Clearing clutter on a sleepless night

A little prayer whispered in the mind’s wakeful corners.

An experiment, flirtatious meditation
with a winter bird’s feather on my tongue.
Incense lit, it’s fumes inhaled
all the way inside, down to my gut.

Vacant eyes tracing sleep’s shadows.
But my mind’s eyes are lit
and its neuron highways buzzing
like the bullet trains in Tokyo.
Every noise amplified
every detail magnified.
It is on these nights
that memories are re-lived,
they are remade,
classified and archived, boxed,

and some trashed.

Mistful Alpine Dreams

On moments resting on

mistful alpine dreams
The moon awakens,

stelliferous new beginnings. 

(artwork by IsyLLiS)

Wild Woman

She placed the blazing Sun in the middle of her forehead
and the Moon in the pearl of her earrings.

She swathed her body in the rising red desert
and adorned her hair with the flower of Hibiscus.

The days were long
but there were fortresses she needed to build.

The oceans were calm
but she had to harness to safety, those in rocking boats.

In her heart lotuses bloomed, and stars in her womb
and she birthed a new safe world
for those hurt, wounded and seeking love.
(artwork by IsyLLiS)

Of men and musicians – why we love them

For all the good, warm-hearted men 🙂

Their music
sound of a gentle churning
in the deepest part
of the earth.

We love them
for their unkempt sideburns
and cigarette smells.

Their laughter echoing
unfiltered white-noise
to complement warblers’ ruckus
trombone to forest song.

We love them
for the careless ‘unbuttoned-ness’ of shirt,
yet subtly proclaiming gentlemanliness.

Their banter
poetry midst the prose of life
streaks of bright red in monochrome.

We love them
for their coffee-stained teeth
yet an unfettered smile breaking between a moustache and a beard.

Their weathered face
maps of places we want to travel to
but the eyes is where we want to build a home.

We love them
all those times when they
bare their souls and child-like cry.

We love them
even more when
we miss having them in our life.

A perfect piece of music by the great Zbigniew Preisner found me while I was writing this poem. The first eight minutes are so beautiful! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP0wQxWifBY

A case for harmless smileys :)

I am working on a film assignment for a prestigious, world famous institution. It is important to mention here that I am not an employee of this organization, thankfully so, and that I work independently because I like ‘freeness’, and I love ‘freedom’.

This evening, apparently I made a mistake of including one harmless – no, actually two – smileys 🙂 🙂 in my email communication to the ‘boss’. And ten minutes later I get a call from a friend and a co-worker explaining to me that it wasn’t quite appropriate! And we talked about it for ten minutes and I said to my friend that perhaps there is a need for creating that space in communication, at least for positive expressions like a harmless smiley. I guess I wasn’t being heard. Now this is the same person who while sharing my resume with the ‘boss’ deleted the ‘poetry’ bit from my profile without asking me. It was nice of him though to inform me later on.

Now, I was a bit upset about somebody’s irrational demand in the organization and I am an emotional person and I like to express it subtly, without offending anybody – I would never do that, I am so sensitive to that – even in work situations. I am not ashamed of expressing my emotion or fear being an emotional, sensitive self. I like being honest to myself more than to anybody else. Now, I got this call suggesting that it wasn’t exactly appropriate and that up until now my e – mail communication was good and “dry”, but this wasn’t acceptable. So, being a peaceful person, I sent my next email which was completely dry – dry like the dry, chapped lips when one travels to the leeward side of the highest altitude cold desert in the world. Now I have been there so I know what it feels like. A weather so dry, we had to put nose-drops every hour to even breathe comfortably.

Well, you know what, I am quite sure I would use smileys even if I were to write to the Obamas and the Putins, the Merkels and the Kin Jong Ils, Kim Il Sungs of the world. 🙂 🙂 Smileys for everybody. And a big 🙂 for those who don’t like them in their “official”email communication.

For those who have arrived

Drifting away with the winter breeze
yellow brown leaves.
Fading away like poetry
read sitting on old creaking wooden chairs.
Wilting away like spring flowers
gloomily blooming in December’s wrath.
Dust filled narrow lanes of my youth
bring me to the silver tresses
of antiquity long cherished.
The Sun will shine its golden light
the moon its milky luminescence
on those
who have lost and now have risen.
Only love for those
who have left and for those who have arrived.
(December 16, 2013)

Pastoral poet

A bird flew out of timelessness,
perched on a twig.
The twig broke,
the bird flew away.
We laughed at what just happened
the forest laughed with us.

Mother of all mountains

A long train journey
through dull cityscapes,
and dry deserts of humanity.
There wasn’t much outside to see,
but within there were landscapes
waiting to be trekked on.
There were mind-scapes
waiting for their contours to be drawn.
So I pulled the shutters down
and set out on a journey within.
As my body moved along the railway tracks,
my pen did on the smooth landscape
of an ivory cartridge paper, 150 GSM.
It all started with a dot,
that became a line,
that soon turned into a swirl,
that transformed into patterns
colliding, mingling, merging,
running across, parallel, converging.
The art-scape became my world
my pen my own private jet
and we explored our private world
until we met the Mother of all Mountains –
from behind her face peaceful
a yellow sun rose.