The span

 

One last look at the canvas

Remains the deepest one

Between now and eternity

There is an ocean of time

Attempts, chances , opportunity

Hence the eternal procrastination

Of stretching the last glance now

Within the fathom of present effort.

When the first sight is also the last

The two horizons collide into one

The sea gushes with a crushed rage

 A giant demon cramped in a minuscule cage

There the mental compass loses direction

All but what is in the ambit of sight

Is a matter of fading irrelevance

If the canvas were an eternity

We would eke out the color bits till the last corner

In the process dry out the pensive brush

But when events slip into the past

The mind chews the  cud of memories

With a rich stroke oozing from bristles

Searching for a discarded inch of blank canvas.

 

Delhi

2081

00.07 hrs

30.7.23

The ephemeral perpetuity

 

An unblossomed bud dangles

Blushing with her latent smile

The thrill of possibilities

For she carries petals in her womb

The floral curtains on dreams

The seeds await backstage

For the unraveling of their role

The nectary blossom and myriad shades

When they pollinate afar terrains

Then the dream of culmination

Of all the display and concealed sap

An ovation to part perfectly performed

Begetting life in their demise

For she lived like sweetness of nectar

Invisible but still the very  essence

And dies to be omni present

Between the dangle and shrivelling

Lies an ephemeral perpetuity.

 

Delhi

23.40 hrs

26.7.23, 5 yrs after mom breathed her last

2080

 

The dazzle of dark

 

You always have returned my waves

My unrelenting and perpetual breath

And my unwavering sight towards you

You dispel with callous disdain

My dreams disperse and fall apart

What you return is bright glitter

While what seeps within turns black

The caves no one knows about

The dark damp corners of life

Blindfolded by the scintillating reality

The brilliance of grated dreams

While the ravine reality smoulders

Like the crackle of unburnt coke.

 

Delhi

1.11 hrs

Delhi

23.7.23

Found in prayers

 

Amidst the chants of hermits

The silence of an atheist emanates

The invisible and unsung lyric

Immersed in sonorous tunes

The dipped bucket that burrows

The cracked abyss of a parched well

There is a  blindfolded reflection

Of a rare lunar smile cast on umbra

When she whispers in my eager ear

I am so lost in her thoughts

That imaginary reality curbs

The real imagination for once

Intertwined strands of belief

The atheist could behold God

When He interrupted the prayers

Of a furious hermit with His silence.

 

Delhi

00.57 hrs

2078

22.7.23

The battle

 

 

The warrior returns to citadel

With a shiny Armour

And a spotless sword

While gallops overflow

The soul is smeared

His troops shudder in disbelief

For the bugle still beckons

The field summons with fiery

The peril of the foe challenges

Masses stare with abandon dismay

But there are Trojans in his mind.

 

Delhi

16.7.23

2077

14.10 hrs

 

 

Her eye brow

 

The open port awaits

The siren on the mast

She corrodes and awaits

The eventual delta of life

With an eyebrow that is open

For several days now

While one half of her

Is intangible and lost

Time has gnawed into her

And demands to give way

On the restless port

While we who have forever

Challenged the sea and braved the tides

When engulfed in her arms

Now stare at the listless bubbles

Then she sinks in the time

We lose and are lost

Her eyebrow is open

Still in the constellation of time.

 

Delhi.

2076

13.48 hrs

16.7.23

 

 

 

 

 

The maestro

 

 

Latching onto every nuance

Of the sugary tune bride

As she slides through the mind

To flush the aisle with her melody

Escorted by her pompous band

When even the silence in the tune

Speaks out to the heart within

Like the solitude of a lover

Brings him closer to the beloved

The metaphysical and perception

Do not wary to the one who finds

His image in a transparent mirror

And himself in the myriad faces

That fill the mask clad world .

Such is the aficionado dipped

Sitting in the audience at a dark corner

Dipped in the tune that thaws on stage

Actually we know not

Who is the real maestro ?

 

Delhi

16.7.23

2075

13.36 hrs

 

 

 

 

The obvious cache

 

Like an elephant camouflaged 

By a strand of burnt grass

Within the realm of smoky night

Diminishes into invisibility 

So does the emotion freeze

Saddled on a throbbing heart

Spurred by pulsating breath

The reins of wisdom arrest 

The pounding gallop of mind 

It is there but not to be seen.

Then the trumpet blows 

The wood that was dead 

Suddenly the caves echo

The trees swing upon breeze strings

Once your dreams alight

On the branch of dark night .

Delhi

2074

13.19 hrs

16.7.23

When the followers lead

 

The sprint along the untrodden track

To keep pace with the sublimity 

Superlative despite his flaws and folly

An unequal self  of the egalitarian lot

And still an unfinished perfection 

Unsurpassable as an infinite horizon 

While the throng is struck in ripples

Emanated from an unshakeable ore

The Master excels to ccreate his aura

While the sun manages to ring a halo

And the breeze blows his soft tune 

Somewhere amidst the cloud and the wave

He holds his gait to perfection :

He who fears not to dissolve 

In the taste of brine 

In the charred sky of night

In the flutter of twilight

In the grayness of the wave 

The throng knows not whom they follow

For the Master has no face 

Only his form to follow 

And the elongated forms

Of those that follow 

The Master steps on these shadows 

Of those who actually lead the way

Somehow believe they can only follow 

00.19 hrs

2073

13.7.23

Delhi

 

Why do kids hate their uncle ?

Coz it’s an instance involving antipathy

 

In admiration of grit

 

 

The mental foil that alienates

Surrender from hope and vigor

Hope of conjuring a wave eventually

Even as the last thought drags itself

On the vast sea bed that is stark

Naked with a single drop to drape .

Vigor of a youthful and blazing noon

Even when the twilight smoulders

And the sun sinks within the horizon

In search of a chirping morn sometime

The vigor to tide over the testing times

By merely waiting for the hour to hatch

The longest night will have a dawn sometime

Only for the one who waits for long enough.

 

Delhi

2072

8.7.23

00 .03 hrs

 

 

 

 

 

 

The frigid sun

 

The callous visage 

Of a ruminating glacier

Apparently numbed 

Hardened in her despair 

She is thawed within 

Within the sheets of white

And even simmers sometimes

Amidst her gaping crevices 

But maintains her silent poise

To the most focused eye 

Like an unwrapped act on stage 

Before the eager audience 

That stares at the curtain 

And then at the ticking clock

Once the show is dumped 

The throng stetches from exit

As if making up for the lost hour.

The one who waits for eternity 

With the anxiety of a mad rush 

His bated breath is now relieved

And unwraps his  gift of life 

The frigid sun now melts to glow

Sitting for long in the reclined ice 

He was indeed the true performer

Now the horizon where glacier climbs

To touch the reddened sky 

Which side of the curtain is the stage

Thr gift is the world outside the wrapper.

Gurgaon 

1671

16.19 hrs

2.7.23