Keatsian Lyre

Ode to Jesse and Dolly

2026-08-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

In January 1979,
an arranged marriage drew together
a young man from a small seaside town
and a young woman from Kolkata,
the City of Joy.

There were questions, of course.
Would she find her way
through this smaller world?
Would its streets learn her footsteps,
its people open their doors,
its houses begin to feel like home?

But Dolly arrived
like sunrise spilling over the sea,
with a suitcase, a smile,
and a warmth that seemed to kindle
every room she entered.

Before long, she had learned
the language of Jesse’s life:
the names of neighbours,
the pulse of the streets,
the small worries,
the sudden celebrations.
Wherever she went,
she left a little more light behind.
And slowly, surely,
the bride from Kolkata
became the beating heart
of the town she had entered.

For Jesse, she became more than a wife.
She became his north star,
his courage when the road grew dark,
his laughter in ordinary hours,
his companion through every season
the years placed before them.

Some dreams remained unspoken,
like letters sealed and kept in a drawer.
They faced the measuring eyes
of a world too eager
to weigh another person’s happiness.

But true companionship
does not live by other people’s scales.
It is a bridge built plank by plank,
crossed together in every weather.
It asks no permission
to be faithful, joyful and complete.

And Jesse and Dolly
chose one another,
again and again.

When age and illness
began to dim the lives of their parents,
they became the lamps left burning
through the longest nights.
They held steady
when memory loosened its grip,
when familiar names drifted away,
when faces became islands
in a fog of forgetting.

Love still knew the way home.

There were hospital corridors
washed pale by sleepless mornings,
reports that fell like stones,
and responsibilities arriving
like waves that refused to break.
Work, worry and care
crowded around them,
leaving scarcely a corner
in which to rest.

Yet they carried on.

They became the hands
that lifted, washed, fed and comforted;
the voices that repeated
what memory had lost;
the quiet guardians
who stood watch when the night
seemed to have no end.

They cared for parents and in-laws
with little respite and little help.
And even today,
they continue to care for Dolly’s mother,
keeping faith with love
through the long, unglamorous hours
when devotion is measured
not in words, but in presence.

Their life has been a river of giving,
not loud, not seeking applause,
but flowing because love
had carved its course.

And alongside all this,
they worked and built.

For many years, Jesse created beverages
that people remember still,
for their taste, their quality,
and the goodwill woven into every bottle.

Dolly stood beside him there too,
bringing patience and skill
to the making of ice creams
for their little retail outlet.
Together they turned milk, sugar and time
into something bright and sweet,
and a small business
into a shared table of dreams.

When circumstances closed that chapter,
they set it down with dignity.
But its flavour lingered,
in memories, in friendships,
in the people who still ask
after those beloved tastes.

Dolly herself has crossed
more than her share of difficult ground.
There were days when illness
entered the house like a sudden storm,
when fear pressed against the windows
and recovery seemed a mountain
without a visible path.

There were tears.
There was shock.
There was the question
that rises from every loving heart
when someone dear is suffering:

How do we bear this?

But Dolly fought.

She fought with faith
like a lantern held against the dark;
with the prayers of well-wishers
gathering around her like a sheltering roof;
with a strength that did not shout,
but returned each morning
and began again.

And Jesse stood beside her,
not as a distant witness,
but as her anchor,
her handhold,
the steady shore
against which the waves could spend themselves.

Through illness and pain,
Dolly remained Dolly.

She could still find a spark
and strike it into a smile;
still offer a joke
when the room had grown too heavy;
still meet Jesse’s eyes
with that familiar glimmer
and remind despair
that it would not be the final voice.

Her courage became a second heartbeat
in the house.
Jesse drew strength from it,
as a traveller draws water
from a well discovered on a hard road.
Her endurance taught him endurance;
his steadfastness gave her
somewhere safe to rest.

This is the rare companionship
that deserves to be celebrated.

Not love preserved in photographs
for easy days and bright occasions,
but love that sits beside the hospital bed;
love that keeps watch
when sleep has become a stranger;
love that carries a family
through its heaviest seasons;
love that knows grief by name
and still leaves the door open
for laughter.

It is two hands
holding the same rope,
two hearts keeping time
through wind and darkness,
one compass pointing forward.

Jesse and Dolly
have weathered storms
that many people never saw.
They have crossed rough seas
without surrendering their tenderness.
Hardship did not turn them to stone;
it taught them the strength
of bending without breaking.

They kept their balance
by leaning on one another.
They met each trial
with faith as their keel,
fortitude as their sail,
and cheerful hope
as the light at the mast.

Now their prayer is simple:

good health for one another;
the freedom to move through the world
without fear or hurry;
a short holiday,
a road opening gently before them;
a journey long postponed;
a few quiet days
that belong to them alone.

