Thoughts Like Shadows

An empty darkness spreads over the realm
of my scattered thoughts that have gone astray
like the shadow cast by a setting sun
on the ground at the end of a bright day.

Shadows of the foliage and yonder hill,
receding from the sun and her warm light,
keep getting longer, forever until
even the plains too are shrouded by the night.

But a darkness all around lets us see
the wonders above, hidden by the sun –
the whole universe and her history
back to the moment her tale had begun.

So on behalf of my scattered thoughts, I
belligerently bid the sun goodbye!

---

The Sky Is Sad Tonight

Dedicated to Mulhima.

 

The sky is sad tonight,
his tears becoming solid hails
in the chill of a depression.
He groaned too in a blinding rage
every now and then
and each time the night grew
transparent, white, silver and blue,
baring the emptiness around.
   

I have always wanted to be as vast as the sky
and here I am, sad and bare as he is tonight!
   

Measured in meters I stand half way
between the universe and quantum particles
as lonely as the first and incomprehensible
as the latter, unpredictable at best.
    

After the fierce hailstorm, wind blows in sobbing gusts.
After the dripping of your words have ceased to flow,
I cannot remember why is it that we must
live like Adam and Eve with two unpardoned souls!

.

---

 

So What: The Prologue of a Dream

So what, if no one is
paying heed to our unequivocal words,
in solitude we have
a chance to listen to the universe!
And trust me I swear, it is
a far more skilled partner in dialogue,
despite what we have been taught
or customs that might have come in vogue
of late, with well patronized galas,
awards and ceremonies,
often so many that
certain ignorance rather tastes like bliss!

But we wage war instead and fight
against the received social norms
to overthrow the tyranny
of tribalism’s established ways!

Yes we know, change too often comes,
riding on the meaninglessness
of shed human blood and too many lives
and revolutions, too often as well,
end up flattened beneath a guillotine.

Still, if we don’t suffer and grow
to be its fearless harbingers,
like a Winter is of the Spring,
the children of Eve and Adam,
cave dwellers for eternity,
will not see what it truly means
to become a human being first.

Until all men become half woman and
all women, half man, we cannot
and nor will we ever relent
from our pursuit of equal rights!
So what, if we are dreaming big,
human dreams ain’t supposed to be like rats’!

.

---

A Straight Line

My heart aches, to see myself morph into
a straight line from the old triangular shape,
a form, I had grown so comfortable with
but dreaded change is the sole constant of things!

I have never had circumference as
one of my vital properties, unless
one considers the entire breadth and width
and height too, of the visible universe!

Even in my rare lucid dreams, if I
had ever imagined a curving line
being drawn by Fate around my existence,
the center remained on the other side!

The snarling faces will never relent
from across the mirror, jeering at life,
so, no matter what, why should I resent,
being a full circle, a throbbing triangle or a straight line!

.

---

 

Dualities

Undefeated, I have never lost nor won,
for I have been a mirror all through life,
across the ups and downs towards the sun,
in all my future dreams and previous flights!

 

Vagabond, I have never possessed nor belonged,
except, in both cases, the entire universe!
Sleepless for life, though I have hardly missed a dawn,
the morning light have never had my sighs traversed!

 

Illiterate, I have not been able to learn yet
what the quintessence of humanity might be
with myself surrendered to the rhythm of my fate –
who, with conviction in their eyes, can answer me!

 

How do you absolve such dualities in your existence
against the universe that had never dreamed of a fence?

.

---