinguish through any baro-paro-meter or a class X subject.

With all that as a memory and what we easily lock up in our furnished apartments, as past, I have slept with strangers, liquored myself, added zeroes on the right side and grown money-plants. Reaching at that phase of a life where you await a storm, today, I feel like remembering all those.

There is a moment where you feel lonely because you are urban. Then you think of all those toys you had left behind as they were poor, trees as you couldn't take them to your new place. You think about your mother and how you could have visited her one extra time and surprise her. You couldn't, as it never occurred to you for an annual leave was there to save, to earn. You think about how your father would have been happy if you had called him once and said, hello. Just that.

To repair all that happened in springs, I shall go and count the leaves and the holes someday. The losses, we will share.

SoUmY@

To Someone

2011-01-04T09:19:00.000-08:00

Every night I write a poem
For you on my secret pages,
where, the scent of our memories
mixes with the old papyrus.
And punctuates.

My words are like semicolons;
Misplaced, confused and necessitated.

They are pre-grieved by
the distance of ours, on maps.

Human emotions are twins to latex.
They shrink and float,
expand and gloat.

In all those fractional moons,
lost metaphors, unbound seas and
indifferent mountains

You may have wondered,
how had I lost myself into you
when there was still fog.

My poems have not seen you for ages.
Still when it rains there,
I open my wooden windows.

My words search for your smell
and that of earth's.

SoUmY@

Renaissance

2010-12-31T21:09:00.000-08:00

There is this dark sea,
One that scares, baffles,
reminds you are a human.

There is this shore.
Sands - treacherous they are
they will slide away.

Each step is drunk
with a beauty that awaits
and uncertainty that roars.

As I stand there
endangered and mesmerized,
the sky plays cruel.

There are stars and no moon.
Black as it is with a little gray,
Surrendering is only pivotal.

Either way,
you are already killed
to live, better.

SoUmY@

Bohemian

2010-12-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

And I sold off my poems today.
The ones who bought it
had red sackbag with them.
They never knew what poetry is about,
neither did they care.
They cared about the ounce and pounds.
Convert the numerics if you will.

I have a bright Eucalyptus as my memory.
Can green be bright?
Perhaps. They have the Sun behind them.
The roots have reached where they should not.

Restraint is a play of nervous system.
You may be as random as your favorite liqour
And its a pity that it takes one peg to write a poetry
or may be one or two smokes.
Art always was whimsical, but never sedated.

With a little of all that we know,
and all that we don't,
a violin, little rings of cigar
and lost alleys of Varanasi,

You won't know what you are,
Unless you have lost yourself
Once.

SoUmY@

Humane

2010-12-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

A dazzling night
and I can not sleep as easily
as you can.
In my millions of veins
there is a rebel that fumes
and exerts and still is quiet.
A blood that freezes an ice, is of mine.

What is it to write
without an eraser?
it is almost you, real.
The way you falter and can not clean
the way you can derange and be helpless
So are we on the sheets.

I had seen a painter who has sketched
on a black art paper.
Art, as they are, indistinguishable,
Unavoidable, plain as the paper.
Bring him a white chalk, perhaps.

Likewise, we all are.
We run while the hideouts are lit up
And then face a chuckle, gross.

I will run to the horizon to search shyness.

SoUmY@

Bubbles

2010-12-11T21:49:00.000-08:00

If you want to escape,
surrender yourself to the cloud,
once.
You may float as the density of emotions
were never as great as clouds.
They carry traces of other world's.
You are a no one there.

Biting my fingers is a pleasure
that I derive from my drinks.
I like to feel if I am me.
Almost like this night where I am drunk
And can feel myself more than
I do with you all.
there is a loneliness that is
comforting, strangely.

Far away from where you can reach
I have a world of my own.
A world that I savour, even the pain.

if you had come, realize,
All that glitters were never gold,
but life, alright.

SoUmY@

Belongings

2010-12-05T06:06:00.001-08:00

We all live with a box.
There inside lies black papers,
earthen pots, some postcards
of countries I have never been,
A few letters and a past.

Some trees have roads in between.
They stand in a row.
When it pours, I come out with the box,
Take a drop or two of seasonal rain,
Keep it.

The earthen pots may melt.
The postcards are old, they refuse color.
But clouds travel.
This rain may come from cross-atlantic.
I keep all that I can not touch, then.

Possessions are not prismatic.
They reflect pity.
They reflect past you can't live without.
For all of us, the box is that.

Some day I will go to the quietest river
and drop the box with all I had.

Then I will dive.

We all die with and without.

- SoUmY@

...Of Modern times and a vagabond

2010-11-26T10:46:00.000-08:00

How much can you trace back
in one moment?
May be a mile.
Memories are not measured by units.

Today there are no more sad lines.
We will talk about the wine that is
buried in your backyard.
We will talk about the graffiti
that I am yet to construct.
These days art has a new name - photoshop.
You can buy yours with a quick few clicks.

I am half drunk.
The other half is life.
With that I lie in a dark room
and listen to a music that is soft
but deafening.
Most relations are, the same.

Pretension has its perimeters.
They are weak when you are.
On one such moment,
you do things that you never regret.
People change, so do leaves.
You wait.

Give me a hundred good dreams.
I will sleep deep, then.

SoUmY@

Coupling

2010-11-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

What you call a black paper,
Is the one that awaits a white chalk,
I hold.
The thread between us is
like those small red crabs on
sea sands -
Quick feet, unsure,
still beautiful.

The scent in you is perpetual.
I peel the skin at nights.
Yours are like snakes' in winters.
They glow when I dip myself, into.

Somedays I burn.
I am like phosphorus(P).
And porous(:).
I try and contain you,
the whole of you in me.
You slid through as grains.
Helplessly, I emit at night.
There is no fire, you say.

I am incandescent.

I cry.
In happy and sad times,
my eyes fill up with saline water
that reflects moon, sharply.
You say, its childish,
We are role-reversed.
A man shouldn't cry that much.

Then, monthly expenditure of salt is mathed.
We agree that,
I will never write on a wet paper.

And,
I break my promises,
far too often.

SoUmY@

Life Etcetera

2010-11-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

There is a little rain in all of us.
There should be.
There are winters too.
Seasons cycle for humans,
or vice-versa?
There is a lot of vice if you think.

My poetry is as good as the moment.
They dissolve and laugh and cry.
If I am lucky, I am loved.
And luck? that is a respite for loss.

Today I wish to talk about important things,
may be that red bag.
It has travelled a lot, with me.
To cities, to seas.
It has carried a lot, of me.
To buses, to boats.
Now it stays, stoic, and the metallic chains rust
with a lot of me, inside, as air, as vacuum.

I have burned myself like wax.
Melting has its own charm,
As has sacrifice.
One is never the same before,
and after.

If you Compare loss to mutual funds,
you will understand there is more to shares
than money. There always were.

And laugh as you may like,
the world that lets you lead a life,
is actually getting slow, to die.

The day it stops,
Breathe.

SoUmY@

Belated

2010-11-17T07:34:00.000-08:00

Through the distant stars
I recall the nights
that had our names,
as two oval halves of a sandclock.
Complimenting each other
quietly we would mix.

My love for you is like
the coloured windchime.
Tune is its forte, still
on a rainy day you prefer sparkles.

Remember? You gifted me a magnet.
Poles reconciled.
Opposites attract.
We were quite the same, still.
Physics is so merely physics, at times.

A quota in my life is for me, little.
Rest is yours.
A quota in my poetry is you, a lot.
Rest is a mundane stanza.

A note I had had for you.
Delivered but escaping a thousand
waves of your white saree.

Still living with the scent,
I have changed a line or two,

"All the roses in this world were white.
Until love came and dipped them in red."

SoUmY@

Oblique

2010-11-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

Lonely is the poet.
If you can't find another expression,
You worry not.
We all live with a little of
physics, chemistry and mathematics in life,
but poetry.

On a chilling night,
when kith and kinship is established in real world,
The poet wraps himself up with the snow
and the blanket that is as porous as a metaphor.
He heads South.

Words? No he is too full of that.
Souls? He is still to.

On a rainy day,
when people are either sheltered or making love,
The poet visits his old school street;
He finds new joy in waiting for someone, again.
Knowing she will not come, she has sent rain.

Care? No he is too full of that.
Life? He is still to.

The poet dies ordinarily one day.
When people were either happy or sad,
The poet leaves, just.
It was not winter so there was no metaphor
in his death.
Beside him was his book, his poems.