May the years ahead
be softer ground beneath their feet.
May they bring laughter
that rises easily,
rest without guilt,
and mornings bright with possibility.

May they find time
to sit together by the sea,
to watch the horizon widen,
to feel the years behind them
settle like calm water,
and to enjoy the simple miracle
of still having one another.

For in January 1979,
a ray of sunshine travelled from Kolkata
to a little town beside the sea.

All these years later,
after every storm and every night,
that sunshine has not faded.

It lives in the warmth they give,
in the lives they have carried,
in the laughter they have protected...
and in the enduring light
of Jesse and Dolly,
still walking forward together.

Jesse and Dolly’s story is one of a bond that has made its way through responsibility, caregiving, work, illness and fear, without surrendering tenderness, faith or the ability to laugh.

They have cared for those who depended on them, built a life of honest work together, stood beside one another through every difficult season, and continued to choose one another when life demanded more than it seemed possible to give.

Their story reminds us that companionship is not proved by society’s measures. It is proved in presence: the hand held in a hospital corridor, the lamp kept lit through a long night, the joke offered when the heart is heavy, the courage borrowed from someone you love.

Even as senior citizens,fending for themselves and dolly's mother with noone else to ease their burdens,this couple defines cheer and contenentment.

I hope this poem is able to add one little happy spark to this wonderful couple's life.Thank You,Jesse and Dolly,for being guiding stars to us all and teaching us how to live inspite of life.

Father and Daughter

2007-07-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

My daughter dear, divine gift,
You are now all of twenty-five,
I see that you are all adrift,
Do moor and dock while I am alive.

Precious princess, don't be dull,
Papa loves you all the same,
Yet, the time has come to mull over
The rules of the mating game.

Pot of gold, I live for you,
I wish you to live happily,
For that this one thing we must do,
Find you another family.

Look here, one day I will place your hand,
In the sweaty palm of a suitable man,
He will then be your promised land,
To cherish and love all your life time.

When you were little, my heart, my core
I bought you stories, long and short,
They spoke of knaves and Kings of yore,
Filled with human values of import.

Princes and paupers the same graves ply,
Sceptres and sickles come to the same,
Go for the best, I am there by your side,
Whatever you wish for, simply take aim.

I gave you love, I gave you might,
I told you to go live your life right,
Sometimes you failed me, sometimes not,
Yet, in you, I lost faith not.

I know that you are a misplaced idealist,
My poor little girl, my lassie naive,
This cruel word has its own grind and grist,
And much little room for your dusty Palgrave.

I remember having told you once,
At any stage in life to remember
And be at ease with the fact
That ultimately we are all alone.

Learn to confront yourself with that truth
And my baby, you will have peace of mind,
I know that you will sit by my dutiful feet
And tend to my careworn frazzled frame.

You tell me you are no pastoral maid,
Who coyly waits for love to beat her breast
You say you are a brazen De Beauvoir,
Who seeks not security in your nuptial bed.

You say you will stand alone,
Wed, Single or divorcee,
You want to make your own mistakes,
Which you may live to repent and regret.

You may run to me at times of self-strife,
But never blame me for the state of your life?
You may ask me for money if you are hard up,
But never demand it of daughterly right?

Do as you wish, my lovely pearl,
I will live by you and die by you,
You are a woman of matter and mettle,
Papa is always proud of his girl.

Ode to Henry Louis Vivian Derozio

2007-07-06T04:27:00.002-07:00

A memory lost in nameless grave,
India remembers you no exalted more,
She bears not how you loved her lore,
To you he is none but Sahib White,
A Wilful colonial oppressor.

I set down your freckled name today,
On the hoary rocks of Jungheera,
Where all at once can witness true,
The doubting mane of manicktollah,
Spirit wafting the smoky greens.

Then seated under an unhurried tree,
Lost in pensive melodious quill,
Silken thoughts sighing your soul,
Hybrid vigour churning your mind
In sleepless fits of rhythmic rhyme.

Tuned to the music of nature's pulse,
Your sensible beat of passionate vein,
Throbbing with the heartbeat of grass
Burning with the widow on her promising pyre,
Loving with a feeling full of innocent fire.

Of Byron's beautiful, dark wan brood,
Browning's wondrous tender love mood,
Black eyes, twinkling, silent, deep,
For ignorant humanity, wanton weeps.

Reflections

2007-07-06T04:27:00.001-07:00

Let us not tempt fate,
For she makes a bad godmother,
To children born out of wedlock.

If only you could can your
Barbed wire branded humour.
It claws me like a lusty cat.

It is of that self-pity that I write,
That shallow tenderness,
Some of us call it love.
The flowery sandals and scarred feet,
They make my self-image.

Mistreated witch of inverted priorities,
Realising the wrong things,
Thinking them true.

