Song of the Little Princess

Little Princess, this is a wish
to see you grow & run
in an age where innocence is not undone.
To see you run, unfettered and wild and free
as only a soaring bird can be.
I wish upon you the solitude and silence
of big mountains green.
So you may walk in their shadows
and uncover all that is now, and has ever been.
And I wish upon you the grace and the romance
of the dark, hill cat.
The one who melts in with the night,
walks where she pleases and owns what she wants,
with memories that remain incomplete
and desires that forever haunt.
And lastly, my dear little princess,
the child and the angel of a million promises of dawn.
I wish upon you, the eyes of your mom.
The ones which hold the secrets
of that strange soliloquy of women
that look the happiest when they are the most forlorn.

2:12 AM
1st October, 2010

PS: Dedicated to a little princess on her first birthday, whose mother once had eyes I once loved too much for my own good

It is good to come back as a ghost

It is good to come back as a ghost
for you have been forgotten by the living.
It is good to come back as a ghost
and to lie on the grass and see the world spinning.
Drifting along some strange, lonely summer breeze
wafting by the fragrance of a lonely flower,
you stand in the vacuum of the universe
and contemplate time under the light of blue stars.
And there is time.
More time than you thought was ever there.
Dare if you will, for it will fill
all that you ever can remember and share.
And only in the emptiness of everlasting time
can you really find what you wanted the most.
& so it is, after the nostalgia of a million lost loves & tears
it is really good, to come back as a ghost.

*

9:53 AM
28th September, 2010

Dead loves

You and I, we move through time,

barely taking note of the days and nights that we pass

like the phantom lights of cars travelling in an opposite direction

on a long, desolate highway.

Everything revolves and is stationary, a strange tapestry of time.

I can see everything all at once

You and I, we come together like separate disconnected verses

locked in a strange symmetry of an inexplicable rhyme.

The moon slows down, and the darkness becomes eternal.

The world fades away.

You and I, we look deep into our eyes and grieve

for the magic that is now lost.

Yet we remain intertwined in this longest of nights,

in each other’s embrace

as we slowly fade away

from the consciousness of history and the meaning of time.

As I watch Tiyaasha sleep

Through a crack in the window,

an old window, a decrepit and dirty window,

a hazy beam of sunlight peeps in cautiously.

It keeps a slow and steady time

devoid of mystery and rhyme

and flows languidly between forgotten particles of dust

suspended in the rust of a million random Brownian acrobatics.

Ships, like lost little ships, rudderless on an angry ocean

the dust is moves through time

devoid of mystery and rhyme,

and nothing changes in the dark room.

Croon, hear the silence croon,

in this lost and forgotten room.

Where sunlight peeps in cautiously

to consume all that has ever been

and all that will ever remain.

An insane freedom fills out the dark and heavy air.

Floating without a care for history or time,

devoid of any mystery or rhyme,

Tiyaasha lies stretched supinely on a bed

that rocks in the darkness like a lost little ship.

In an age before creation, did the Gods too feel as restless

as I do now, watching Tiyaasha sleep in a world devoid of time,

full of mystery and rhyme,

and envelop in her slow and steady breathing

the very secret of the universe unfolding

and holding its scattered thoughts for a moment

before all is lost to the swirling dust in the beam of sunlight.

*

1: 18 AM

19^th March, 2010

An Irony

The night it descends, softly

like the curtain of dew on a world stifled

by the claustrophobia of dust and heat.

The retreat has been sounded

and the footsteps march in perfect symphony

to that eternal call of sleep.

And somewhere deep inside that chasm

where civilizations have blossomed and been forgotten

lies a more ancient music

that softens the ceaseless pounding of time.

For only in sleep can the city-man reconcile

himself to his meaningless day.

Here he walks in a strange murky land

of brown shadows with no past and no future.

But the city-man, he proudly forgets,

that sleep was not to be the gift of man.

It began with the flow of time and despite its

music and its rhyme, it will stop

whenever it can.

And like phantoms from histories lost and misplaced,

they will look around at the world in awe and despair.

Desiccated to bare bones, they will call upon

their supermarket gods for repair.

And then they shall be reminded that

before the foundations of their iron cities were forged

and before their tall towering towers were put up.

There abounded lands and winds

more ancient and serene.

And they shall be reminded that

even within the vacant neon dreams of their deep city

there live other men –

a lesser race

who do not need sleep to comfort their return to oblivion.

00:06 AM

8^th February, 2010

We have been discovered.

A feral, slow and persistent music
hangs obstinately in the air.
It won't talk to you,
it won't stop to smile.
It is obsessed and it doesn't care.
A strange smell is up and about,
a dangerous symmetry is lurking in the clouds.
What insane animals must be out in the streets
for it is darkness today
and in the dark darkness, darker eyes shall meet.
A sinister smile pursed on their lips
and their footsteps fall hard on the tarmac
like the menacing march of death.
A heavy shadow is suffocating the air
like the moist dampness of a crazy choking mist.
Behold, the age of the lonely man -
nasty at birth, ignored in tears and bereft of a lover's kiss.

6:59 PM
20th Aug, 09

The Sentinel

The city is a graveyard of images.
Buried they lie under a sky
that is forgotten by the people of the metropolis.
Criss-cross run the wires overhead
like the lines scribbled on the hands of the other by her lover
in an age when innocence still made them smile.
And here lie the old tram tracks
weary and battered and senile.
Here and there wander about like hungry beggars,
lost little roads who have forgotten their paths.
The city has robbed them of their dignity and of their wrath.
They sob now with all the others, solemn and unheard
in the smoky light of the last long lamp-post;
The sentinel of all that has come to be
and of that which is yet to unfold.
It nods gravely and muses, the city is a graveyard of images
and all its stories will forever remain untold.

9:29 PM

15th September, 09