Poetry for the insomniacs

Elope with me into that dying gaze
of the sunset, elope with me where the Azure
is vermilion- whose color like Van Gogh’s
palette- whose words like Tolstoy echo over
the brims of another continent.
The night sky has
reddened.

This night the sky has reddened and my favorite
book lie face-down on the table, waiting for its reader
to blow the trumpet- to turn the pages over, to mark
the words he won’t fathom, to mark the lines he would
forget. I am not awake, I am dreaming
that I am awake like the dead dream of living
and the world is a big bad maze.

Elope with me through the big bad mazes, let’s
make love- let’s purify our veins with the
remembrance of yesterday-when we were too
young to hold hands and not feel love, but love?

My heart beats now, my words are sallow,
the sky has reddened and it shall rain.
Would you love me
again? 

A Song from my Childhood.

The dawn greets me with the song of
the sparrows. When I look out of the
window I see three of them -
sparrows dancing on the sill, singing
 all the while, singing as if no one’s
listening, as if the world were a
singing festival, singing to their last
breath, singing as if this dawn
were the last song of the
dying bird, as if, as if I were
the last witness to the
songs of a forgotten city-

To
Calcutta (and its
chorui-pakhi). 

Afternoons before today.

Here is the world august and round
Here is my heart free but bound
If what I hear is not a sound.

If what I hear is what I see
As the lumber wades through the sea
The silence counts from one to three
The silence stays from one to three.


Strange life, whose lie we live
Voluptuous hearts which never grieve
Are fond of me, and I of them.

If eyes were ears and ears were eyes;
If heart was mind and mind was heart
Then who would you love?


And who would love you
Forever?

The Sihouettes

The silhouettes  come in my head

in various shapes then gather dust
and stones and become what they
are destined to become-
words. 

This is the shape and size of every

stanza that I write-five lines

by seven-eight words that sometimes
deviate away from the standard that
I set in the rhythm of poetry, and poetry.

Is it hard to understand?
Poets are insidious and fastidious-
 oh you know, how cryptic they must be,
like hiccups they produce words and beauty,
but if you hear another story
believe in that too- for in this world
there is no certainty- not in poetry,
not in love, not in what you think you
want to believe.  No certainty, never in
love. There are versions. And in them there
are versions too. 

There is no certainty in the home, so get out
straight, run through your terse head
and plunge deep into your heart so you may believe
in life there is more, so you may believe it doesn’t begin
in the womb or end with the funeral pyre-
when you trust the certainty of words, 
when you and I, and
I trust- the CERTAINTY of words.
Not you? 


If you ask me, if you do ask me-
ask me if I believe, if I believe in what I write-
what do you expect I would say?

You must hope for a silent nod when you
 hear the cruel

NO, I DON’T.

Call me Ishmael.

The waves in their foamy textures
Could help us none.
The sea was empty, empty of grass,
Still life, how still, like my parent’s
bed.

Where are the gulls tonight?
Birds don’t fly at night.
Where are the gulls today, it’s strange
They haven’t arrived yet.


The sea is a charmer, the boy is seven,
The boy is me. I am the boy. Look, look here’s-
My little harpoon and my love-fish.
I smell like fish. I am sharks and
I am whales, I am waves and I am winds.
I am seagulls and I am the sea, yes, I am ships that float on
me.

‘Call me Ishmael.’
Call me by my name. I am the little hunter of
Godthab bay.



The sea is empty. The whales are dead. Where do think
I can get a little bread? 

Moonshadow, a song.

Chevron hills,

saffron junipers,

scattered across twilight,

looking like nothing,

beside lost paths,
that lead somewhere strange,
inside heads.


I was here,
I was there.
You were here before,  
do you hear?


The dust and the oldest trees,
the junipers and the little-little bees,
the hills and the scree,
all made of matter-
pitter-patter,

never belonged to us,
never ever?


                  And who were we,
                          stoning the stones,
                                        making fire,
                                               making ire.



And this was where,
this was when,

the sphinx had laughed,
the sphincter sang,
in gossamer thoughts,
of gods and gargoyles,
and we had poked,
and we had punned,
in our heads,
in that loveshadow,
beneath the pines,
in that moonshadow
of our hearts,
in that moonshadow
in our heads,
where we dwell,

you and I.