Time running out,
My cake slice lies foul,
In company with other
Culinary experiments gone bad.
Hard, tasteless and out of shape.
Maybe a skilled chef can render it tolerable,
That is my only piece, my last.

Trying to imagine,
That when gone, my near and dear
Will be in a room full of light,
Knowing everything there is to know
In a cosmic jiffy,
While I pine on in a sub-deathly ignorance.
Could I turn my mind inside out,
And see the insides of reality
Or truth or beauty or love?
If I can think of them,
Why cannot I see them?

Or is it that I am a creature
Of shallow sensibility
Who learned by infra-experiential rote,
These ideas passed on in indifferent print?

Yet, I am human.
There has to be a continuum
Between the lowest and highest,
Somewhere to be sighted, isn't it?

Cosmic Joy

2007-07-06T04:26:00.002-07:00

No quest for infinity,
It may be an idea,
Never to be a thing,
Like love,the universe,
God and sin.

Feel and relegate feeling
To a telescoped consciousness,
That moves erratic
Between indistinct realms,
Flitting across flickers

Take up a thought,
Like a garment's texture
That is all it is,a passing sensation
Wrought by forces unseen but
In your control.

Cultivate independence of mind,
Not arrogant self-righteousness,
No self-indulgent fascism,
A sense of duty,sense of shame past,
Of life alone.........

Ultimately alone....
and revelling in happy life.

To Mothers

2007-07-06T04:26:00.001-07:00

Her mellow grace and subtle charm,
Her childish wit and easy manner,
Her classy ways all go to make her what she is
And will be, mine forever; a mother.
Even when she and I are gone,
In a time capsule of verse,
These words will write her name
Over and over.

Today's Child

2007-07-06T04:25:00.002-07:00

Knowledge as it seems to me,
Is where, when and how had been,
Sulling bright-eyed sparks that be,
Numbers, names, places unseen.

Named after auspicious stars,
Gods, goddesses, planets far,
Blessed to receive life’s nitty-gritty,
By ordained agents of the almighty.

Not stronger against death,
Not stronger towards life,
Just restless and at strife,
With all and with myself.

Duty

2007-07-06T04:25:00.001-07:00

A feeling that changed me,
The leafy silhouette
Flashed lightning in its gaps
And the knowledge that
What I thought was is not
Blends inside and later,
Clears up better.

Everything is as good
As I make it
To a measure,
Will and time
Amount to nothing
But can keep me
Content within search.

This summer evening
Marked by misty bursts,
I calibrate my past,
Index my future,
Trial,pain
Not in vain
What I chose.

In my power,
Fortunate being,
People to love,
Love back more
Never in need of sincerity.
Lucky, quite sparkish,
Creature of ideas and put-uppances.

Who hurts people.
This is a new call
To duty beautiful
Satisfying, yet more stretchly.
Never did, now dearly.
Again, that's what I choose to try.

Urban Delusion

2007-07-06T04:23:00.002-07:00

Swept away in hyperbole,
I by-passed a much needed reality-check.
The only memories of our earlier life
Are in department store gift wrapping
That I save and savour
In deliberate sorrow,
paper shells in which
I hand out recycled feelings to you, unnoticed.

Love, a popular one-word-fits-all euphemism,
An endocrine surge.
It sells, maims, kills and resuscitates too.
I know you are no Keats who loved
An ambiguous Fanny till his gnawing consumptive death,
Nor a Yeats who wooed his Maud to perfection
All I ask for is to feel alive,
In your life, mind and being.

I grow dizzy on the outer vortex
Of the teeming whirlpool that is your life.
Languishing on the periphery
Of your perceptive field,
Yet, most jarred.
Our realities are
Just personal constructs,
One for me and another for you.

Your dire sorrow makes not
My lack of joy
Any less poignant.
Your black and my white
Makes a common
Mid-way pallid gray,
Where cheer has not a chance,
Nor cathartic grief any scope.

What’s that you say?
You couldn’t keep your sacred vow?
No matter, darling,
Just toss it along
On our common scrap-heap of promises,
The only thing we share,
Except of course
For a bed and bathroom slippers.

Why argue over my Spanish lessons?
I need them to stay ahead
And make sure that
I am decisively chosen
For the deputation next time around.
I also like to drive around alone at night,
I need to feel independent.
You wouldn’t understand.

Just like you need
To meet your foreign client,
Every weekend at that classy restaurant.
Its work, I know, dearest.
And Sunday mornings are the only times
Your stallion honchos
Can find time to swap wife-jokes
And slap backs over hormonal escapades.

Have you noticed that
My diction has moved
From Daniel Jones to
Prime-time soap opera bombshell?
In your absence,
Digital phantoms entertain me,
And netizen compatriots
Calm my frayed nerves.