Poems? No he had written too many.
Blanks? He still had to.

SoUmY@

Random...

2010-10-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

Two autumns. My blue pen has dried off as has been many of the thoughts. They have come and gone and no one has cared. Just like that quiet station in the village where the train itself is a curiosity first, necessity later. There is a human who signals with a green flag. Station master. I wish I would get that job in the farthest corner of human existence. But. But you all have made Earth round. In all these human rights and democracy, a person cries for a quiet corner on the busiest road. He is wearing a torn red shirt. Someone please help. I assure. He is not a communist. I am not a humanist too.

One spring. I have felt a lot. I don't know if there is any capacity of emotions just like our address-books in mobile phones. We delete 'old' contacts. We bring in new. Tennyson should be happy. He would not be. At some cloudy nights I have gone through some of my such 'old' friends. Our savoured moments are called logs there.

2009/02/28 22:00:00 PM 45:00 minutes. 09830527***

I recollect. I had paupered myself that night. Let's assume that I was talking about balance. Those three stars are to show my faithfulness to that person. How convenient. I have to delete her tonight. Erasing one kind of memory is easier thus. I will keep a new contact. My new boss. My confirmatory appraisal is just around the corner. Am I an opportunist? No. My phone book is as impotent. Blame her. or it.

One Summer. I have created a balance sheet for life. In one such afternoon, I have calculated my Sunburns to my dried clothes. Did I benefit? I always like to think I am at loss. Just like you. Perspectives has perspired. At the end of the day, the dying Sun has made me feel victorious, happy, contented. No one knows, how defeated I was, you were. I hate summers.

Five rains. I like rainyday holidays, paperboats, black boots, unscheduled laziness and windchimes. Do you feel that you can sit in front a half eaten wooden window and watch its raining? I can. I am slow, unicoloured, purposeless as this write, unfortunate as the ink that flows without knowing it will concentrate and go deep just when its dying. Poetry is synthetic. It slips from one season to the other until it settles to a stable curve. Rain is that.

I pity those who use umbrella. One afternoon, someone told me to drench in rain. I couldn't say no. That is what has made me say yes forever. Or to you. Consequences never mattered. Clouds never had answers, nor they had certainities. But they are like the deepest emotions, when heavy, they will Pour down, and again, and again, and...

No winters. In my story, this year, there are no winters. If you had waited for a few frail leaves, I had them. I have them. Deranged like the Kaleidoscope that randomly creates patterns of images just to split in the next moment. Winters to me, is also that. I will tell you their story some other day.

For now, let us think of that lost migratory bird who is waiting a year to meet its family, the summer winds in the evening which can make you love summers again, your first emotion that morphs itself as a silk irrespective of a season and if you can, think of the ashtrays where you have crushed a lot of you, recently.

With all that and a morning newspaper, tell me which season are you?

SoUmY@

Chess

2010-09-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

There is a game we play.
Black and white, as they are.
64 is just a number,
as are cats' nine lives or our one heart.

You are a pawn
if you are first.
Reason out your sacrifice, within.
When someone crosses,
die hard.

Relations are straight.
Go, meet and stay.
When needed we know
You and I become animal, diagonal.
Eat up and carry the leftover.

Escapists wait for two and a half.
When no one is looking,
they jump, at night.
They prey.

You and I are pawns.
Like emotions and trees
we never go back.
I die when he kills.

Or else squares make me a vegetable.

Money is like a rook,
Traverses here to end,
Scaled to be one-dimensional it is.
Then Life castles.
We trade humans for emotions.
Love migrates,
We call it a defense.

Beyond all these,
time excuses itself as we blindly
fit ourselves to those 64 squares.

Win, lose, mutual, checkmate!
Why do we always have a story to tell?

SoUmY@

Rhombus

2010-08-27T07:17:00.001-07:00

I

Between you and me
There is this sea of space.
Even the warmth of your blood
is not on the floors where my feet are.
And in between there is a plastic
that burns quietly, without flames,
Obnoxious!

Between me and you, there is ash.

II

Three course of meal,
and in between, we make love.
Morning - I excite.
After lunch its you.
And before its night, we try.

On other days, we sleep,
Strangers and hungry.

III

Between you and me
We share ghazals.
In a serene night
With you around, talking of moon,
I play.

Life is so good between two songs.
We live the moments in pauses.

IV

You surprise me with
bright sunflowers at times,
The other day you come and embrace
when I am still sleeping.

Simple Sun enters my room,
finds an excuse and lies beside me.
You drop the curtains.

I smile in dreams.

- Thus, Tilting an usual square,
we make a story of our own,
in a rhombus.

SoUmY@

Independence!

2010-08-13T23:39:00.000-07:00

In a suave Indian lounge some people gather to party. Posh as they are, and as is the word, they show all of it and much more than you may wish to see. With some Peter Colonial Country shirt and with a perfume that arrogantly bosses over the air of a third world country, they laugh and fall over each other, 'unnecessarily' is a word so true to its own existence. Beyond their attire, they are conscious of keeping their feet on the ground and so bring plastic flags which feebly depict a tri-color a third world country should. They take positions, one after another, finding their partners as only a neon light glows inquisitive of the emotions, pride or lust.

There starts the National Anthem. Importing independence and democracy onto themselves, some fold their legs, some lean back, some talk over a boring lyric and the others, if left, sing along. After that, all clap, more as a relief than of a passion. Even the big cotton flag, despite the artificial wind around, embarrassingly hangs without wings. In small groups they talk of boutiques, outsourcing, global warming and Page 3. Patriots as they are, their country's poverty gets two or more 'uh-oh's. Intricate, the conversation is, and some 'plastic' flags get walked over. Respect their sincerity though, even unknowingly they help environment.

They party with soft liquors, pastries and many things which can help them touch each other, of course being straight. No leaning back now. All this and much more of it spells and smells of countries that do not include the one, they are celebrating of. And the heroes' photos, as uninvited as they look, get appreciation by a sleeveless conscience, not for the sacrifice they have gone through but for the rigid and glowing manhood. Blame it on neon light and some queen's country's liquid.

While the show goes on, some shadows come out of them and invisibly walk out of the door, where humiliation has got a new name by celebration.

Out on the street under a lamp, two children, newly and fully dressed, where such adverbs are still uncommon, make a paper boat on which a hand made flag stands. It radiates cheap colors painted by immature hands. They sail it through the river that flows through the country which is in need of a respect today. The boat sails. The flag stands proud as the shadows watch.

As the boat dilutes in the horizon, the innocent souls scream, 'Jai Hind'. Somewhere, a Mother sheds a tear or two and smiles.

SoUmY@

[ Thanks to Usha ma'am for being a perfect teacher :) ]

Ashtray

2010-08-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

There are people for whom
A does not precede B.
May be I am one.
At times beneath the banyan tree
you have touched my hand
in one moment that we can not recreate.
I was to take yours and press a bit,
shelter your cold palm in mine.

I have only smiled.

At times inside a lonely tram,
along the roots of our heritage city
and with an ageing conductor,
you have wished I will cuddle
and plant a kiss, perhaps.

Spring has come, but I have sat
like a tree where winter still hails.
Stoic, willing, wishing and still desperately, wishing.

At times while argumenting
You have tried to fight, jostle.
Anger is the flame of love's impurity.
You have tried to burn us together.

I have kept silent
Having hundred questions to ask you
but never could, even one.
I have let you win, always.
I have let you lose, thus.

In high fever, one night,
Trembling you have murmured,
" Come unto me".
'Passionate' the lover I am, have stood still.
Gently touching your forehead I have let you sleep.

In all these times,
where we could have created
loving sequence of a thousand touchable dreams,
I have existed, only.

Now that you are not there
for reasons humane, I wish to shout and say,
my restraints were only apparent.

Deep down, you could never know,
there was a heartbeat that ran and ran
and is still running, today, at this moment
for that one touch...

... A touch that will make me feel like a child,
and let me sleep, just.

We will make love when I wake up.

SoUmY@

Of Another Season...

2010-07-29T09:15:00.001-07:00

On a day like today
when an abrupt monsoon meets
A delighted Sun,
I think of you,
like the dew drops on the petals -
the freshness, eternal.

On a day like today
When my Neruda can sip coffee
with your Joyce,
you come to me as if
memories were more real than now.
They always were, are.

