I Write of Those Who Give Me Gold

“The destiny and history of nations -

Corroding, compromising

Raided, deranged, derailed;

The machines have churned out

Great two dimensional heroes.

The poet stands alone.”

Through blood he wades

Towards the crown

Dead and gone

Vanity of human wishes

Of silken cloth

Of laced up boots

Leading on doom

Disaster.

Unloved, unmissed, unremembered

No graves, no wood to burn

No vultures either

“Privileged, you want to live?

Project, what?

God – he dead;”

Epitaph –

‘Here lies a poet’

Accepting commitment,

Reasonable pride is motivation enough

That impetus is now gone

Clinging to dedications

Growing, revolving

Shrieking in the wilderness

No voice, no words

“Progress, then?

What about the land?

Did it sprout gold?

Elucidate -

Duly justified in terms of human content.”

Analysts, economists

They don’t know

The poet stands still

Talking about all you know and more

No break, no disjunction

“I do not write of the poet

Disillusioned, embittered, lost

I write of those who give me gold.”

Three Blind Mice

To S, M and A

Not necessarily in that order

***

Credit

One of them

Resolved to live with it

Because the roads in ‘Lore

Are unlike the Capital’s.

And now he’d rather shut up,

Unless interrogated.

He knows not what he looks for

Knows not what to do

He does know this –

That he is not to be known.

The other, meanwhile,

Puffed in cancer

Breathing out fear

Of failing to meet up

His preset paradigm

With the kid dead

And mother unaware

What yarn could he spin,

So Consciousness would let him live

Both his and William’s

The third, in the meantime,

Is living in his own sweet bubble

Speaking a language

He doesn’t understand.

The ghost of days gone by

Haunts him still;

So he just travels

From mountains to deserts

Lighting candles

Wherever he goes.

Birthday and Launch (Seven Deadly Sins)

Happy 4th birthday to Kreation!

I'm not going to launch into the long and complicated history this blog and I have shared, nor will I sit down and make a list of why I love it so. All that is self-explanatory. For the last year or so, the blog has been more or less dormant but I have been posting fairly regularly again and I intend on continuing this practice (yes, even if it means replying on excessively nonsensical tags to keep it going).

Four years ago, launching this blog was my first attempt at finding readers who were not my poor classmates bullied into reading and appreciating my (then, and possibly still, crappy) poetry. Now, four years later - and indeed it is so appropriate that this happens on the exact same day as ol' Kreation's birthday -  my first ever published work is out.

Agreed, it is not entirely mine; the anthology Seven Deadly Sins includes short stories by a bunch of talented writers. This endeavour began as a contest by Serene Woods Publication judged by Mithun Mukherjee of De-Scribe - author of Cold Feet and Revenge. The winning entries were compiled into a book and Seven Deadly Sins was born. the book will officially be launched by Guracharan Das of India Unbound fame.

You're all welcome to the launch!

Note: A slight change in schedule... the event starts at 4:30 pm.

Buy your copy of the book here!

A Wednesday

      -  Ode to September 7





So, it shook -
Heavens in the morning
Earth at night.

Bloody possessions, torn limbs
Spattered intestines and mangled bones
Of the morn’s proletariats
Metamorphosed brusquely
To flustered, frightened flocks of
Nightwalkers
In this happening city.

Black-robed made way for the dead
The dead for the grieving
The grieving for 
The nightgown-and-shorts-clad.
Victims one minute,
Revellers another.

‘Mild’ and ‘slight’
Were the adjectives used 
By those
With their mugshot—likenesses
Plastered over the screens.
Nothing to worry about, you see
11 dead, 74 injured
It was the exceptional one per cent.
Then again,
4.2 on the Richter is nothing.
Go home.
Sleep well.

Mere twelve hours 
And the city shook
Twice.
Mere twelve hours.

Both times
Death whisked past us
It chose, instead –
Others, with more to lose perhaps

Both times we turned
To Twitter and Facebook 
To maintain our sanity.