The Ashes of Time

Libraries burnt,
philosophies twisted,
the canvas
tarnished –
the bitterness
seeps into generations.
 
With every betrayal
of peace,
with every cry
for arms,
we fall back
by a hundred years.
 
The cycle
starts again
with a clean slate
and a burdened conscience.

The Enchantress

Even the mightiest warriors
who swung
their fiercest swords
and slayed
the vilest villains,
curl up
in their warm spaces:
by a fireplace, in a nest,
or a lover's lap,
close their eyes gently,
and become
the most vulnerable.

Seasons of Death

She loves to savor the colors,
one by one.
He makes her swallow the rainbow
whole.
Her essence
is in the blades of grass.
His hunger
consumes
the wildness of the forest.
 
She hasn’t soaked
in exploding sunrises
nor has she absorbed
the delicate dance of a dewdrop
in a long time.
 
Her spring
reeks of death,
like the revolting smell
of a blooming rafflesia.
He sucks at her breast
in the midnight hour,
pollinating her.
His chokehold
over her existence
keeps
men, beasts, and dreams
miles away.

Her summers
were a different version
of the same tragedy.
But her feet
refuse
to blister on the scorching grounds
anymore.

Magnum Opus

The loop
is His masterpiece.
 
The loop
rolled
for eons,
folding into itself
like a mobius strip.
 
Across all levels,
even in our dreams
and the dreams within our dreams,
we must do everything right,
every single time,
without a mote of self-doubt.
 
That’s when
the loop breaks,
spits us out of the prison
of flesh and bones.

An Encyclopedia of Lies

Technology
should hit the sweet spot:
nothing more
nothing less.
 
We are a generation
of depressed spirits.
Art
doesn’t excite me anymore,
nor do works of fiction
or three-line poems.
Everything
is picture-perfect.
Suddenly
the blemishes, the cracks
make the frame
believable.
Are even the imperfections
generated?
 
I want to smell the grass,
feel the sun,
eat popcorn,
and watch
two teams
fight it out
in sweat and mud.
 
I want to feel the grit.
I want
to sort
the grains of truth
from the pixels.
I want
to revel
in reality.

A Spotlight on Our Ugliness

Our primal instinct
is to strike
or to flee.

We evolved
from a history of violence.
We emerged
from acts of violence
in tattered rags
and tainted spirits.
With our zealous, shining weapons,
we wiped out
forests, tribes, races,
and entire species.
We stole
rainbows, 
laughter,
sunshine
from entire generations. 

The need for peace
is a foil.
The call for arms
is a recurring theme.
 
Like the fate
of epochs bygone,
the terror
will not descend from the skies,
it’s hardwired
in our flesh and blood.
 
Nobody
can save us
from ourselves –
not even
the prince
who attained moksha
under a glorious canopy,
or a messenger of peace
who entered a city
riding a donkey.
 
We sharpen
our knives and axes
on their altars –
stones
baptized
in blood.

The Burden of the Forever Man

The air
is heavy
with his grunts
and guttural sighs.
 
He has lived forever.
Some tribesmen say
he walked with the saber-toothed.
 
He fought battles,
hunted bears,
hunted with bears,
jumped into waterfalls,
emerged out of pyres,
abducted women,
courted women,
sired hordes of children,
narrated stories
by crackling fires
to friends and folks,
slept on mountaintops,
lay awake on warm floors,
stared at morning skies,
evening skies, night skies,
brooding. 

One breezy evening,
on the banks of a mighty river,
a little girl
sits on his lap
and asks him about the time
when a dragon
swallowed the sun
whole.
 
He smiles,
narrates about a time
when the silence of a deep forest
was interrupted by heavy rain
and the cries of a newborn
broke
into the darkness of an eclipse
to mount
the steed
of immortality.
 
He died
countless times
in his dreams,
and woke up
each time
to the savage reality
of his sweat and flesh,
to the horror
of his own breathing.