On a day like today,
When the translucent streets of my home
gets wet and hears a tram go by,
your thoughts occur.
I feel you
beyond those concretes and raindrops kamikaze.

On a day like today,
When my words seek no grammar and
chases no metaphor,
I think of poetry and I think
of you.
With or without, I wrote for.

On a day like today,
When I am diseased and all burnt,
I want you to forget me as a season.

We will meet again in summers,
in our little ways, before Sunrise.

SoUmY@

Untitled

2010-07-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

Two nude people are gazing.
The picture is on the orange wall in
A frame made of Mahogany wood,
One that smells of a burnished past.

They are discussing paintings.
Oil paintings they are. Colors are abrupt,
sudden and strong as the saddest nights,
Soothing and polite as promised whispers
Or whispered promises of colors, that have faded.

Art in its essential, is pure;
So they wish to be the same, nude.
Of Adam and Eve,
Of Prometheus; art is fire.

Pictures come and go.
They sit on wrought irons -
sophisticated, minimalist, sharp and nude, like them.
And here it is,
a face under a veil.
Dark black it is, tanned skin, eyes
speak of a thousand pain and a single humor,
or vice-versa.

Interpretation is an artist's pride,
deciphering is his patience.
So they are visibly restless.
Apparently immovable two souls
stand and try gazing what is under its veils.
Desperate, nine straight lines on their foreheads,
each.

In this artistic liberty,
they don't understand that
nudity collides with nudity in flesh
and what radiates is restraint.

They bring down the picture from the green wall
and one tears off the veil.
The other looks at the eyes. Still,
A thousand humor and a plural pain
or vice-versa.

While they tore it off in naked ambitions,
It dawned, even the skin is a pretense.

Hundred reflections of a broken mirror lay on ground,
in disbelief.

SoUmY@

Belgian Glass

2010-07-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

In that 4' * 4' glass house,
Colored fishes roam about
alien trees, look at this side of the world
where living doesn't create bubbles,
Neither do they burst.

Two souls live in a bigger cage
and take care of the 4' * 4',
Happily taking pride in sheltering
orphaned dreams, that come so close to the glass house
and go back nudging the belgian wall.

They pity, they laugh.
Fishes can't cry.

On some other days,
Satin hopes rejuvenates with candled romance.
The two shadows become one.
Their souls lie on the white carpet
where conjugal stains used to frequent.
Cleanliness is so unworthy at times.

Around the time, that
ticks-tocks and ticks-tocks,
upon hourly insecurities of a clock
that mumbles and counts the path it has traversed,
ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong -
they keep track of absence and quarrel.
Presence instigates bitterness of the two.
The clock stops at times, or whispers low.

It has two helping hands.

In the bed they sleep, distant.
But dreams are not measured.
Surpassing their sedated unwillingness,
one comes into the other's world.
Silk is what is in between.
They see through each other.
In orchestrated awkwardness
one comes to sense
And helps the other to erase the smile
that was hanging in the corner, unconsciously so.

They start from the beginning, again.

Now one prefers perversion to take hold of his.
The other fights and kills and dips her hand in blood.
No one wakes up that night.

There comes the morning.
Souls enact strangers.
With a perfect red apple and
scrambled as the egg is,
coupled diseases suffocate.
They run, not for the proteins
but of congestion of some deeper viral.

Amongst all these, during the remaining course,
they depart with the same keys
and use the same surname at promotional pages,
guarantee each others' presence in gatherings
and leave a neat nameplate and a postbox.

Over the mutual agreement of some common things
such as above,
One clock, a handful of colored fishes, a neat household,
unstained bedcovers and carpets
reflect sadness over a mute pretense...

... that took an oath of being real around the fire, someday.

In a 4' * 4', fishes cry.

SoUmY@

Uttaradhikar

2010-07-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

Uncountable battles you have won behind the back,
Prudent, shrewd the soldier you are,
the anarchist - as some will say.
And the others who spit on your name
for the deities you have maligned.

The armour, embarrassed it reflects
hundreds of bodies stampeded by Mughal rampage,
where brave rajput souls still lie in dreamy eyes,
and their women - long been fed to satisfy.

The person you were, a predator
who never believed in his own blood,
could not have asked history to redeem you
of the fatwas that you once made, oh so coldly.

But tell me Aurangzeb,
today as you see the gallant successors
of yours, ominously lurking, possessing
whatever or whoever is affront,
Do you feel you were never a history?
Or it was just foolish of us to blame you.

Blood never bore the Mughal descendance.
It was always a stoic asset.
And so, in the name of uttaradhikar,
We have inherited what was already inside,

... history that we, ourselves despise of,
but possess, nevertheless.

SoUmY@

1 BHK

2010-06-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

That night some rain conspired
and stole clouds from your sky
to pour down on me.

Love is what turns a why to a how.
So you never questioned.
I drenched, wondered, wandered.

Window is an escapade for poetry.
And my decor is un-weak.
So in our world there are only rooms.
Doors can be latched,
Unlike your memories and my emotions.
I haven't let them yet.

We can cook up love, is it?
Moments are kept in spice jars.
Never mix them while they are there.
It may smell.
I will bring you fire.
Burn.

Let us go deep.
Here is the bed where
A platonic you meets a real me.
Chiffon hesitance may rest,
We will only whisper tonight.

Beneath this, there is a grave
which lies as a witness to many a sobs.
Never visit there with naked feet.
You will at once know its our dark
that I have still preserved.

Ask me why.
An irrelevant me will answer,
Even our saddest moments were too special
to let go by.

Do not plant a kiss yet.
We have no doors.

SoUmY@

Worded

2010-06-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

Is there a tunnelway to poetry
Where mine meet yours?
Two poets can not live together.
Verses make a world of their own
when they are asleep.
I have heard words whisper with each other,
make love, maybe.
We are insignificantly coupled.

I know not how
often have I fed a poetry.
Are you grateful that they come?
Redemption is dangerous.
They come as punctuations
and can unsettle you, unexpected.

Beneath the poetic soul,
there is another who is a labour,
who constantly bears the load of words,
carefully places, sweats and still does.
We are too lost in the hemisphere.

Lonely words -
Vagrant, vagabond, orphaned
ride the bridge of other words
and console each other
when the complacent is asleep.

That is why
You keep a rose inside them,
You will see it died of salinity.

SoUmY@

Oceanic

2010-05-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

Your love is that of sea.

You love mountains
So your words echo,
the ones you say.
And for the silence, it's turbulent.
It comes in waves and I taste salt.

There are moments when we differ.
We all do.
Your anger comes in waves, dive and burst.
You say I am oceanic.
My emotions have no end
but one must explore; you do.

For the times you have waited for me
to call your name,
I have been busy keeping your memories
in the heart of the ocean.

You have asked,
Have you been restless, ever?
I have only tried.
Depth is a burden at times.

You will never know.
The times I have cried and called your name,
I was too deep.

I am blue.

SoUmY@

Strangers

2010-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Let us not know each other tonight
Let us not think what we could have said,
what we had to, what we can, what we should.
Let us just, unknowingly, make a story.

Today you can just hold my hand, or not.
We can keep silence; it grows distance
which someone says, is comforting.
I can blurt it out today.
I can tell you how many times I have missed you
and cried and laugh about it, just.
You can count yours. Happy face?

Let us not call it a love too.
We have seen too much of it, haven't we?
Let us just unknow what we don't
And say, we knew each other, unknowingly.

SoUmY@

That Is...

2010-04-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

Today I want to write about the imperial sadness

that spreads way above you and me;
Like the roots of a tree that threatens
the earth and embraces like an octopus.

Stoic is the sky
and there is one moon that is sad.
At this hour, darkness is silk
You can wear it and cry unnoticed.

We know not why even truths have versions.
There are different truths; stories to tell.
We choose convenience.
Or sometimes the other.

If you are afraid of heights, fly.
You may meet a cocoon who decided
to date back and became a caterpillar.

SoUmY@

Migratory

2010-04-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

This winter the hummingbird did not come to the banyan tree in front of my room. I saw leaves ageing and dying and every morning hoped for the chirps I so longed to hear. Perhaps, birds are like humans. They just fly away someday and never return. I forget that even the ones with wings can be escapists. Or is it me, judgmental? Expectations have given me many a seasonal disappointments.

