Poetry

Poetry is not easy.
Had not been, so many times.
Running daylong makes difficult forcing mind.
Yes, forcing to write
While thoughts in head
Whirl restlessly and chatter and cry;
Scavenging for even a shred of thought,
Is tiring, endless, boring too.
And then there's “I”.
I can't escape, it seems, this “I”.
It comes on pages all I write.
I'm all I write, and firmly so.
They say it's wrong,
Indecent, crude
So subjective, and passionate too.
But when did I write for them?

Words flowing out

Words flowing out,
Haltingly,
Slowly.
Irregularly
Trickling down
As I wait for them.
In anticipation,
Angrily.
Oh! The futility of waiting
On and on!
Looking at the console
All the while
I keep on wishing, that they'll come after all as they used to – once.
Once.
Yes they used to pour uninvited.
Words the water of a broken pipeline on the street.
All the taps
Are dry mouthed now.
No water.
I wait
In anticipation
For words' flowing out
Even if haltingly
Slowly.

Life

How big a bully this life has been!
It pushed you, slapped you, pinched you:
To make you dance on its tunes new
Took props away-all- lest you lean.
How big a con, without a blindfold
It made you trust its lays.
Snatched all your years, all nights and days,
It shackled; poisoned, kept you in hold.
The ground below and wide sky blue,
It'll make you run and take em away.
If you breathe still, it'll say,
“Now give me all sweet, small things too -
That hold you when I've taken all.

I could not linger on the platform # 1

I am no natural poet.
No sir!
Poetry comes very rarely,
Infrequently, to me.
It had been knocking
The last few days
Faintly.
I did not open the doors
(Metaphorical), of mind.
I'm a busy man,
You see.
How can a professional
Adult Indian male
Be so weak as to stop running
His private-public rat race
And take time out
For a thing so insignificant
As licking his wound
That rankles with pain of (good) old days?
I could not linger on the platform that night.
I had a train to catch,
3 bags to place,
With a status of RAC.
Delayed heartache.
The prognosis I prophetically knew.
It was true.
Home is not where the heart is;
Home is where the purse can be filled.
And the belly.
Heart and all it can do,
Is nothing -
When compared to
What stomach does when aroused.
Therefore, I have travelled 798 kilometers
And come
To the city where I work
From the only city where I ever lived
From the city I loved
(And hated, and tried to flee from
But that's another story.
I was a better/worse man/boy then).
So, I could not stay,
While coming or going,
On platform # 1.
12 hours and so much to do.
You see
I could not even meet you
And you and you.

Kashi

How'd I ever write of anyone but you, O Kashi!
Lord Shiva, the destroyer of all desires,
How burnt he in his desire for return!
I too, with closed eyes come to you
And roam in the lanes I lived in-
A restless, haunter
Of my city,
My ghats, my and lanes and days with you.
My uncle, exile, he wept for his Kashi,
And told
“The man who loved you most
Was cursed to stay away forever.”
A curse, they say, is curse
When heart it burns.
The old curse fell.
This time,
On me.
The curse of living away,
Of never coming back
To you, O Kashi!