Did I tell you that
My hair now falls in clumps
And that my face needs a lift?
And this inspite of the mail-order
Volume-inducing potions
And anti-cellulite concoctions.
The fantasy is finally spent,
But do we notice?

Never dreamt of looking
Coyly at a husband
With whom I would whelp
In our bondage,
‘We two, our two’.
Must I look to motherhood
To deliver me from my malignant ache,
That simmers on our kitchen stove?

Forgiveness

2007-07-06T04:23:00.001-07:00

A wakeful grandeur to toss in tonight,
But, to when does this pleasing picture endure?
Cannot still handle my beating guilt,
Does the night air cure a lonely aching heart?

Escaping view of my inner plight,
Finding your sylvan grace of forgiveness further ahead,
Gleeful resuscitation that thrives on single sight,
How a convulsive cold chill you warmed mellow mature.

I know not why my past I dread,
Just feeling the in and out of layered past,
Keep me, a trinket, that used to line your bed,
Lofty airs I now have none to cast.

Many a dusk, you drew out in to dawn,
Never a tinge of blame or curse you let me feel,
Only a pining sense of silence and love stillborn,
Pleasing play of bygone halts my insane reel.

Quieter than ever, I, a defeated thing,
Rueful to all but you, my saviour bright,
Sinking your healing words in to my soul,
To raise my sense of hollow existence.

Unless I give in to your calm and pensive embrace,
Vivid joy I am rendered incapable of,
Why I am so important to you,
Explanations cannot be found.

Yet, the faith that colours your forgiveness,
Zealously I guard, as you breathe in to me,
A new life.

De-layering

2007-07-06T04:22:00.001-07:00

Fear of disclosing
Raw disconnection,
Vacuous ambition,
Pretentious notion
Of well-written verse,
Therefore, revision blues.

To add on a Wildean flourish,
Or stick to a domestic strain?

To position oneself as a poet,
Is it conscious a process?
Does it happen naturally?
As you write,
As you learn and laugh to cry?
But I grow older, know no better.

A postcolonial doldrum wannabe,
Or a stifled keatsian drunk on the sea?

To gain brownies of a battered world,
Womens's groups or animal rights,
On whom may I smother my bewildered words?
But, whom am I kidding?
Is this piece itself a cry for consideration,
For praise on subversion?

An attempt to crawl on to global paper,
And be witnessed by the critic's eye?

Else, why yearn to publish,
Long-held private space?
A covert poet
Is no poet at all for the world.
Why the scramble at competitions?
As any other, the poet is no grander.

The need to be acknowledged, be admired,
Runs in every creative vein, deny it howsoever.

It may be a precedence lesser or larger
Than the inspired contentment,
But it exists incontestably all the same.
Just as doing good feels fine,
Why rebuff that we do it
For our own being, as well?

I go all agog over toothless trill,
And digest a whole lot of gobbledygook.

I ruminate over
New-historicism and post-modernism.
I take the trouble,
Because I want to be seen.
I have a simple, short life,
Here today, Gone tomorrow.

I need to leave a mark,
And see what I can do.

And the day I spotted verse,
The moment I felt the urge
To put in to words of untold type,
I knew this is where I was headed.
To see on cover, a name fond to
Me and those who I treasure.

To make them proud,
And beam and buoy, along with me.

To understand what goes on inside,
In my craggy,
Presumptuous mind.
This is not adulatory self-reproach.
The only time I am myself
Is when I write this styled out stuff.

It gives me identity, it gives me self,
I let it take over.

I have no control over the root,
But,twice refined through maze of thought,
It comes out half-born,
Sometimes grim, rock faced,
Or maybe at times,
Grosser still.

Dilemma

2007-07-06T04:21:00.002-07:00

There is no limit,
interests are cold,
A farce, live it,
clay set in gold.
A change so jolting,
to what does amount?

Smooth voices giddying,
complacency does rout.
Stop the jarring beeps,
they repeat to imbalance,
a guarded insecurity peeps,
and sees through a false grace.

None created yet perfect,
a detached air much needed.
tug spasmodic instincts,
all crashes and burns left unheeded.
Imagine our cuffs disengage,
security & order inescapable,

Free from dynamic bondage,
laid back practical inevitable.
tinge of hint so disturbs,
out pours steamy silence,
How much can endurance curb,
without resort to dreamy violence?

The way out is not visible,
but why try at all?
When no means are feasible,
and states change in a call?

Eyes In Gray Marble

2007-07-06T04:21:00.001-07:00

A flinching ballast brand of gray……………
Flickers in your bloodshot eyes……………..
Elgin Marbles polished white……………….
Branding irons sparking bright………..

Fly to Olympus

2007-07-06T04:20:00.002-07:00

I am sure you never did express your best,
A reveling colt in a thoughtful meadow
Before time, sapped to death and laid to rest,
A spirit bounding, of stoic meed must fate lead to sorrow.