The Story of Him and Her

She stripped her clothes for him
seventeen years ago.
‘Steamboat Willie’
was playing on the television.
 
The nakedness
was starker
when she bared her soul
to share
her deepest desires
and darkest secrets.
He admired
her cracks,
licked
her scars,
made love
to her unhealed wounds.
 
In all these years,
he didn’t give her space
to unfold,
or time
for the wounds to heal.
 
He
prodded
her vulnerabilities,
struck at her
through the chinks in her armor.
 
He pinched the wick,
killed the flame,
and disfigured
the spirit
of a tigress.
Spongebob Squarepants
was playing on the television.

In the deepest chambers
of her well-guarded shrine,
she mutes his voice,
stares at him long enough,
and pets
his loud insecurities.
The stench
of his presence
fades. 

The claws
push through the skin,
the stripes
reemerge.
In those cold, blank eyes,
a tempest
has risen. 

Perspective

It’s a mad, mad, mad world.
It takes immense effort
to find an iota of peace
to calm
our throbbing nerves.
Sensibility
is a fleeting shadow,
time, a teasing lover.
 
Like children
in a spring garden,
we chase
after butterflies.
And when we catch one,
we don’t hold on to it
for even a blink –
to absorb its colors.
 
He stands
in the middle of a busy road.
Soft sunlight
streams
through his delicate fingers.
He stares
at the wonders
of the morning sky
and chuckles.
The laughter
lingers
on his face for too long.
 
They call him
a mad man.

The Wildest Ones

Like a flag
tattered by the bullets
of a thousand battles,
they bare it all –
their ugliness,
their darkness,
their scars
on the body
and on the soul,
for the world to see.
 
They come
unclothed,
their faces
unmasked,
their words
unfiltered.
 
The wildest ones
are the purest ones.
 
They
don’t
hold back.
Their ugliness
is the naked truth
of the world.
 
Their silence,
its death. 

The Infinity Monkey Problem

Somewhere
within the walls
of a freshly-painted bungalow
in a faraway island,
a handful of AI machines
churn out code
ceaselessly
to derive a meaning
of the existence
of all.
 
A billion years
may have passed.
The hardware
was replaced
with sentient photons
assigned
to the same Sisyphean task,
to derive a meaning
of the existence
of all.
 
Infinity
has passed.
These photons,
like tireless wanderers,
dance between
uncharted dimensions,
shine upon
gods and beings of hidden worlds,
squeeze through wormholes,
get sucked in
and spewed out
of black holes,
catch up with the edges
of the stretching universe,
but the meaning
eludes them all.
 
Infinity
has come
and gone.

Time
stands still.

The question
stares back
from the freezing,
paint-peeled walls
of the deserted bungalow–
demanding the dots
be connected
backwards.

A Sliver of the Sky

 

We bleed like this

We live
in a grand illusion.
We imagine
we have risen,
we strongly believe
we are the elevated.
We are no different
from the hungry beasts
fighting for a scrap of meat,
or a mate.
 
We have our little shining moments
under the starry night,
when we narrate our lofty stories –
conscience-driven parables,
to the younger generations.
 
At all other times,
we are just a bag of bones
driven by base instincts.

We live
a grand illusion.

Enjambment

It was not
a clean strike.
 
He pierced
between the chest
and the groin
in quick short stabs,
nineteen times.
Every time
the knife dived
into the skin,
the sharp metal
soaked
in the rush 
of warm blood.
He reveled
in the poetic release,
in the abrupt
sputter
of words.

Acts of Kindness

Shoals of king fish,
lulled in revelation,

circle upstream
in a faraway river
to find their mojo.

Under the spell
of meditative swirls,
the galaxies
dissolve
into the waters.
 
From one pilgrimage
to another,
in absolute calm,
the seekers
peel the beauty,
layer 
by layer. 

From one act of kindness
to another,
in absolute calm,
the giver
bares the bounty,
to be emptied
and filled again.