A Dance in Silent Violins

Lovers

Three Paces

One day, in passing
I invaded the valley of her dreams,
And found
Her absence in the realm,
And found
Her lost in her absence,
And found
Her searching all that’s lost.
I found all three of her
Sitting separately
Three paces away from each other.

I found all three of her
Sitting separately
In the corpse garden of her dreams.
Amidst her collection of confused corpses, unsleeping
Three paces away from each other.

One day, in passing
I invaded her dream of three paces.
Fresh spaces were being made for
a new-born corpse in refurbished petals
Of grey – A baby Jesus.
For him we shifted our only bench
Three paces away from us.
We sacrificed our sacred space,
Our point-of-view. I heard
A lullaby. She was putting him to sleep.

Later, when his eyelids found rest,
From opposite corners of the bench
We tried to mend the distance
But for each step we took,
Every pace betwixt, receded
Three paces away from each other.

Dreaming, baby Jesus giggled in his sleep.
Dreaming, baby Jesus giggled in her sleep.
Dreaming, baby Jesus giggled.

Poet

Euthanasia

“You
Glimpsed soldier of fortune
Sweeping their footprints
With branches of mistletoe.
You showed them the corpse garden
————————————-
Madness, you brought it home.”
– Yusef Komunyakaa

The dusk stood leaning by my balcony,
About to fall, onto the streets,
Shattereing into a sleep on a soft, cosy bed
Of rotten petals. Leftovers. Age-old.

A plot of preoccupied dreams
Claimed this empty garden.
The flowers, perhaps, have been stolen
Or maybe they have run away
From the breeze, and from themselves.
I had once run away from myself …
I don’t remember clearly,
Perhaps, I was too, Stolen with the flowers.

Forgetting. A chant for the unforgiven.
An eternity of fireless smoke
Where I disolved, uncomplicated.
People came searching for my corpse.
They found none but claimed my heartbeat.
Later they realized – I was their first dream;
That I had rented their fantasy;
That they have inherited me, created me.
So, they returned home one night, realizing
That threy have become gods;
That Jesus too, lived in their fantasy.

I forgot how long I slept on the petals,
But woke up last dusk
Hearing heavy breathing of tiring souls.
I recognized my poems in their depths:
As if all my infinite characters;
All my innumerable faces
And even, my faceless masks have converged
For an oath we shall share in common -

“Reality is the hurting light. Untamed.
Death shall end reality, rendering us imaginary.
And then we live on a soft, cosy bed
Of other’s memory of ourselves. Liberated.
For its not our heartbeat that keeps us alive
But our memories. We breathe as history does.
So, let’s take an oath, for paranoia of pains,
And fashion euthanasia before we slay.”

Parents

The Return

It rained petals last night
On these streets, dew-worn.
It rained petals in the dark
Of flowers all yet unknown.
And they covered the pain of a lonesome lane,
And they heaped by the broken window panes,
And they exuded the fragrance of a new-born world:
Jubilating; beautified; giggling; silent,
All in the dark, last night.

Then, the morning they had all waited for, came
When the light and smell over-brimmed their waking senses.
Some long closed doors were opened,
They screeched in music, they sang
The song of homecoming, of distant dreams
When they saw petals lying on their street-bed:
Red, yellow, white, blue.

Slowly, timidly, they stepped out in naked feet
And they met their neighbours
Whom they had long believed to be dead.
They felt each others heartbeat. They sang.
Once, taking different palms they danced;
They danced with the petals beneath their feet.
They danced ’cause them that they loved
Shall never return.

It had been long, very long
Since they built their house
Behind the closed doors. Hinged.
They had spent their nights in darkness,
They had spent their mornings in darkness,
They had spent their chunk of sunshine, in darkness.
The chunk of sunshine that poured in
Through their broken window panes:
Dead; moist; untempered; blue.

Then, it rained petals last night
In the out, on the streets
And the fragrance has brought them out
From their dreams; also, in their dreams.
The longest dream. An eternal sleep. Nightmares.

So, they mourned for them they loved
Then, picked a handful of fallen petals
And flung them in the sky above
They flung them in the sky beneath
And they faded into surging petals
Like a dream of a poet.

