Last but one...

November, thou art magical…

The chill in the air carries your scent…

Gone are the sweet mornings beaming with light,

You wear a somber look, clad in grey raiment…

I inhale you deeply…it fills up my lungs,

My eyes, my lips, my life…

I am brimming over with your potion,

Just a few drops have wound up a charm…

November, thy misty countenance eludes me,

Thy wintry breezes make me shiver…

The long nights mock my insomniac eyes,

Fuming vapors from my coffee mug, and my lips quiver,

The songs of summer, of sunshine days,

I’ve burnt down in the fireplace…

In the folds and creases of my quilt,

I nurture my vernal fancies…

How blanched now looks nature’s rosy face,

With the blanket of thy haze marring her grace…

My saccharine dreams have gone away-

With the nostalgia of the autumn evenings…

The clouds come floating along my balcony,

Perched on thy gossamer wings…
Tiptoeing, you peer through my blinds,

I tread on your dew-trodden paths,

And…

Some frozen memories are warmed back to life…

Awaiting light...

I sink deep in the abyss of vacancy…

But there’s calm deep beneath…

Where the deafening clamors cannot penetrate…

The sadist instincts of this world are up in arms,

They’ll strangle me soon….

And sting me with vicious words,

Bully me till I yield,

Heap ashes upon me, and then there’ll be no trace of me…

And then…

The chaos will recede,

Quietude will fill up the vacuum of my thoughts…

The rusty souvenirs of my existence will wear away…

This endless persecution will no more eat me up…

I shall have gone far…

Redemption is what I seek…

Ponderings...

The soot has darkened, and all ‘yesterdays’ appear black…

Reeking of the old days that once defined my being, I writhe in pain…

‘Twas not a vision spun out of air, The Utopia…

…days, months, years, I’ve breathed through…

The sun has long faded out against the crimson drapery of the horizon,

The city’s smoky skyline tinged in grey blears out everything…

But who can free me??

I’m stranded in my own wasteland,

I see before my eyes, the carcass of broken dreams,

The moonlight slowly descends on my idle reveries…

And in the nook of my eyes, sleep groans…

Yet, the bittersweet drowsiness, I love to savour…

On The Crossroads...

The flame of the dying candle flickers,

                            The trembling wick is yielding to the strong gale…

The silence pierces the stillness of the landscape,

                            I can only hear my heart moan and wail…

After years I see you, standing before me,

                           The floodgates of pent-up emotions have now burst open…

Do those promises still hold?? Or shall I be deceived yet again??

I have cremated my dreams, and burnt my heart into ashes…

The corpse yet remains, its stench will choke you.

You stand before me, a few steps away,

                              Yet an unseen barrier rips us apart…

You look into my eyes, appalled by the stony coldness…

                               My lips don’t twitch, my limbs don’t tremble…

I am benumbed by your closeness,

                                In your arms, I feel ever so distant from you…

As the dawn awakes…this maddening crowd, this cacophony deafens my soul…

Do you call me?? Your voice is drowned out…

You ask me to fall in love, all over again…

                                 But don’t you see my deadness??

You hold my frail body, feel my pale skin,

                                 But it renders me hollow from within      …

Love makes me shudder, I dread at the very thought,

                                To have to go through it all, again, numbs me…

The journey that never ends...

I’ve been walking on, on the paths I’ve traversed since long…

                                    Yet today, I know not where I’m heading towards…

Life has set me into motion, and hence…

                                    I’m tirelessly walking on…

Days wither away in the lap of dusk, and dusk ushers in the endless nights…

                                    The cosmic forces too come to a standstill, but I do not pause…

This perpetual journey has now become synonymous

                                    With my identity, or…or with the loss of it??

I seek respite, a thick black cloud of haze blurs my vision,

                                    I plead- kill me, let my soul be free…

With remnants of broken dreams,

                                    I feel encumbered, I feel weighed down by the burden…

My heart lets out a muffled cry,

                                    But I suppress it with a heavy sigh,

I’m tossed and turned in the tempests of life,

                                    I wonder, I ask, but why??

Countless tears I’ve swallowed in my path,

                                    And smiles have evaded my lips…

The shadows overpower, and sometimes go away,

                                    I still stand in the penumbra…

Hark! The night whispers, I readily drink its potion,

                                    It shall put me off to eternal slumber, and then I shall rest in peace…

The Night that Enthralls...

                    Night descends on my dim terrace, and stealthily crawls into my room,

                                    The glistening stars on the firmament weave dreams,

               I whisper wayward fancies to myself, and

                                    And strange, nameless shadows hear them all, it seems…

               The crescent moon peers through window-pane,

                                    And winks at me, I stare at it in awe,

           My weary body seeks repose, heavy-eyed, I usher slumber to overpower me…

      Yes, I wait for tomorrow to come…but will these long hours ever come to an end??

       I sleep and sleep, yet the night seems to perpetuate itself…

            The velvety darkness about me stir my unquiet dreams, unfetter my thoughts,

                                    The placid darkness…drapes me in its silk-like attire,

            The winds sing a somnolent melody,

                                    And the zinnia blossoms are lulled to sleep…

            The night narrates curious fables, hoary tales of love, betrayal and passion…

       I listen to them half-heartedly, my attention swaying to and fro

       Quiet contemplations soon give way, I don’t know whence they come and go…

       I summon my own angels, aren’t they said to wander freely at the wee hours??

       I keep fighting my own devils, trying to wrench myself free from their evil powers…

            Waiting and waiting…

           

            When would the vermillion rays dispel the darkness,

                                                And herald a new horizon??

Yesterday...

YESTERDAY…such a captivating word…it seems to enfold within itself myriad emotions…so many sentiments cling to its bosom…

Our TODAY is born out of its womb, and yet the umbilical cord is never altogether severed…can we ever rip off our ‘yesterday’ from our existence and cast it aside?? It’s a shadow that keeps us ever on close surveillance…and our TOMORROW seems to feed on it, and thus thrive and grow…it is formed from the ashes of the bygone ‘yesterdays’…

Yesterday contains such a plethora of paradoxes…it suggests a weird sense of wistful romanticism, of an empty fulfillment, of painful pleasure, of sweet melancholy that at once maims as well as reinvigorates or inward spirits…it’s like an oasis in a desert…we can ‘see’ it so decidedly, yet it seems so much beyond our reach…and perhaps, its exceptional charm lies in its inaccessibility…

We are overwhelmed by a paroxysm of sensations whenever we happen to revisit our ‘yesterdays’…we were a bit younger, and how beautiful those heydays were…we had a loved one close to us, who has gone too afar now…perhaps, we smiled more often, fretted much lesser, lived better…but this torturous photographic memory often proves to be our undoing…

 Yet, when the going gets tough, wearied by the perpetual struggles of life…we seek a romantic escape in our ‘yesterday’, trying to flee away to the halcyon days, looking for solace to pacify our disconsolate souls, and our deep sighs letting out the nostalgic – “Those were the days…”