People migrate from one place to the other; from one relation to another. Almost like seasons, they are. The traits, the aura, the magic each time is different. You can not blame one for doing that. Then that hummingbird is to be cursed first. But. Let us talk about the residue now. The remnance are the ashes which will kindle another candle. Yes emotions. I wonder if they change. I wonder if we feel differently if we love different people in different times. Is not that a migration too? Maybe some of you would be able to answer that yourself.

Our earthly belongings - they move too. In my office I am just a resource who helps in migrating data from one bank to another. We celebrate. People migrate from Orkut to Facebook to Twitter. Do they return? I do not know. But whenever we revisit, does it make you nostalgic even for a moment? Do you feel guilty that you have just 'left'? Do memories of machines bring you real tears?

I find strange resemblance of trees with emotions. Both can not wish to but be stationary. To each its own. Lots of pun, take yours.

Dreams are migratory. I wish I will die in my dream someday. And I will live to read this soliloquy in some other place, some other time. Till then I shall wait for the hummingbird to come back and give these words wings.

SoUmY@

Remnance

2010-04-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

1
2 3
4 5 6

I discuss no maths here.
They are bricks, that pile up
events after events,
bygone, as remnants.

Have you seen the sea shore?
What is left of the sands
After a wave passes by.

Relations, us.
I have seen togetherness die one night
and in the next, individuals are born.
Do they live?
Some questions only embarrass the affected.

I wonder if the ashes after death
hold a life's memory.
I feel they do.
Futility adds a lot of understanding.
Ashes are thus, such.

For a leaf is born
in the same place where the tree sheds
in winters.
And with our faded memories
we cry,
Why don't emotions have chlorophyll?

SoUmY@

Random...

2010-03-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

Someday I feel I will write an essay. Words should have the luxury of coming in twins, build a locality of its own. Poetry for them is a lonely space. Each preciously used to carry out a task ( we call meanings) and until they are done, pretend as if they are someone else. Metaphor, some call it.

I wonder if I will ever be able to shred the too many 'I's I use in an I-tem. If ever I can live upto to write what is non personal. Something that talks about trees, seas, mountains, hills, Sun and the moon and for a moment reserves the blunt knife for some blunt-er souls ( like me ofcourse, no offense to you).

Reality has come into halves all my life. I have dreamt the other. Like the conventional glass case, I have measured the half empty moments of life and treasured the half fulls. For a strange optimist I have been, the reason for pessimism has also been the same. I know people who invent ways to sadden themselves. There is a strange negative energy to it, a sense of security in feeling vulnerable.

Today as you read my story that is as incoherent as colors described in binary codes, I wonder, what makes us more comfortable from the innermost core as a human? To see us pass or to see others fail and join the league. We can do an SMS poll someday and the result may surprise everyone. Truth has always been like that. Its as convenient as the ones we choose. And what lies is left.

I can not shun the pun. Someone asked me in the park, what is your grief son? And I couldn't answer! Perhaps I am one of those who sedate themselves with pain. If I present myself as a conspirer against my own sanity, I won't say it was rude.

Whats rude is already there in the wall. I write, you read or the opposite. And in this squarish notepad which is as futile as the remembrance of a DELETE, we live just not to die, ever. And we die, the moment next.

The essay starts, thereafter.

SoUmY@

Pulp Fiction

2010-03-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

I want you to know
tonight if I die in my sleep,
do not forget to switch the AC off tomorrow.
Bread, butter, jam will be on the table
and oh yes, keys in the hall.

I want you to know
tomorrow if I do not wake up,
Remember what is left of us is under the bed;
Photos, letters - memories and a whole lot.
Do not just leave me like any other day.
Coming back will be a discomfort.

I want you to know
tonight if you be more indifferent,
I would not mind.
I am used to your late night whispers,
pretensions conveniently termed 'office calls'.
You were never a good liar.

But, tomorrow I may just wake up
as if I have changed my mind
And burn this letter.
Its the hundredth time.

What you won't know is,
Like that piece of paper,
I have only dreamt of being read oneday.

There has never been a pulp fiction.
Perhaps there never will be.

SoUmY@

Art of Living

2010-02-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

For once I read my poetry
and caressed with my palm,
Felt what I have fathered
and suffered and altered and
still kept, dearly.

You may show indifference but deep down
between the pages, you have counted
stars and tears: same time, for one.

Your promises that were fulfilled
and wishes that were abandoned,
it still has the scent of the first red rose
that has died waiting to be savored, somewhere else.

The earthly smell and the aroma of rains
happily trespassed and blotted a few emotions
when you slept oneday keeping your window open.

I shall stand up and say this to all you poets.
If one night you feel like gasping,
Touch your memories that are etched and inked
as events, there inside your poetry.

I have heard emotions can soak.

For you will see glowworms
coming out of them,
and flying all around your room.
You freed them and saved a life (of your own).

Rejoice.

SoUmy@

Interpreted

2010-02-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

I am sleepless at nights.
Between you and me
and our rhymetic and prosaic verses
Lies a Judas- perspectives.

Yours and mine and theirs.

Replication is for machines. And uniqueness is an illusion in a crowd. Because anyday we all are grouped to be too common or too unique.

Just like this above contradiction,
I concur...

...Lets not decipher a beautiful thought.
I can take an oath against my limitations
and say, interpreting is an insult sometimes.
You can take a poem for a petal
And sit there, just admire. Can't you?

Because oneday you will mother an orphan emotion.
I shall examine the skeleton and laugh.

Would you like that Poet?

SoUmY@

[You are free to avoid this piece as a crazy social experiment going wrong :) ]

At Random!

2010-01-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

For there are words and clothes
similar in ways which
may or may not be put
in places.
But silence and skin are both uncomforting.

Coz they show us the truth.
Truth is again what we perceive.
And what we perceive is what we choose.
What we choose is not the truth, atmost, almost.

Cycles are confusing
because we need an end.
There is none.

We put blanks where we question or
don't want to answer or wish to feel more.
Take a teacher and an escapist and a lover, sequentially.

Still there are routines, schedules, trackers and plans.
Someone is running away,
We are running out.
Mr. Time is arrogant.

Have faith some say.
Have fate, I do.
For there are words and clothes
dissimilar in ways which
may or may not be taken back
in places
And silence and skin are both comforting.

Coz they show us the truth.
At random,
without a mask.

Take an escapist who taught you to love oneday.

SoUmY@

Watermark

2009-12-15T08:18:00.000-08:00

There is something very selfish about dreams.
Remembrance is a trespasser.
And still, every night
I dream of you, you of one and one of many.
We circle, forget and again indulge.

Futility has an attraction of its own.

Watermarks!
A life that we live but we wish.
A truth we see but what we believe.
A dream that is awake and another that is asleep.

Light is bent for everything
that happens with our without us.

I wish I will touch the Sun on the horizon,someday.
Can emotions be that cold ever?
Never if they are alive.
If...

In between life and death, I count dreams.
and cross tress with white chalks
So that in the morning I can just walk upto that
and believe what we don't wish to.

We are taught
I can only strive for a wish.
They should always be like tomorrows and yesterdays.
Between them we are, we live, and nomore.

I believe, I will meet me one night
To forget how to remember.
And see how the faded watermarks
learn to die and to live..

...yet another dream.

SoUmY@

The Return

2009-11-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

Another quiet night passes by
as we wait.
Three for us,
One for you, (we still keep).
And
"Cheers"! ...miss the loud voice.
Someone gulps your absence down.
In a trance we believe you were here.
We sleep to forget.

Vodkas and grass lie with green hopes.

In half jaded senses,
when we go for our walk,
there have hardly been mornings
when Ravi hasn't forgot his chappals,
and Maddy his pullovers...

But never did we miss to touch the gulmohar
you so loved to sit beneath.

Is this what it feels to be feeling you?

We don't go there in winters.

Time is sarcastic.
You can't skip if you wish.
We gather for your birthday.
Maddy whistles, Ravi prays,
I keep mum.
Whether to celebrate or to miss?
Silence is so nauseating at times.

We blow the candles.
Darkness is comforting, we realize.

Three windy lives,
you as the only exception, wait,
as summers and autumns and springs cycle
and even hopes attract rust.

Then one day,
You come back.

Unlike the happy endings in tight embrace,
we shout, " why did you?".
The voices echo from and to
as our emotions fly, orphaned to excitement.

That day, On a less travelled road,
Three white flowers lay together.

You return,
to us.

SoUmY@

Obverse

2009-08-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

Noise

For a thousand words
that floated like bubble between us,
Only few have burst into wet emotions.
Perhaps the others were too shy.

