Row, row, row the boat sang them all rowers deft,

Dying ripples- a memento from a dreamy noon, behind they left.

Humming an old song, them ripples each caress my feet,

And then each bringing itself a departure to another beat.

I remember a sunny Sunday, when my name you took in a yawn,

Today as I idle by this stream, the ripples tell me again you are gone.

Think of you I once in a while, forget you I try more often,

But tell me these ripple again, as to the beat strike the oarsmen.

Look at them not -these ripples, for they distort my face,

The tussles of a once tempestuous heart still have no grace.

Amused are these banks by the resilient ripples since grand old eternity,

For to the banks we must all get and row we must in all certainty.

From the past to the present and the present to a past, these ripples alone ferry us.

 So, row we must, trapped be not by these ripples, row we must.

You were the breeze that cooled the sparrow perched up on my window,
I too wished to dwell in your company. And off you flew with that sparrow.

What do you wish me to be?

What do you wish me to be?

The wind that can swirl what time has implanted within you

Or the breeze that’s just gentle and yields from you without a bicker.

The wind that sets the desert in to an untameable delirium

Or the breeze that just flows past whispering an old secret.

The wind or the breeze?

What do you wish me to be?

The infinitude of the ocean that can cleave your hull

Or the narrow stream that just wets the feet in a sunny lull.

The interminable torrent that can drown but leave you thirsty

Or the quenching boundedness incapable of ingesting you.

The ocean or the stream?

What do you wish me to be?

The earth beneath –the eternal womb of creation

Or the skies above- the untouchable illusion of destiny.

This stage beneath with props and actors deluding smiles and tears

Or the clock above, that’s both light and curtain to the show.

The earth or the sky?

What do you wish me to be?

The placid permanence of death,

Or the temporal temptation of life.

Sublime in to the ubiquitous darkness

Or be a flickering flame on a stolid yet vanishing candle?

Life or death?

What do you wish me to be?

The Lighthouse

As I walk by the beach, waves washing away the footsteps I leave,
I wonder where that youth and zeal vanished to.
Knowing fully well, that no glory lies ahead, no cause too noble,
That truth is, only till the twist of logic.

Now, that there are only questions and no answers, may it be known,
That there is childhood and then there is life.
No pain seems too great that numbness cannot take its place.
Isn’t today but a rehearsal of tomorrow?

The road I walked by, hold no mark of my soul,
Here by these rocks, there used to be a lighthouse
Up to which, against the wind, I used to race.
Can someone tell me whatever happened to it?

Many a nightmares made my sleep terrible, as a child many a fears I used to know.
The spans of time have got me over them all but one.
And I remain clinging on to life dear, for the fear of death alone.
Can there be a better reason to life than that?

Hey dearest of strangers, here by these rocks there for sure used to be a light house,
While I write an obit to it,
Can someone tell me, if the roads ahead will show me the lighthouse again?

A Thought On Immortality

The leftover of consumed sanity,
A hushed up thought in a sizzling mind.
Doing the pirouettes in this labyrinth,
Many a lost and many a dead.

Of shades and light,
A relationship of inseparability,
Ever again the same ones
Knocking the doors I find.

By those familiar corners,
Wafts some old ghosts.
Out of those walls again,
Peep some sleeping faces.

In that abysmal somnolence,
Elicit I, a few mortgaged dreams
Again to lend them hues of hope.
And yet a few eluding ones,
Pricked to life in the halo of a high.

Rise from the graves, children of my mind,
Let’s end this game of hide and seek.
For in this maze of time, by this corner
I might come again.
But might then be too bitter in the heart
To play this game.
So, Oh thoughts, you that
I have seduced and fondled with,
You that I have beguiled in to existence,
Let me etch you in to immortality.

When this life of drawing holes
In bubbles sublimes to nothingness,
You will ripple in perpetuity.
When you impregnate a thousand
Minds with dreams,
As your shadow, beneath your light
Of hope I will lurk.
Hey thought, my elixir of immortality,
Come forth this once
Let me write my name on you.

Scorched for hours, the hooligan has trawled in the night.
Crimson painted, bloody from the travail is the sky.
The ruckus and the rumpus, the clamour and the blare,
From a thousand noises now transposed to the cacophony of a tavern
Subside the frayed minds and bodies in a Bloody Mary.
From the labour of a day now there is respite.

Set beneath an arc, alit some splinters keep the fire.
The baton has changed hands in the bleak of night.
My appointment sees it bright, the rumble is quieter,
But I let it not die.

In a while the hooligan will be back and baton shall too go back.
And then again when the barmaid disciplines the rummy,
I shall, here, by the arc keep the chimes.
And again love the night.

The Last Puff

In what elapsed between my breath and then,
When that Cadillac whisked the lovers away,
In what elapsed between a moment and then,
When the fog horn aloud, missed the bay,
I held you within.

That night when the clouds burst and went,
When that drop off the sill,
Dripped from my cheek to neck,
I held you within.

In that tiny spell,
A gasp of air as I drowned in my self.
For the briefest of moments we met-
You, my loneliness and me.
The last puff, one deep drag,
Ah! A sting, my lips;
And you too vanished in to the wet air.

Once again in the company of none,
I wished, along you had taken me too.