In life, in living, in phlegm and heave,
To break a corpse, to shred a pertinent one
She glides in slither-gown, yet bade not leave,
Watched you wasting, yet, to you, she is none.

Lover of right, in form, in lays,
Of truth and outdoor blithe-cheer sanity
Of casements ope and bright-lit ways,
A moderate vision of tempered humanity.

Sense is enlivened, passage suppressed,
Cascade in blinks, each ravishing beauty
Perfect in grace, subtle-eyed impressed,
The restraint, the poise of poetic duty.

Friend to ages, Monarch of youth,
Hysterical congruous, voluptuous intense
For direction and love, a Greek in truth,
Innocent perusals, inspiring musical sense.

Yearn for Olympian lyre and prophetic zones,
The sign of warm love’s kiss on Psyche’s face
Keep looking, listening for figment of choric moan,
And the Goddess shall your endeavours embrace.

Convey to me through a pacing candour,
Your heroic ascending galloping verse
For a mind to perceive through centuries racing,
All that is apt is in poetic ether to immerse.

An Apotheosis

2007-07-06T04:20:00.001-07:00

"O’ye who have your eyeballs vext and tired
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea,
O’ye whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody-
Sit ye near some old caverns mouth and brood,
Until ye start as if the sea nymphs quired.

On the Sea

John Keats"
----------

Enthralled by timeless Breathing about,
The lure of unexplained shores and a mighty rush,
Which has limits prodigious,
Only godly intrusion can render them unwelcome.

A shivering spectacle creates no creation,
This what I wrote does quell my distemper,
It lent back some slumber I ventured,
I am falling back in to anguish again.

Virtue is what my heart must encompass,
Spencer in his happy mayhem says so,
My ambitions shall be answered by virtue alone,
Without which it is rendered puerile imagination’s plaything.

My blaze can never abate,
I will not let it fade away,
Till it harbingers a cluster of a kin,
With this heave I embark on my eternal work.

I trust in the omni-potent,
Give me the warmth and the stuff for this endeavour,
Let me see in the girl next door,
Diana’s icy romance.

Let me watch the peasants work,
And midst them, my devoted lad,
How will I shift from my mind
When not a sinew concurs?

O, Apollo, do not punish me…
I have mocked you,
But in worship alone
Did my vain quill step by your mane.

Sweet Cynthis, Charming Cynthia,
Symbol of beauty and voluptuous grace,
My soul is human and stands for my fancy
Taken to sea by my searching imagination.

The sea alone on this orb can render me peaceful,
How you love and are in awe of me, my little girl,
To be bonded with you in brotherliness
Is my lifelong privilege.

Do not scorn a single written work, devilish act,
Verse humane I want to write,
I want to be inanimate, strong and defiant,
I cannot escape my ears.

Yet the Blackwood’s acid has left me sick,
A patient with no will to live.
How can a poet be true to his vocation,
If his creative faculty waits for its own creations?

No, there can be no such artist,
Who deserves to live,
And so I must die a poetic death,
Since I have undone mine own poetic duty.

No, I will not dwell on my woes,
I am shy and fear to share,
My abilities are slave to needs,
Why do these scrapes rack me so?

Prod and invoke my sleeping self,
It seems onerous,
Hark…the world watches,
But are all these millions of eyes watching me alone?

I learn from noisy mouths,
Setting fear in my heart and flow in my lines,
I am no versifier, I set bones,
Why gull my own senses with imagined fame?

Yet the smell of a pod is ether to mine sense,
I live in nether world,
Between saving souls and lifting them,
Thus belonging nowhere.

As I walk across these square laid stones,
Knowing all too well where I go,
These walls standing for a two hundred something,
They guard me from the present.
…………………………………
How beautiful you lie in a wet grave,
England’s honourable son,
You may not have charmed so,
In furrowed hide and blunt gaze.

Your fame would mar itself,
And you would be the century’s child,
Not an alluring youth,
In a poignant sepulcher.

This youth, a countenance so icy,
Every aspect tuned to the expressive whole,
I fear brevity inspite of the great bard,
Why did no great indulge in it yet?

O England, My England,
My last breath for you and my Mother Nature.
I will bury my feel, Sense and ardour,
In to my task unseen, a two headed Janus.

Tonight I am as good as a dead man,
My faculty is dry…. Help me Mother,
You are here in my being,
But how do I bring forth thee?

Your mystery shall never be unearthed,
Laid in your infested tomb,
Your life is open to guessing,
So can you and you and I too.

I write, I work, my noisy imitations left the crowds wild,
Crying pains need no dreamy apothecary,
And wordy man heeds no surgical melody,
I write in volumes, for my creativity flows.