In that cosmos of togetherness
words that haven't touched us
have nudged each other, played in circle.

And we have wondered if
noise is what can't be deciphered
or won't.

Silence

Silence is us
When thoughts are symbiotic.
In between, there is a glass
that lets our eyes read each other, not in full.
Opacity is pride sometimes.

And then,
Ideologies have faced mortality
Through curious moments.

We have been individually two
When silence became a predator.

---

Just then, it dawned.
Silence and noise are twins.
We, the conscious, have conspired and failed.

SoUmY@

If you promise me...

2009-08-09T10:04:00.001-07:00

I wish to gift you but one rose.
The color parched in red
still drips the same, from me.

Indifferent we have been to the sea
and so has been our coming and going
and going and coming onto each other ; waves.

For I know how we have savoured a kiss,
A starved touch that has distancelessly etched
into the warmth of fire and poured on some mature ashes.

If I really write the saddest lines tonight
I wonder if the glorious moon will soothe any less,
the gentle sea will unlook shallow.
I am lost and I don't want to sleep but dream.

In a bright daylight where sunflowers bloom
I will gift you an irrelevant book;
you look ethereal when your eyes art surprise.
I will sketch you in trembling hands and tear it apart
because the joy is mine and I am selfish to share with you.

If you promise me a touch, I shall keep the moment
It has the scent of your skin, forever as a hope.

SoUmY@

And etcetera...

2009-07-24T10:20:00.001-07:00

There is a lot of truth in a parabola.
No two souls at either ends
are equi-distant.
Sometimes too close,
at times too far, we are.

Some say, acceptance is one
form of resignation!
I believe, its to know when
we need to take the parched leaf
out of the book and remember
how to forget; vice-versa.

Life is too direct for an abstract figure
or may be an opulent realization.

So, our little moments of truth
hide and seek and lie and die
somewhere near the rear window,
the broken chairs and the old books
and granny's mahogany bed.

In these points, where
facts and figures and favours and follies
intermix- boil- burn- vaporize and condense again,
You get back life, unaltered.

Need not you say,
philosophies are born where
one looks up to the sky for a daylight
and the Sun is eclipsed,

just then!

SoUmY@

[Little moment of reckoning this! :) ]

Memento

2009-07-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

Perhaps there is more to life
than a blunt punctuality, that is mine.
I have always come early
but been late.

In a life where I never
intended to intrude in your sensitivities
always fearing that ,
oozing is inevitable when its me,
I have waited sheepishly.

Haemocyanin- blue blood, oh its mine.

Like the improper misplacement above,
I have waited and drenched in rain
just to feel what is it to be close to you.
Have spent sleepless nights
Just to know how pure is the Sun
That touches you first.

Today, as you tie a bolder knot
With the one who could say before
(and me? nay ever)

I will be there, mute,
Silently waving at your graceful departure
and wish, if for once you do the cliche',
Turn back and smile, perhaps.

Even if you do, I promise,
you won't see how an ice
drowned and choked in its own fate.

Can we reverse the moment
and never let it melt?

SoUmY@

[No more complexities for today. Just a blunt and simple life. :)]

Us and Them

2009-07-02T04:15:00.001-07:00

Entwined in the heart are
I and You.
Let us lock them up
in the closet today and
watch her, him and them.

Let us talk about lazy crows,
dead fish, a wet metro
or hustling bazaar.

I for once
(err, I was to put in the s(h)elf)
will choose that hawker boy
who sells roses and buys his dreams,
We buy dreams and sail our romance
- We complement them.

Then you for twice
can select your prey in the old age homes.
Look, there in the balcony, that sorry old lady.
We are together, still counting stars
They are so alone and tired of stars
- They contradict us.

In this com-n-con game, we watch
as I and you come out of locked worlds
and mix in the crowd of her, him and them.

They say,
"its an illusion that you are different.
We have but one life"

SoUmY@

A note to you, dearest

2009-06-24T10:09:00.001-07:00

The tender memories have
long been terrified and quiet under
your harsher overtones.

Smiles and giggles have hid under our pillows
that has designer covers with
many a sobs of mine carefully washed.

Artificial smiles, socialites' parties,
a theatrical performance each day,
happy photographs, innocent make ups -
All of them I have obeyed-
dutifully, gracefully, being yours, your own.

And I have seen life change
in the eyes of a pessimistic kaleidoscope
that never had a coloured glass inside.

At night, you crawl
No, NO, you happily trespass
on to the soul you legally claim
and never realize a void that exists between
You and me.

As the darkest of empathies coil up
within me on some nights,
That same vacuum takes shape of a
Unborn child that I have so dearly wished
and you have denied, on timeless times.

Oh, you have taught me to hate myself.

So tonight, before you think
you can choke me to death,
I don't want to read aloud
Yet another average verse
that bleeds and cares not ...

... because I am a woman.

Your serpentine chords of conscience
will never ever reach its roots
Where I am now.

Tonight
I will sleep in peace, deep.

SoUmY@

Iron-y

2009-06-24T09:36:00.001-07:00

And I still have the petals
parched inside the pages
that had the scent of your skin.

It dies each day,
so do I...

...from memories to dust.

Tonight I gift you
what love had alloyed but failed.

An iron-y of us.

SoUmY@

The way we are...

2009-06-07T09:44:00.001-07:00

I have played with life.
Whimsically I found it shaped
sometimes squared, a bit spherical, is it?
Oh no, you see an undefined orbit.

On that squarish route,
My life has been squeezed
to insignificant volumes.
Fame, success, caustic lights-
They allure me in different domains.

I wonder if there is too much of me
in my words or so much of I.
An I for an I-
the world revolves around an ellipse.
Sometimes too close to life
and too far when you wish...

In this pattern which follows disorientation,
Comes the knowledge, hence the realization
and awaits a human in their shadows,
Owning them.

Life, as it is,
wouldn't have ever been the same
if there were definitions of you and me.

So I say, must you agree (?)
we make rooms square
To embrace surety.

...the Earth is round!

SoUmY@

Dream...

2009-06-06T12:57:00.001-07:00

Tonight
Let's meet in our dreams.

Let's hold hands gently
Your palm into mine, delicately ours.
We will traverse the mountains over the clouds
that pour in with fertile rains.

We will walk past the night
till we see the first rays of a crimson Sun.
Purity - oh, how I have longed for you!

Let me recount those empty spaces
before and after __ us __.
I will recite them today, audibly.

We will cross the waves once.
On the sea shore
where our memories lie embraced,
I will take fistful of sands
And never let it out, as if you are there, inside,
Fragmented in completion.

You can talk about a life lost
I will dream within a dream.
Imperfect be our poetry
We can still rhyme in the realm.

Let's not keep our old eyes open dear.
I have heard, tonight
we will love each other anew, in our dreams.

SoUmY@

Jittery

2009-05-18T10:50:00.001-07:00

To perform the duty
that is poetry,
I sat back on my wooden chair
to relive the bygone days of playfulness
with words.

Its a calm night.
As the rains fantasize bout the dreamy moon,
So do I, about words that are hard to come by.

A forced poetry is like
asking an ice to get burnt into ashes.
Ashes - will they, ever?

I wonder if I am that beggar in the street
who is more sure of living the next day
than the residents of the high rise afar.

Because both of us have nothing to lose...
... and more importantly, nothing to preserve.

Sensitivity is like an empty piggy bank when you are like me.
You recollect and break yourselves into halves, threes n fours
Still they refuse to come; spent n dried - amn't I?

I still admire the showrooms glittering in neon lights,
the poets who create music with words,
the lives that make us dream.

And while finishing the undone trial of another false verse,
I become too conscious of a missing fullstop (.) in my epitaph.

They say,
the dots were never required.

I know,
I had nothing left to fill in the blanks

.

SoUmY@

Geometric Gibberish

2009-04-08T04:04:00.000-07:00

Indescribably in a rectangular path

I measure height and you, width.
Diagonally we traverse crossing each other
Longing for a square.

Wishing...
(Alas, if we had been a bit alike)

Three points - You, me and us.
We try converging into each other.
Frantically you unto me, me onto you.
and the last remains, untouched.

(Lust is it that never touches 'us' (love?))

I always took geometry as philosophy.
The smallest unit, a point, is dimensionless- a dot.
Like my white wish painted against your black refusals.
Black and white - they crisscross. Coexist invisibly.

