They Have Dried Up

It is true,
indeed, she’d never been mine,
yet,
somehow did for me
what Bhagirath,
long back in time.

It had really flowed
each day, each night, each hour
every minute
quenching prosaic fields,
where I reaped rich,
blossoming fragrant flowers by the side,
with me as constant gardener,
sometimes little pansies of a few lines
purple
once a huge chrysanthemum,
a mellow yellow
another time, a lily- white
fragmenting which I’d play
“she loves me, or does not”

I have tried to build dams
to always gain control
to use to my advantage
channelise the flow
but ’twas its own master
rather I the thrall
not it at mine
but I at beck and call

Omnipresent, Omnipotent
it was my new God
this new Brahmaputra, this new Amazon

But then one day
it changed its course
began rubbing its sides
causing breaks in banks

I ran about frantic
to do best as I could,
but it was as if Thetis
I not half The Man.

What could I do as it fled away?
untie-able, nobody’s prey

It has left behind,
in its wake, just one lingering life
very desolate,
all my companions- my breathing words, my flowers
They have dried up!
as I now create
these with paper
origam-ous ones, that do not live
no smells exude.


3rd March 2008
12:10 PM, quite soon after waking up.

I Am The Word

I
am the word:
Spoken, read, written
thought, imagined
uttered, smothered
in tears, in laughter
as an abuse, abused
as articulated, power
stringed together
for link-ins
even break ups

I am the affirmative
and the negative too
I am in ascent
and
decline
in prayers, I am God, Satan
uses me too.
I am conceived
as you are
hatching out of pregnant
wombs
of matter grey
or colourless
waves of sound
of ink that is
blue, black or brown
I can s p r e a d like fire
travel faster than light
It is I who amuse
I who delight
I am signifier
I am logos, I am speech
I who communicate
Because of me harmony
Because of me breach

God SAID and that is
why there was light
and because of me
all was Good
and you could ask for Eve
It was I -split at Babel
I would be Pralaya

I am thought that is why Descarte

Poignant am I
superfluous too
I am there in quarrels
comforting silences with you

You have but to think
and I come to your mind
Get rid of me you cannot
Know me not well
and are marginalised

In politics, I rhetort
lecture in class,
in courts litigate
on roads I brawl

I am bourgeois
communist, capitalist
colonial, coloured, communal,
casteist, classed and the
vice versa too

I soar, I plunge
I am codified, I am free
I am aliph, bĕ, pĕ
I am A, B, C

Beautiful I am
I am ugly,
I wrong, I write
Workman’s necessity
The connoisseur’s pride
You need ME to judge
as thou shalt be too

I AM POWER
use me well
and at the right time,
craft me to your glories
sculpt your successes of me

I am in prizes
and citations too,

in death sentences,

it is I who woo

I am the soul
of all arts
Science needs expression
I am the language
of Commerce
Of Osama, Bush and Narendra too

I am the Azaan
at birth
Epitaph
after death

I am creative
I am critic
In this poem I am
I form cultures and traditions
I am inherited and taught
I evolve, I metamorphose
I am maimed, wiped out
Still living like the phoenix
of unnumbered facets
I
perch on lips
hibernate
in hearts
brood in breeding brains
leave marks on paper, impressions
on psyches

So let me fly
never stop
I am consequence
Yet I am process too.


Written sometime around the 24th of January 2007

An Epic Creation

Lending order to the chaotic world
From all the material out there in flux
When brooding I had sat on it
While the two orbs had circumnavigated
Their Celestial pathways seven times each
And darkness and light
Had completed their patterns
To make themselves create days and nights heptad
Then I had found Grace
To be able to deliver
To complete my work of grand design
To accomplish what I had set out to do
Even if I had exceeded time

Lo and behold there it was
The paragon for all
To emulate
Marvellous in its scope
The benchmark for future posterities

What I had completed at last
After drawing out each element,
Sculpting each part of the body to be
So that in front of mine eyes lay

My MA assignment for ma’am Grace
For paper 3!

Written on 30th October 2007
When I was finally about to conclude an assignment for my tute that I was supposed to submit on 28th of October, to Ms. Grace.

Ibtedai- Trying To Tell A Story

Ibtedai
Or Initial or Introductory,

the names of my first blog and its first post, represent what is nearly my first real foray in to the open world with my acts of creation. Like Milton, I hope that it will "fit audience find, though few."

I begin with a self reflexive poem on the creative endeavour for me,

Trying To Tell A Story

I
Want to tell
The story of the Word
For which
Words enough
I haven’t
Found
Yet.

I grope in the dark
I read in the light
I search my soul
To be able to indite

Imagination
I don’t think
I lack,
It’s the words
That escape me
From
Me
Forever
In flight
I catch them
Now and then
As I run constantly
Pin them down
And
Scribble them
Or
Trap them
In my
Hard disk

But these are only
The feeble runners
The weak ones of the herd
Who fall prey to my
Inept snares

The fiery gazelle
Know no leaps
No bounds
Too high
On and on
they flee
from me

I do have tomes,
Trophies that
Hang
On shelves on walls,
The Advanced Learner’s
Has the whole lot
Neatly bound
By feeble threads
Alphabetically arranged
Barely three inches thick

Yet
these are not mine
to boast of!
A chaos of darkness
That I have not moulded
Into worlds of my mind
Into days and nights
Poems and novels
And stories
That I want to tell

My prized catch
Still remains
Far far away.



Written
1:30 AM Oct 12, 2007
Delhi