Tonight

Tonight could be just another of those nights 
When the world sleeps as some lie shivering awake
under sad and forlorn neon lights
obscured by the fog passing cars make.
And in the midst of the year end's festivity
there could certainly be that whisper now
of a little conscience pricking gently
that nudges the heart to see somehow

that tonight is just another night in the cold
for some to whom this is just another date;
and if the year grows young or completely old
their gross reality it does not obfuscate.
What joy, what hope, what happiness ahead
to touch their lives when this year too is dead?

Last night when I was dropping my friend home, we noticed a group of people huddled under a flyover. The memory has haunted me all day, and, facile though it seems, I would like to dedicate my last poem of the year to all the homeless people for whom this is just another date.

Transformation

I love how your fingertips make poetry with my skin;

How your eyes watch mine, pleasured by my pleasure;

How you are at once strong and gentle within;

And how in your arms I feel like your treasure.

When with your mind's lovemaking you lead me to an arcane shore

And you play music that touches my soul --

I know that I have never visited this landscape before:

rugged mountaintops, soft sandy beaches and tides that roll.

Then your tactile teasing to drive me wild:

Here and now, moments of ephemeral eternal delight --

You turn me into that forty-something child

looking for, searching for, seeking an epiphanic insight

into life's greatest mystery:

how love transforms the worst warped history.

Budflower

22 December 2015

23:17

Last night, here I was again; brokenhearted as is the wont

Crying in the searing pain; a careless word the font

While the world slept with a clear conscience, oft rare,

And others shadows of their innate evil, like a shield or burden bear.

But how could it end… or end… or end; before a sliver of a chance

two off-chance paths to blend, together a graceful waltz to dance?

And though the heart shattered through acid tears

a cosmic joke it was not, played on an unsuspecting quarry's fears.

Battered and often bruised on the altars of love;

eschewing constantly the middle path which,

Sensible, though it is, little it offers

to the dry leaves of grasses that twitch

to save those little budflowers from certain doom --

To give each budflower what it needs to bloom.

A Sonnet for Quitters

23 December 2015

22:37

On the fringes of the brain

insidious cravings creep:

Triggered by an infinitesimal waft

resolve weakened, lulled to sleep.

Not now, not just now, maybe

later, should it get worse --

Stomachpit kicks itself, gut

clenches, with the effort.

But there are no excuses

and nothing is reason enough

to foil this repetitive attempt

if one's made of stronger stuff.

And though someday the worst will be over

The abyss awaits always, a puff away from surrender.

Want on

19 December 2015

22:17

And suddenly…

In the middle of a brightly lit street

Under a particularly bright street lamp

You finally decided to…

Or perhaps it was a decision taken out of your hands

Compelled by… what?

Held back by a myriad reasons…. but…

It happened, and we did…

Was it the cosmos that shifted

Shivered, shook and shushed,

as we sought what has eluded

for long?

So was it that wanton, then,

just coz it was the middle of the street?

With people padding past pretty oblivious

Or were we oblivious?

Anyway, that's just semantics

Or some such erudite diversion

That should serve to take our minds off

the real thing…

But, it doesn't really work, does it?

Every hour drives the next one to craziness

Though it would rather prophecy an end

to the longest five days we have ever

had to live through… While each minute

drips with possibilities of when

anticipation turns tactile gentle fingertips to

Fulfil the promise of that eternal moment

Under a particularly bright street lamp

In the middle of a brightly lit street

when suddenly… right in the middle of a sentence

and the street… we kissed…

Kindling

Eagle on thermal highs

floating free across

enchanting azure skies

as smooth zigzag patterns enweb --

But sometimes a long melodious cry

a call to her mate?

And sometimes in song-like harmony

another call melds with the one

another pair of wings zigzags

an aerial waltz in tandem.

And raised above the mundane city

throbbing along in a glide

wingtips feather in a gentle touch

kindling

while a soft breath ruffles the down;

And the only sound --

the mingled thudding of two hearts.

The Ballad for an Unknown Candidate

Hesitant, unconfident, you step into the space

to seek numbers to an enmeshed land

the solace of an uncertain dream

in an unclear, distant map of shifting sand;

Tripping on the arcane syntax of a foreign tongue,

bending your mind around diction to enable

the esoteric grammar of an unknown culture -

while the examiner across a makeshift table

Genial but essentially cold to the passion

that burns a path, tears your secure world apart,

smiles comfortingly as your words stumble and trip

a stranger to the dreams that wing your heart.

You watch fascinated as the cultured mouth

forms the well-turned white-accented phrase

as rehearsed and unredeemed words pour forth

from a countenance as brown as your face

poses one insane question after another to which

sometimes you have an answer; but mostly, like fiction

you just wish for a magic wand to turn the tables

on this alien space in your own land of contradictions.

And in that moment when faced with those

dreaded questions, sweat breaks out,

Karna's curse kicks in: the word, the phrase,

the idiom you long to shout 

Memorized, frozen

on the edge of your mind

paralyzed by first-language interference

You seek and search but fail to find --

And once more the mind is colonized

by the hope of a better day:

In a better someplace

In a mad bid to escape, run away,

from a mundane, dreary existence devoid of

the power to raise you from the cesspool of pelf --

And disguised this time as the flight to

the land of opportunity:  History repeats itself.