(What remains is an orange dot of defying Sun)

In this gibberish, which are too minute to understand
Or cynically un-reasoned,
I talk of future, you talk of facts. We sum up- failure.

But of whom? I ask, you ask - to each other.

Despite knowing the 'Earth is round'
We could never love circles.

SoUmY@

[Pardon my french]

Insecurity

2009-03-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

I fear innocent these days. I can not look upto his eyes in fear of if he asks, "Why did you do it?"
I just can't stand in front of a mirror that has people behind.
They ask, "Why did you?". - "What did I?"
You just asked: "Where is the painter in his painting?"

SoUmY@
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do not ask me what is this. Its happened to be called 55 Fiction

What is 55 Fiction?

A literary work will be considered 55 Fiction if it has:

Fifty-five words or less (A non-negotiable rule)
A setting,
One or more characters,
Some conflict, and
A resolution. (Not limited to moral of the story)

Usha ma'am is entirely responsible for this one. She insisted that I write one on 55 er and I can't skip. So, here was that attempt which I am sure was nothing worse than a torture.

But, but, Why don't you try yourself? Try and write one 55 Fiction yourself and share. Its really interesting.

Role-Back

2009-03-03T08:40:00.001-08:00

On one such occasion
When words left me while I was sleeping
I knew they will be there, somewhere
Hiding behind the walls of worn out verses,
Fabricated lies,
Stories of us and them and
Truths of me, curtained.

I have books by my name
That has grown over me long before.
What is left is ashes of success
Which I had smoked to futility.

Burdened is a poetry
That expects jewels in return
and crippled is his pen who builds a stage
that is consciously poetic
To us (or them?).

I have seen colors fade-
Sky to be green,
Leaves came gray
Love to be black
and words in white.

So I wait as time ticks by
and with a curious alertness I try
To decipher the tune of silence
To listen to the words that are lost.

A victim I am and a spectator you are
Of the moment that recycles poesy back
To the dot, when diamonds were uncut
and roses were without petals.

Don't you count
Who got sold and for how much.

SoUmY@

Voodoo

2009-02-25T09:47:00.001-08:00

I will confess to the tree
About the times I had spent underneath
with you.

Rain tastes the same, feels the same
Brings back you and memories
Wherever.

I see sunrays draw many a tangents
Through the window over the shelf
Where you and I reside, mute, in albums.

You died once.
I die many a deaths each day.

For remembering you at moments when I wish not
And for I wish if I could remember at some others.
The flames overwhelm from both sides.

I jump.

I love winters for nature is at loss then.
Just like me.

And for memories that burn me from within,
I become a victim
Where life plays voodoo and I lose us,
All too often.

SoUmY@

All that is, Who are Lost

2009-02-18T09:35:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I stand near the window-
Old fashioned, rusty with fading colors.
It shows me an eyeful of sky
Where clouds conspire and turn black.

Clouds are like memories, no?
You know it will rain, but when.

I see the quiet lane in a midsummer noon.
On one such day my kittens ran away
And never came back.
I wish if I could see them once, right now.
I hope they are alive. They will surprise me one day.

Do you think cats have emotions?

I see the gulmohar tree.
Under which you had held my hand and promised...
...Promised to hold my hand, forever. Never.

The gulmohar lives on. So do I and you, may be.
All apart, distant, as three incidents who never met.

Do you think trees have memories?
I wish the gulmohar will die.

I wonder why do I talk of pain,
Of them who have left me,
Of the kite orphaned in the vast sky,
for paper boats that never return.

All that is lost can always be found.
I cry for all that remains but can't be mine,...

...For the memories of a moth
Who dived into the fire one night
To become a glowworm.

SoUmY@

Of Ecstasy...

2009-02-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

Beyond the horizon lies the gray
that rests between your feet, delicately.

Waves ripple and glide past the footsteps,
Silently washing off your prints afar,
Uncomplaining in tender reverence.

You raise your arms as if to embrace the sea.
I see twilight, I feel air gently hushing by.

The crimson Sun is at its last breath
And caresses you with quiet blessings.

As your innocence reflects upon
the gracing Sun and the soothing sea

I stand mute and mesmerized...
... Oblivious of the rest as the triad touches me

And I cry, just.

SoUmY@

[p.s. -> This post of mine is inspired by the picture atop.

I thank Jennifer for letting me share this. And this piece goes to Angel.]

Untitled

2009-01-25T09:09:00.001-08:00

Wish I could be a cloud one day
I will love to be grey if its you
To whom, through whom I traverse.

Transparency is optimum;
For I know you are unattainable
like the sand escaping from the fist
like the meaning assumed from the gist.

look, oh yes, I can rhyme too.
If you wish I can artify our world.
Inspiration never needs a permit.

You had asked,
Why do I vomit blood.
Interruptions in dreamy un-realism
doesn't suit me. I know.

So I write.
So that I can breathe you in
and breathe dreams out.

Live long, you had wished.
(Wished), did you? honestly?

I will let it pass like just another
Failed attempt to face reality
Finds itself en-route to contamination.

Oh! then what is pure? you may ask.

Purity is not you, not me, but us.
Purity is the way verses traverse.

I will vomit to death one day.
Do not pray for me.
Pray for my poems who are quiet.

Let them borrow my breaths.
Let the poetry for us live.

(And the footnotes conclude:)

You - a miser in love
Me - a happy lender.

SoUmy@

A Sadist's Soliloquy

2009-01-21T09:35:00.001-08:00

I have peeled my skin
With each of your blank verses.

My poetry has gone through erosions,
lost pages of memoirs,
Un-remembrance and what else?

Irreversibility never liked me.
Nor did I.

Blood has dripped, once, twice,
May be more?
I never had a scale to fathom what I lost.
Nor did veins apologized, ever.

Veins, oh they know when to let go of you
As color red.

You had a quotient of quality.
I have put myself on either side of balancing machine,
Have weighed myself with my emotions
Perhaps the odd moments against my soul.

Unperturbed you were, you are.
A perfect imbalance I am.
Just like this verse which pleads to be understood.

I leave you with one question except me:
Will you ever kill your shadow to be alone?

Oh nights have the answer still.
I will wait.
I know you won't know for
Dark never wronged black.

SoUmY@

Unexplanatory

2008-12-28T08:57:00.001-08:00

They say there are three seasons now.
I differ. I say there is only one, greed.

But we have remained the same.
With ours and with mine
With a mind selfishly claiming 'divine'.

We have blamed and awaited a full moon.
Have feared the scorching Sun,
Back-stabbed the winter with a prayer of spring.

Mocking this obstinacy, it has rained in winters,
Clouds have shaded some summer noons,
Autumn leaves have never denied the gravity.

The rainbow we see bent with stripes across the horizon,
Was straight until you & I realized that the earth is round.

SoUmY@

An Imperfect Palindrome

2008-12-25T05:12:00.000-08:00

A pen.
A pen and a paper.
A pen and a paper and a plot.
A pen and a paper and a plot and a poet.
A poet and a plot and a paper and a pen.
A poet and a plot and a paper.
A poet and a plot.
A poet.

A perfect palindrome?
Starts and ends in uselessness.

SoUmY@

Existence

2008-12-25T05:08:00.000-08:00

I often stop by the mirror and see
If the diary behind my back overshadows me.

I know its not possible.
Because physics has rules
that sets lights straight.

But in this world of poets and stories
They have a different rule that even they don't know!
I fear,
One day I will not be fast enough
To chase down the words I believe to have caged.

I have seen people who are phobic to noise.
Trust me, it is still better than silence.

SoUmY@

Disoriented

2008-12-25T04:57:00.000-08:00

6:00 AM - Alarm clock.
8:00 AM - Office calls.
1:00 PM - Lunch break
6:00 PM - Love awaits.
8:00 PM - Love departs.

A routine that we follow is named Love.
Difference? Is of a film to that of a theater.

How 'much' do you want?
One pound of flesh? no more, no less.
Or may be two stanzas full of four lines.

One will say the other betrayed,
The other will protest under another curtain.
If you can not find love
Inside the pauses,
After the lines,
Beyond the adjectives that die down
to yet another punctuation,
you haven't really felt love, have you?

And if you have,
still set the alarm clock to a time convenient,
You will never know
how time runs by and tide awaits
Where love lies dead but still pretends.

SoUmY@

A-Word

2008-11-22T22:04:00.000-08:00

Purposeless is the soul
That lives for his,
And is owned by others.