Else, which may lose its ease of wave,
I may love what my mother provided,
But I will not write her as my focus,
Unless I have none else.

Every nook, every sapling, every book, every happening,
Is my issue for poetry,
As long as it scintillates my five foeish friends,
As long as it stirs up my latent core.

My fairy, she is weak because I doubt her,
I want to dedicate myself to you, little one,
But I know my task too well,
And am incapacitated.

Your spirit is light and balms your red hair,
You are in love with life, therein your compassion,
You live in an era,
Which wants to escape this helpless optimism.

Ignore my little fairy, damn her,
Disfigure her gentle wings with your acrid tongues,
I am a sick bird, who looks up and sees its own end,
Knowing what I want, I know not where to find,

I wander still inspite of my stages of growth,
I am a man in search of greatness,
In search of centurion immortality,
I did not write for you to bask in critical glory.

Spit with repugnance,
At my drawn out naked consciousness,
You will not shell my mind,
Or hope for my passionate withdrawal.

I am an honourable son of this land,
I will make you feel,
In time to come,
Where your folly in marring my pen has been.

The eternal bard! I seek a balance,
But my thoughts are always falling me,
Elsewhere than I want them to,
But they are singular in their union.

I worship you, my little fairy,
My psyche true of poesy,
Why am I obsessed,
With what I seek shelter in?

These marbles remind me so,
Of senses else perceived,
O my beautiful midget,
Caretaker of cheerful dock,
Various ships dock and leave,
Carrying cargo views and dreamy customs,
To far off lands,
And occupy their natives with novelty.

Only the master ships,
With a dedicated crew does so,
Others wash away in the winds,
And their cargo dies unseen.
I do not want to see your beauty,
I want to experience beauty,
Feel my own as you see it,
This is what a bard must do.

I turn; I turn; yet your shadow blocks my path,
I know my prophecy is mine own end,
I want to be disinterested,
Please guide me as to how.
I am the Prince of profligacy…
Excess in rhyme, in word, in sense,
I lie like a cadaver, oozing my life through,
I will use you till you tire, antithesis.

I see all, I see clear,
And the importance of doing so,
I am me and none else I can be,
Nor desire to be else my vision endures.
If you do not know,
You might say poetry is coated artifice,
But how you declare your ignorance,
It is none but a profound and life-making ideal.

How I did emerge,
I do not want to be the greatest by imitation,
For I want to be myself,
Of all inspiration purged.
A poet derives the angles that fit,
Not from classic worship alone,
I must know more, my life is short,
And most of it passes in slumber and vapid vacancy.

I want to transit from the literary idylls of the past
To the evident and fresh sublime,
The precious past’s shackles are to be broken,
And a new mindset to be born.
Idealism gives us tradition, Classics and the opportunity
To sieve out the best, and on the other hand,
It kills the self-inclination and forces upon us,
A feeling of incompetence for originality.

Originality, which is confused,
With pretty imitation of former greats,
Instead of being criticized,
For writing a lifeless epic…
Originality is subjective,
I am ignorant, tormented,
And numb yet possess,
A Mood-less mind.

A conscious stepping up of thoughts,
In the human mind, Sonnet to ode,
Infinite steps, psyche-‘perfection personified’
The model for an utopian future.
The greatness of a poet is determined,
By the grade of steps that he has achieved,
And the plane of thought,
Coincides with the stair level.

You feature high though
The time factor lags you behind,
You are a son of the sea,
Your expression dictates so.

After a particular high step
We see only mist and no clarity
Feel numb to all sensations except pain
Like ascending a mountain.

IDENTITY

2007-07-06T04:19:00.001-07:00

I live to create impressions.
A two-faced work, that’s how I see myself.

Secretive, oblique
And oh, so obtuse,
Sometimes I don’t know
Why I say what I do or dont,
And why I do what I do.
At other times, I do.

I am so inward, for I never wonder
What I will if he did what I do.

I have a process,
Of living, of life,
You had your chances,
You will have more.
This is not the end.
There is no end.

Judgements may help you see better,
But the ultimate voice is still your own.

Every generation,
Their complex baggage
To outgrow endeavour,
To eat their own
Slice of sweet pie,
The ceaseless irony of maturity.

Every life, the starting point for
A divine argument, If ever such a thing exists.

Bogged in a queer sense of fear
That my books will not miss me
When I pass away.
When the past visits and away,
When partnership fails,
Yet holds your sway.

Decide not to move to your impulse,
Do not fall prey to your own false sense.

You think you have family values,
But you fool yourself, you have none.
You are a limited intellectual,
You may have lots to give,
But you have changed
The course of your life,

In to merry submission to alien
Whims of love’s regulation books.