Children

This Christmas Ends

I came loitering into the town
Of lingering children, untamed.
I found Christmas sans candles.
I found smile-illumined cherry-trees
And I heard playing feet, unreasoning
Into their life-ending night.

Children -
Unknown to invention of fire,
With darkness dazzling on their palms
Were fading into their shadows, slowly;
Until traces of a difference – fully removed
Like their dresses had once been by their parents,
In a different night.

This was a night, different
From those different nights. Untamed
Like the children. Thier life-ending night.
Parents have secured their own busy heartbeats
To keep living after their children.
Their parents, no more, a part of them -
Left them. Left to themselves
They sprinkled Christmas in the air
And hailed the child stranger – greeted me.

Then, it rained needles, that night
On these streets dew-worn.
It rained burning needles in the dark
Where fire was yet unknown.
And they burned the palms of a dazzling dark
And they shattered some window panes
And extinguished the smile-illumined cherry-trees.

The morning brought a moist sunlight
And illumined the Christmas ends.
Leftovers. A heap of expired piglets.
Pyramid. A perfect misnomer of Christian pyre.
And found under the needle-stricken, burnt heap
A baby Jesus, unburnt, saved from the rain;
Dead, under the burden of infinite deaths.

Death, Return Me

Have you heard the frozen seas
On the dark, unpainted night?
Splashing on the rocks
Dying into smaller droplets, unmoving.
Have you heard the frozen waves?

People, they used to call me a painter
But it was a wrong name
I couldn’t paint you in the dark
I needed light to paint you
I needed sight to recognize you
Painting, perhaps, is not of sights
As much as it is of sounds –
There’s music in the darkness
And I was deaf
I couldn’t paint your voice.
I’m a sinner. A dreadful sinner.
I couldn’t paint your screams.

I couldn’t paint your tears
So, you became the droplets
In some lonely painter’s sea.
And it was not me
Jesus, it was not me.
So, I don’t look at paintings anymore
Neither do I listen to them.
I’ve taken my refuge in sands
In which I dream of melting
“Sands, scatter me in your being
Becoming the common, and the drab
So that no one shall ever recognize me
Neither call me a painter.”

Freeze my heartbeat, then. I’m old
You do not scream any more
The pain has become your home
A standstill has been your life
Death is the window to outside
Tell me, don’t you stare outside?
Say me, don’t you search me there?

Just permit me of dreaming, one night
Of a maddening sandstorm
That would carry me in her heart
And leave me on the shore
Of the frozen sea, in one corner of your home
Where you’ve become a droplet, unmoving
Let us sleep in each other’s arms
A droplet in the sand
“Death, return me to my lover’s arms”

It began
When his floor-tiles cracked
Assuming shapes of broken dreams
And shades of a spider’s web.
The first shoot was seen – peeping in,
Creeping into his room.
An opening in the center of this crack.
The beginnings of a baby.

He, who lived inside the room
Or, perhaps,
He, over and above whom the room spread
Jubilated, celebrated, witnessed
A breakthrough called life
In his solemn room
Of claustrophobic shadows.

The plant grew up along with his fingernails.
It bore hearts ’stead of leaves
Each of which would beat day-long.
Night-long.
Like hairs on the child’s head
They grew in size and numbers.
He, who lived in its music
Learnt to dance with the heartbeats.

He counted in the mornings
He counted in the nights
The hearts in the plant.
He was the shepherd of heartbeats.

He counted, one night
Ninety-nine hearts in the grown-up tree
An anticipation of morning disturbed his sleep
Night-long.
The hundredth heart but, never grew.
He lost many a sleeps
He lost many a dreams
He lost many an insomnias
The hundredth heart but, never grew.
The tree of ninety-nine hearts kept beating
Whispering, singing, screaming.

As he learnt to cry
The teardrops rolled down his cheek
The teardrops rolled down to its root
Then,
Tentacles came out of each heart
Tentacles came out of every.
Tentacles made way on his ceilings
Tentacles made way on the walls
Tentacles dripped head in his cold soup
Tentacles dripped head in his pillow
Tentacles ran right though his torn skin
Tentacles ran right into his blood.
Tentacles went and touched his nerve cells
Tentacles went and touched his heart.

The shepherd of heartbeats counted
And the hundredth heart was found
On the plant. Beating.