To share a word
Through love or award
Transgresses the barriers
And shows us the world that
breathes together.

A bond that frees us more
Binds us less
and respects
Till infinity tires and rest.

SoUmY@

[p.s.- The award logo (butterfly award) is generously passed on to me by Usha ma'am and Sashu, two amongst my very few inspirations @ blogging.

Continuing the trend, lemme pass this award link to

Rukhiya

Cinderella

and anyone who finds poetry respectable, its for you. Own it because this logo can not find a better place but your musings museum.

So, as Instructed in the Ways of Award Presentation and Conferring, this is what has to be done, as I understand, from Usha ma'am :)

1. Put the logo on the blog. by downloading the picture and adding it as a picture widget

2. Add a link to the person who presented it to you.

3. Pass this one, and link other bloggers that you'd like to share it with.

Hemostasis

2008-11-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Hopes are white
Nights! I know them black.

I met a man the other day
He sees but never observes.
What is the difference between two lives
When at the end you see black
and the other observes death?
Is the pain any less and certain?

I love to see kites flying
Do they mean independence?
You fly high with your greed strung...
A rooted flight,
How much can you pay for such freedom?

I know I talk gibberish,
I have grown old now.
I see white and black
In stripes of unknown dimensions.

But you?

You have an irreparable wound of shallowness.
I see your blood and that is not blue
Will it ever coagulate? You fear, I laugh.

You can never know how porous you are;
I know.
I saw your soul walking down the street that day.

You were too busy selling your dreams.

SoUmY@

[p.s. -> hemostasis is the cessation of blood loss from a damaged vessel. Coagulation is its defense mechanism

docs, pardon me for if I am wrong]

Crystals

2008-10-19T00:05:00.001-07:00

There were times when
I used to find nature selfish
Because it was seasonal;
And not like poetry that comes
Even in the outrageous summers or rusty winters
Or catalytic rains.

Its been long
Where Memories have flooded down
Many a prayers
That had names of us and verses.

I still stand under that pine
Where words used to come to me
Like soft breeze that blows within,
For inspirations better lived with you.

Today this pauper poet awaits them
And the pine leaves fall as if gifting me
A silent poetry of yours, in rhythm.

I still search for those crystals that
My palms had soaked thence.

The color of blood was faded that day.

SoUmY@

Incandescence

2008-10-10T09:55:00.001-07:00

I will put the lights out tonight.
Certainty is not you, I know.
On the floor where scented sticks
burn themselves with aroma,
I will remember you.

Oh, till how far should the memory be traced
If I wish to remember?

I will leave the doors open tonight.
You are in disguise, I know.
In my balcony where full moon reflects
And lends me a hazy twin of hers,
I will see you refracted inside me.

Oh, till how far should the lights obey physics
If I wish to see the seen?

I will dance in the rain tonight.
"Rain is mine", you used to say, I know.
On that lawn where droplets evoke soily smell
And cold breeze iterates,
I will soak you inside me.

Oh till how far is it raining?
Tell me its the same the droplet that wets me,
awaits you.

SoUmY@

The Chosen One

2008-10-10T09:54:00.003-07:00

There will be ours
And there will be yours.
But what if creations cry out,
What are the creators' worth?

How can you distinguish
Which rose to choose
If ever you knew, one plucked
Makes the others cry?

SoUmY@

Snake Skin

2008-10-10T09:54:00.001-07:00

In winters I woke up
And saw blood in my hand.
Blood- of conscience or
of realization?
I watched my epidermis
peeling itself off,
As if in hatred for my flesh.

Unaffected me crawled across my bed.
Because I know,
At night, sheepishly
When I will come out of
My snake skin, I will forget
about blood of theirs
that had stained mine.

I will rejoice the spring
Anew.

SoUmY@

Tripod

2008-09-28T02:48:00.001-07:00

Virtues & Vices

Beauty comes with mortality.
It makes me insecure.
Because one night, when I discover
That it has left me alone for winter
How will I answer to my desires?

Questions

I often wonder what is more futile?
To let love fall free
When you know of gravity
Or
To wait for it.
What if the same force pulls it down?

Do We...

May some questions never have answers.
Because, you know, I know,
In some cases, we never choose the red.
We avoid the black instead.

-----

Life is never complex.
Only the explorer remains confused.
Because surety is death,
Before that, there is life and Many a tripods

SoUmY@

[A pure rambling. Feel free to avoid]

Yearning

2008-09-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

In front of the sea that speaks silence,
You and me stand close, counting the waves
and inscribing the names of ours on the wet sand.

Vulnerability is something that allures one from within
Isn't it ?
That is why we always choose the sea instead.

You wouldn't listen and I wouldn't say,
So the obvious silence mixes with twilights
And flies on with the wet breeze that caresses.

I relive myself with the tides.
They accept the inevitable at the shore,
Still they rise, if for once, they can grow
And never touch the ground, ever again.
"Don't you know they never can ?" you say.
"Then why do you wait by the sea" , I ask.

With yours and mine, our scribbled names,
That never were etched deep within the sand,
My own optimism rushes them to futility--
Another wave and they are gone, abstruse.

What you never know is its not the swells.
Its me who disorients the hyphen in between.
Then I let the waves to flow,
On,
In,
Through,
Over...

...So that you come and I hope, for that evening
When the hyphen will remain
And the waves will never touch the sands.

SoUmY@

Interrupted

2008-09-07T21:39:00.001-07:00

Thousand of words like these
I can write for you
Which you won't ever see
Which I will put to flames
and inhale the blue death

Was it too much to ask twice?
You will talk of rough edges
Point out to missing commas , fullstop.
I will nod correcting my emotions
At the cost of them

When can you ever sense
The feeling I have for you
Suffocates and dies under the velvet
That adorns my poesy
But buries my love ,

,Interrupted.

SoUmY@

Untitled

2008-09-07T21:38:00.001-07:00

At times when I can't sleep ,
I look at the snowy hills
That tells me I have a beloved
On the other side , waiting.

When there are no stars
On a dark night sky ,
I paint you with waxed emotions
That melts in my incoherence , abruptly!

They advise me
"Before you die , Cross the mountain once"
When there is full moon , I wish to.

How can I tell them ,
A dream is a dream and only a dream.
To find it is to lose ,
To let you be is to love.

SoUmY@

Multitudes of Nowheres

2008-09-05T04:11:00.001-07:00

I don't dread your knives
Or your strengths ,
Because your claws are too cowardice
To be shown except between us .

The pool of blood
You can spill
With one stroke of yours
Is the one I would have anyway ,
And have been till now ,
Under the skin.

You never were akin to
My veins to see that ,
Were you?

........

Labelled with relations
That can convey higher multitudes,
Some creations confuse
The creators , don't they?

If I tell you this story is of
Blood and poisons ,
Of serpents and avenges
would you be careful to consider
A man and a woman ?
Or
A poet and the pen ?
Or
The creator and His Frankenstein?

Can words mislead you to
Multitudes of nowheres?

So how do we trust them then!

SoUmY@

Jasmine

2008-08-31T09:24:00.001-07:00

Wait beside that jasmine tree dear.

I will find you through
the gates of romantic air ,
Where your charm n her scent
dilute into irresistible wishes.

We will whisper our dreams
On the cold wintry evenings,
On the offshore of springs
Till the full-moon awares us .

"Oh thy beauty can elude the
blooming jasmines into early offerings"
--I will write such lines or two
being far off from the world we call 'real' .
We only chose to live the dreams
With us together , didn't we?

Oh yes, they say
To err is human ,to love is divine.
So one day I may not kiss you that softly ,
Your tender palms may seem a bit rough ,
Still the evening jasmine will remain
And spread around our fragrance of love
In silent and pure diffusion .

Wait under the jasmine tree dear ,
For that final time.

SoUmY@

Cremated

2008-08-10T19:36:00.001-07:00

The sky is yours ,
So is the wind.
On all those treaded paths where
Uniqueness recycles ,
A very common man awaits you.
Who never let the icicles melt,
never let the chimes to stop humming
And never robbed words from his pen
For you made him grow .

Instead,
Scars were all I got .
But did you ever notice a tinge of red?

Today don't let those wounds heal ,
Because at my funeral , in your presence
I will dip the white roses with blood.
If for once you accept ...

...The Eucalyptus will convey my glee.
The roots reach where I lie , deep within
Where you couldn't ,ever.

and from there it will whisper ,

Would you ?

