Is Poetry Twilight

Why is poetry born? 

Does its womb in darkness churn?
Or is its river reason?

Where are its verses meant to reach
The heart in which a corner we crave

Or the home we left behind 
At the end of an old path of trust bereft.

Is poetry merry, singable, is it a song

Or is its verse only a whisper

Like the cry waves leave by their shore
In an ageless error of love.

When we write poetry

Are we answering or asking

Is poetry confluence of our humble sides

And with melody must it be sewn
Or is it the dissent of sore tides.

Able at performing within silent strides.

Is our poem a halt for someone's timeless wander

To hear which the wait has been suffered.

Are words of your poetry

Better guarantors 

At negotiating our differences

That stone walls cover.

I know that by poetry we undress

And cover the frayed flesh of our tattered soul.

Our poems are our window to the world

And the world's peek into the depths that we fall.

Where should we hide poetry

If it goes unheard

Why should we write poetry

If nothing it alters that it must

Burning, aflame

Consumed in fire and dust of hopes

Is poetry meant to die and be reborn
In paper or transcend boundaries that guns draw.

If it is meant to be the song of ages

Why poetry must be written by poets alone

Strange - poetry is immortal

When the hands that write it aren't

They call poetry abstract, figment, feetless walk

And the labour of a mind swimming among islands.
And to find a answer I yet must write another one

What do I know of poems and poetry

Or of their power and shelter

For I have only always crawled to poetry

To conceal the sky of my losses under its wings

To be able to go on, 
To breathe by my poem's shadowy side

To cry what I need and miss

To sing what I believe, 
I write those poems 

When truth and times force me 

To the twilight of my dreams

Amaranthine

I love you when your scarlet lips pray                       

And your feather feet turn the fate of my way,

I love you when you carry the sky in your eyes

And bind the oceans in seraphic smile,

You're the moonlit verse which heavens wear
An ageless song that clouds shower.
I love you for amaranthine is your loveliness
Your arms a fragile haven for my slowing self
I love you when you kneel with kindness
And touch my barren soul's emptiness.

Painting An Embrace

I wish to hold you when you're anxious            
And tell you that there isn't a thing

I wouldn't do to see you smile
But you're so far away
Farther even
Than the farthest dream 
And the faintest star on the night's starry face
I'm not made that powerful
To travel so far
But my care may
It can gently lull you
When you're sleepless
Tell me hence
When your brow sweats
And your heart sinks
It's for such moments
That I exist 
It's to hold you when you're anxious
That I now live

Mystic Longings

We may have all what we want
Yet find no stirring within
But realize love and passion for the one
That's impossible in its becoming

Oh Love, ever elusive, thou art

Village

The evening throbs as if a surge                                           
Of unspoken feelings on their verge
The satin night crawls far & wide
Melting everything hitherto in sight                          

The bamboo vines whispering lullabies 
In chorus, sound like gentle seas 
Mortal forms vanishing into nothing                      
Their footsteps & signs sans lingering

As I toss & turn on the cot
My head chases a single thought
Born of the faceless jingle
That do their job & hastily mingle

My sleepless eyes stumble upon
The starry pond where fireflies spawn
The million glints from their burning
Provoking an unearthly craving

Crew of crickets join for a supper choir
Their tunes tearing from beneath every layer
Melodious than the greatest known tune
Into every note rhapsody strewn 

The tender breeze rising from the banks
Of the distant river breaking ranks
Reassuring my sand ridden hair
Infusing a delight so delicate & rare

I'm captive of a perfumed whiff
Born of some mystic leaf
The many hued flora kneading
Charismatic musk seething

I forget I was born in the lights
I forget all the pointless fights
I forget every mirage to which I clung
I forget my need of a city, far flung

I move over the worthless addictions
I find refuge from haunting afflictions
I sense strain forsake my nerve
I feel the return of humane verve 

I sleep on my back
Looking at the soulful dark
Watching countless questions at sight
That I dodged in the bright

Then, like the ardour of lovers,
Like the embrace of mothers,
Like the ageless sage,
Begins to etch in heart, my village

Hidden Answers

In the stars & the sun

In bonds & alone           

In love & hatred

In life & death

In men and women

In distant and dear ones

In the whole world's confine

Allwhere I'd been to find

But in the end I learnt, 
That what I sought,

Wasn't n
For 'twas always dwelling within

Poison Ivy

Many roses I've held and by their thorns 

Pricked and wounded

The worst hurt but came from one

Whose blossom was without a thorn

It was her tender petal which left its venom

Inevitability

Every way I took, every turn I made

And every manner I walked on the bygone's lane - 
I couldn't but bend time's hand;