So live on, love on,
If this is where you wish to dock,
Settle and know,
That any port is but a resting place,
Do not fool yourself with the planned agony of permanence,
It does not exist.

These words, these thoughts,
Are but particles in an infinite expansion,

There are no ifs and buts in space,
So live your petty little life to the fullest,
Pledge nothing,
Gain nothing.
Give all,
Gain or no gain.

Poetic Frenzy

2007-07-06T04:18:00.002-07:00

Sole inspiration and breath-force right,
Only in moments of dire quick breath intense,
I see your worth in capable light.

All pain does not result in verse,
Or bond across the wretched layers,
This mournful recall will never spare,
I do suffer my work, I am whole aware.

Keeps me hanging by its flesh-hunting hooks,
It jarrs and scares, so clear and unfair,
So regular and undone,
Hours lost in scrape.

Let me change them,
I cannot catch my own shapes,
These passive thoughts
Hold my breath, but for how long?

Away with it, before it comes to life,
Inspire me, with your death in youth,
Your work that I left gaping,
Don't close up on me.

I place an oath and it is carrying,
For your cause, But why does this whole line find
That my memory be lost?
Where is the likeness of my mind?

Where untouched,pathos in blue,
Silvery stars blind-nudged,
Blushing my art anew, paddling in tumult,
Summarize, and find, where I slipped up.

All mine and your life weighed,
Is it mime? Fluorescent nights in nostalgic shade,
Smeared in productive slime, for which I labour tonight.
And bringing out, whatever was cryptic delightful.

And my own I hid, and put out a metaphor,
Green and yellow lamps amid,
Cottages under pale dew beams.
A secret across the road, a mother's love betrayed.

But you know not, my torment,
You love and love only true,
But true does not fit in my grind; I am a chased rodent shrew,
On all my love and life lay, swearing and splitting.

Why do I care?
Because mazes of joy I flung to bind,
Thought to thought and sinew to sinew,
Tan to wheat, and arm mouthed.

Keep it away as you are fortunate,
You knew! For what cool rooted tremble
Thou hast known and housed,
I will nay know.

What past realisation and morbid twirl you clutch,
I never feel. Cured.
A diseased, uncared for creative bout,
And letting go my tired eyes shut.

Enduring and paying,
And lay me moon-dead, by your side,
Unflinching space,
I give up my ensnared time.

And all will flame over my face,
Burn to scorch this earthy grime,
And I now cease out of verse,
And do repeal my unworthy dedication.

Ignore my raging tortuous climb.
Now, for it I do regret,
As every poet of all climes do,
Spawn in words, multiply and beget.

My high-tipped, shameful stray that grew,
Lie and know, that fervour will die not,
For your airy casement,
Lets me in whenever I please to please.

Night

2007-07-06T04:18:00.001-07:00

An inspired night so potent,
That does churn state of repose,
Brims feel, jabs sense,
And numbs presence to all else.

Cool clairvoyant midnight blue,
Does bring forth stores of latent muse,
That sinister sunshine's blinding hue,
Does render lost and buff confused.

Drizzle perceived by ear alone,
Prompts feel of flow of time and space,
A grim sense of task undone,
Grips to life a tramping gaze.

To fumid vision, all is shut,
That does not act in strictest bind,
But its gauze can veil one not,
If refuge is wrought in mageing mind.

In this darkness, delight dwells,
Of stealth stroll through wary walks,
Where stalwart conscience weighs one on,
And fears no anger, love nor scorn.

A breeze, a mist, the spangled sky,
A quiet privity does endow,
Daylight's cheer nor rabble joy,
Does the balmy night bestow.

All morn, the common reason wakes,
And shapes commands to mortal hours,
But shift-eyed twinkle shade it takes,
To stab the sleeping soul awake.

Of secluded order, each aware,
Struggles to be amidst the odds,
But the vaster canvas doth appear,
To one who vents to pulse beyond.

Shut eyed visions, fancy's plays,
Discordant strips of coloured fear,
Do, harass, maul, and pain severe,
The one within.

To decadent dawn, now do head,
To harsh new ways that do unscroll,
This revelation, then must end,
For shocking glares are in store.

The first bright villain blazons,
And kills the drowsed delighting gloom,
Come again, bitter ease,
That each channel does engage.

It started with the morning rain...

2007-07-06T04:17:00.000-07:00

I wake up drained,
From a drizzly dream.
The fan turns,
My knees ache.
It is hereditary.
Black patches,
I owe to clime.
Time passes,
I see myself,
Full-breasted,
Leaning to pluck fruit
In an art gallery.

A set of wet pliers,
On the sill.
Where I left them,
Two days ago.
Things unseen within,
Are manifold desirable.
Yet, when recovered,
Mires in to routine mundane.