Careful with those fragile leaves dear,
Its always been winter.

SoUmY@

String of Love

2008-08-10T19:35:00.003-07:00

The crimson sky will depart
As the dreamy moon shall glow
In its soft and sensuous freedom.
Under the starry sky ,
Where the oyster shells reflect
Feeble white hopes ,
I will write you one letter
With no destination .
I know you will read it
At once.

When did we ever need
a nylon to show
We are threaded ?

SoUmY@

Steroid

2008-08-10T19:35:00.001-07:00

I won't call life uneven.

It was your smile,
Those glances,
Subtle nods , whispers
that gestured me in this world.
And when I am too much in it ,
You blur out!

It is now those green liquids ,
these stimulators I need
To be in a world
Where I don't belong.
But I must pretend ,I do.

When syringes find no more
virgin skin ,
Would you come and take me
Where I wish to ?

Can you ever squeeze in me
To that short space
Where green is for hope ?

SoUmY@

Stiletto

2008-08-03T23:29:00.001-07:00

I

He waited for them,
But they never came .

In the ceremony of words,
the cards were never sent to
the alphabets.

And he sat , lonely ,
without those guests .
A blank page , a vacant gaze.
And moments conspired to
Poison him slowly.

On his last breath ,
He wrote , ...

We conclude ,
Pauses punctuated him to
Death.

II

He invited them ,
But they denied.

and he slit his own wrist.
Failed , deranged.
The so called alternatives
robbed the soul that remained.

They stabbed him ,
All over.
Blood diluted the pigments
Of creation.

Did someone ever say ,
Words are blunt ?

SoUmY@

P.S.-- Rajarshi's "Poetic Prose" has cast its influence here.

Flight!

2008-07-30T03:28:00.001-07:00

It was an autumn afternoon
When we had flown the last kite,
Abandoning it at the sky
watching the orphaned paper-stick
Going away ,far,
Somewhere we couldn't see
As he had too , for all these years.

At this stage of life
Where the mind is restless for those
lost pictures, the blurry images
Were suddenly fresh with his arrival.

-Long time , no ?
--Really .Seemed ages.

Breathlessly we talked of
Memories we knew of us ,
we had of our own
Like kids savouring
Their bits of the afternoons.

Some moments are
Undated!
As we walked towards our
Youthful reminiscence ,
Never knew how
Space and time abided by emotions.

-Look , that kite !
--So what ?
-Should we,now ?
--Who else is watching ?
-Do you care?
-- -(giggles)

And we ran.
Silently in unison ,
For you ,
A thousand times over!

SoUmY@

[For all the friends I have , A true flight it has been for me ,because of you all]

periodic

2008-07-27T07:30:00.001-07:00

In a perpetual circle of
complex vicinity,
I stand aloof and wondrous,
perplexed with the questions
that are too rough to be asked ,
Too smooth to beget.

The mind masturbates
With an overpowering lust ,
follows passion and
at last a guilt
to take nothing for
tomorrow but the night
and we find an escapade in sleep.
Do we actually?

We know we could
rebel against things that
We don't wish for ,
But never did , because
to us , sins are worth waiting for.

As even the snakes meet
To climb up the passion
of each other ,
Knowing never that
they need an axis to do so ,
Our spinal chords helplessly await
Their turns , but to be defied
of limited hopes .

I watch the jelly fishes glow
on the sea shore , alluring .
A life so short lived couldn't have
offered more divine a sight
while praying for the wave
to be intrinsic ;
For ever
To take it home.

SoUmY@

Candle-lit

2008-07-13T01:48:00.001-07:00

When we sit with each other
In assurance , the candle lights up
Uncertainty ,but in vain.

I see you , a bit.
you talk to me , a lot.
And we cherish ,both.

The flame dances beyond our
Shadows ,ever so curious
To reach there ,but .

We keep things vague ,as if
bearing the impotence of that candle to
Reach afar.

Aren't we the same
Even after so many candle-lits?

Emotions are more
Like this wax .
It melts within and burns,
Then freezes, --
Disoriented ,
Misplaced,
But still there ,
Until another match
flickers.

We await ,
Not knowing
whether to fall prey
Or to let it die .

SoUmY@

En-listed

2008-06-30T01:24:00.001-07:00

Then you will List ,

--your Tooth brush and My tooth brush
--My Shaving cream
--Your cosmetics
--My books
--Your music player
--My clothes
--Your clothes
--A comb that we will share.
--Some medicines

I will check
And pick up the pen
To add

--
--
+ --My Love
--Your love?

Somehow
of all the things,
it had to be mentioned
if for once we forget
To leave it behind.

And pretend
We didn't ,
till date.

SoUmY@

[Stone me .I know weirdness has its limits]

Uneclipsed

2008-06-29T07:05:00.001-07:00

A collage of memories
bring in autumn leaves
To my window.
A heart that rejoices lonesome
interiors and admires
Abstract arts ,
is poisonously indefinite,No?

Though turtles race
Abjecting time ,why can not
I ?
Is this the reason
You paint the smoky sky
With different shades?

Wishes abounds fill the
palette of my senses
with coloured glasses
As I observe gray streets
from kaleidoscopes.

But when its black,
How will you protect
My fragile self
being unreal ,
Invisible?

For its only Your touch
What speckles the diamond ring
from the eclipse that
blots me black .

SoUmY@

P.S.--I hate doing this but

lemme put my visions.I know its not to be discovered unless its told.But try to match the far fetched analogy if possible.Time =society , turtles = the scientists who used to spoon feed religious preachers of then , kaleidoscope is said to be Galileo's invention first , You is obviously God , 'when its black' means when ppl r not to see the truth how can u speak the truth out and only an eclipse could prove earth goes round the Sun not the other way around.That was his diamond ring of quest.And the last black is what makes him blind as he grows older but eclipse never came.

that is why it is Uneclipsed.

Galileo was a great admirer of art too :)

Thank you for your patience!!

Infidel

2008-06-28T10:14:00.001-07:00

All the emotions
I could give words to ,
have somehow dried up with
my infidelity with pauses.
Now ,they come at once,
all too many and
I find myself at loss with
some rough sketches that were
never coloured to poetry.

Thoughts have
left me with some sheets of papyrus
which mock me with criss crosses
that are too blue and too frequent.

So I travel only in winters
To laugh at the naked trees ,
To wink at your rough exterior
And to redeem myself with
companionship of being deprived.

Still , quite unfairly
A cold wind blows
Through the windows
and nudges my notebook
as it strips itself up
from prologue to rest ,
That I had shown dreams to
of being limitless.
But now,
At the verge of perdition
it takes revenge of
of its countability,
baring all.

An epilogue awaits.
and now
So do I .

SoUmY@

Insomniac

2008-06-25T05:44:00.001-07:00

On moments such as those
Sleep used to be pregnantly
due for months ,
When you ,quite in haze with
your own assurances
Used to break the peace
With your belongings,your acquaintances
And your parties.

Pandemonium had a sweet social
escapade in 'gatherings' --
the way you termed it
leaving me lonely,miserably alone
On a bed that was comfortable for two
and misplaced for one,
night after night
And yet another followed.

So when we got separated ,
Finally in social eyes ,
I thought of the days
I couldn't sleep because of
The noise that distancelessly
Formed a bubble
In between us
And burst one day due to
my pinpricked tolerance.

Then ,like a happy story ends
With a spongy touch to heal
The pains I had suffered ,
I set my eyes closed
Only to realize
there was too much of silence
That night.

I cried to fill in the void
I sank myself in.

Either way,
An Insomniac.

SoUmY@

Theatrical only ?

2008-06-24T10:51:00.001-07:00

He creates the backdrop,
the lights and the shades.
The curtain is coloured blue ,
detailing situational turnarounds ,
The sets ,the floors ,
the bends.
And You enter
as if unknowingly ,
Unnoticed ,questioning your
own existence at that brink.

Where in that stage
The protagonists play aloud,
Act with authority
And remorse in silence ,
You stand under the sea of darkness
Only to be a nobody but one.

You clap after scenes ,
swing with the way the
the puppeteer prompts invisibly
to your emotions ,
timing your tears and laughs to
Rich benefits, since you
see nothing but real illusions.

Only the events alter
And time ticks on
As you play the part of a
mute spectator .

Then
One day your pink hopes
Dilute in the colourless wishes
of too many shades
and leaves you amazed
As another curtain falls...

And never rises
Again.

SoUmY@