What I tried to alter, was always ordained to be
It inevitably occured, no matter what I did

If Only

If I could be born again

If only I could love and live again

All the chances ignored

If only those could come again

If only I could be in yesterday

If only I could stop again

All the beauty overlooked

If only those could form again

If only I could return

To all the failures again

All the points missed

If I could learn again

If only life were another once

Kinder to me in time and chance

If only a bit more I could savour

Content, I would close forever

Drop

In all failure and glory

In all riches and dearth

In life and in its pages

Is written my story

A closure I seek

The tale cold and steep

A lovely agony

A timeless wait

Dying now born again

Back and forth in lane

Stumbling and stealing

From those moments ingrained

To linger I'm doomed

Suddenly I see days' gloom 

And then roses in night

Like a drop in its flight

Shades of Love

Love is not only

When we hold on

It lives too, when

In time we let go

Love isn't only 

When we show,

It's alive too when

Furtive tears flow

Love isn't only when 

Together we could be 

It's love too, when 

In redeeming them, we split

Love isn't only when it's said to be,
It's there in the unsaid quiet 
Of hopeful eyes and the still of lips 
Born of ages of waiting mute

Love is in giving up

When right it is so to do

It's in failing with pride

When a chance is all you got

It's in burning to save

In suffocating to revive

To deliver the 'one' from pain

Gifting your soul as token

No lover ever measured love

Nor weighed it in earthly scale

To each his heart sang that note

That's how he knew that in love he fell

Predestined

I inch closer to oblivion

Like the sun.
Now over head,
Then kissing horizon;
The brightest of 'em all
Yet destined to set

I embrace impending time
Without bidding adieu
Those many fold memories
Joys, tears, learnings alike

Clutching gray, surrendering youth
Bound to live such inscrutable truth.

Floating Dust

The setting sun mocked
My dwindling silhouette, 
Grinning upon my decline
From light and radiance

Just like she did
When she walked out,
Smirking at my thinning chances
Proud of ripping my fancies

Little does the sun know
I hold its rays 
Captive in my eyes
Enough till it rises

Little did she know that
Even in her presence
I had clung to a memory
Of her shadow, from days gone by.

Uncared

Many women he's held.
While they stood close,
Each asked the same
Will her, he remember ?

He thought over but
Always held his tongue
For the one he'll never forget
Is the one who never asked

When She's Missed..

A moment' gone

And an epoch already

Wonder what'll remain of me
If such was the test of lifetime

Faultless Feuds

A moment it took
To regret and hate
Choice of words
I'd made;

Just when she was
About to melt
Into sunset, I ran,
In surrender I knelt

A Place Beyond..

A certain consequence
Uncertain means
That levels all the
Lack of sense

A place promising
Everlasting fulfillment
A rendezvous with
Infinite recesses

A place beyond..
My dreams call !!!

Am I ...

Am I he, who smiles at humour
Or the cynic who spots the lie
The ambitious who strives for ends
Or the purist who prizes means

Am I he, whose heart fell in love
Or whose body longed for another
The one who pined for that company
Or was it, for solitude, he feared

Am I he who competes
Or the coward who surrenders
The one who runs to win
Or one of the gullible dreamers

Am I the one who deceives
Or the saint who suffers truth
The one who believes in the light
Or who's simply afraid of the dark

Am I split or singular
In places one or plural
He who flourishes 
Or the doomed who perishes
Breathing here and drowned there

The sands I stand on,
With me, are they ridden ?
The faces, at me, that smile
Does nothing lie beneath the sheen ?

Is there something - anything
Of me, when I'm gone, worth recalling





Picture Courtesy - http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshslash/6240211080/

Plea

Across seas, hills, and woods   

I've winged ahead

They offered me all that there was

Tempting me to halt



I've flown to you still

'Cuz that's how it has been

Since my childhood rein 

Shed your drops in our honour, please !!

Kite

Lone stringed flier

Amid a flock of feathers;

The impostor evades and ducks

The guardians of clouds


Soaring in pretense

Of spanning the heavens;

Alas ! It could only rise

To the tallest roof


Lured to deem itself worthy

Of the infinite citadel

And mimicking the wings;

It's but slave to a mere string