To and fro the panes creak,
Rust-burnt, yet strong,
They have seen me,
Grow up alone.
My solitary world,
Fantastic guests at every stage,
As appropriate to mood and age.
Some distant, ethereal,
Some mere below.
My still life untouched,
by Blue Mountains.
The ecstasy,the sheer view,
The trickly twinkle of morning dew,
Shrieks and garbles
From tinted throats
Daily invoke
Our divine orb
Of ginger hue.

Those hills,
They are not mine,
Jealous as they roam,
Higher up the country.

I will never visit them,
For, childish visions,
I desire to retain.

A feeling remembered,
Of sunrise repast,
Unclear, but telling.
The smoke and the smells,
The caves and the spells,
Of an undiscovered tribe.
Their dwellings clean,
Chequered-light lazy woods
Dotted in smooth gray stone seats.

When I return,
`A fantastic hoax',
My hills, a colony may house,
Of urban employees.
Or worse,
its scrub may leave it Dark Green,
And unfit for dawn mist dreams.

Purgatory

2007-07-06T04:16:00.000-07:00

Sin carries retribution,
Covetous,corporeal,
Preposterous confusion.

Trial,error,comedy's pain
Truth,memory,hope,
In one swashbuckle slain.

Oozy remembrance bleeds,
Accursed to perpetuity,
A crestfallen meed.

The crouched disease,
Affects mild-mannered modesty,
Claims what not held fair.

Move to a free flap,
Feathery limbs,
Pry out self-sword rapacious.

Ease side's wound-dig,
Warm at a fire,
Heat,light.

To woo pleasant discord,
To breed a sight,
Of further Plight.

To recognise circular unity,
Longitudinal fate,
Crosses plain with own shame.

Unseen with soul,
As of Derozio's grass,
Quiet conscience?

Tremulous wafts,
Lilting cadence,
Inspires life-lees.

In all guilt,
I yet dream,
Righteous,innocent spirits.

Move,swaying,
Yeatsian spires?
Created,destroyed,
All in a single 'HEAVEN'S DAY'?

Soul Eclipse

2007-07-06T04:15:00.000-07:00

This manifestation grows,
And reassurance, I crave need.

Crass indolence,
Plays her puerile game,
My vile dreams,
Have just erased a name.

Your eyes will not meet,
My lashing lonely shore,

A moment in time,
Like orbiting fame,
A distracted exhibition,
My wishes lame.

Step out of it, it cannot be,
Alls not well that ends true,
Mortal seconds added to me,
We cannot ourselves sue.

As slime takes breathing form,
Within the fold unholy,
You say the blade will fall,
Unasked, duly, inevitably.

My nerves sparking,
Eyes burning,
A janusian lover,
Is no legitimate cover.

Tradition

2007-07-06T04:14:00.000-07:00

A collective body of might,
Discuss, discern, and direct us,
They turn our heads and assume right,
Waves that interfere in to incoherent fuss
Beg, leave it to our souls,
Love, indifference sometimes pays,
Move off our heaving hearts,
And ventilate us back to breathing reason.
True to life, a varied world,
Unascertained actions forever haunt,
Accusation unlikely, I hurled,
My simple days in you I jot,
Gain to all, loss to two.

Links

2007-07-06T04:12:00.000-07:00

Leave me to my own peace
A beguiled idealist,
Of a human instinct to procreate.

We are a manifestation of God’s propagation.
Of lust and shallow sentimentality,
There is nothing that bonds us.

I expect you to do things that I don’t,
We embody nothing higher,
No embellished claims.

Why do we gull ourselves in lascivious pretence?

That we offer to this time,
At least a memorable toast,
Of love and feeling never lent afore.
Remya Lara

Never Break

2007-07-06T04:11:00.002-07:00

Secure it! I will too,
At disgruntled aim, frowning,
Bleak dew of conflict near drew,
In clash of elements groaning.
You, forever here, but hovering,
Try, form a link through it all,
My sense and your deeds in unison,
Shall cling and not fall.
My time of no value,
Your life in watery drops of drudge,
The world is blind to them, I grant you,
But, they set my aches to life.
Go, declare my listlessness,
Emancipate my closed mind,
I shoulder your stray attraction,
And pacify your blink less pain.
A cooked breakfast, you receive,
I'll be back in a glint,
You will peck a good bye
And turn to fresh new print.

From Sylvia To Tom

2007-07-06T04:11:00.001-07:00

Never fear, I’ll ne’er miss it.
As thou perfect thine affection,
Does Jove light me the wondrous glistens far.

Outnumbrerin’ the kisses of a lifetime.

Strung along my lucky bracelet,
I feel warmth, a sunny charm,
A grateful promise.

When do I enter thy fold, a greenstone leers, preying, the associate’s way.

Full with the pugnacious slime the brim tastes,
No more can condescension help,
Tomorrow mine shall be that plinth.