"Whatever" Words

Adages you grow up by,
Labeled as clichés today.
Looked at with a scornful eye;
Too preachy in the modern day.

An ever ready rebuke in place;
"Whatever" to say all you mean.
Wisdom dodged with elegant grace,
(Pretentious but) "hep" you seem

But "oh my god", what will happen when
"Whatever" itself goes out of style?
What(ever) will you reply with then,
Without your tri-syllabic guile?

A "cool" new word will be coined.
Same vacuity it will convey;
When "whatever" gets over-toiled
And is classified as a cliché.

The Ugly Manikin

Tall, slender, full of grace,
She stood for the world to see.
A hint of smile played on her face,
Her wares displayed invitingly.

Flocks and flocks who spotted her
Moved to catch a closer glance.
With bated breath curses utter
On seeing her countenance.

Protruding lips that hid her fangs;
In a snarl her lips were curled.
Hair to rival Medusa's ranks;
Spite and anger her visage hurled.

Though garments pretty she had donned,
Failed to lure the people in.
The sight that left them feeling conned:
The unruly, ugly manikin.

Ugliness of the model blots
The lovely clothes that she wore.
In the shop each garment rots,
As unvisited remained the store

Judgments by what seems to be;
No effort made to probe within.
No second glance to really see;
The worthiness of the manikin.

Shopping Spree

Thousands of them
Like discordant downpour.
The resonant footsteps
Walk in by the score.
Helter-skelter
In the glass enclave.
Driven by unending
Want and crave.
Flimsy garments;
Artefacts brittle;
Fattening foods;
Warranted little.
Abundant, yet
All so expensive.
Unneeded, yet
Desire compulsive.
Buy and consume;
Drain all resources.
A job it creates.
A planet it kills.

A River Flows

An unknown journey, an unseen path
The river flows, questions unasked
Led by gravity
To its destiny
Along the bed that time has cast.

Over the cliff, crashed and tore
Its excitement heard in accompanying roar
Living now
And how!
Unbothered about places to soar

Tomorrow too distant to trouble today
The current of life will lead the way
Let worries go
And freely flow
Savour and soak the time in play

Let Go of Rhymes

Shackles imposed by life on me,
Reflected blatantly
In my words; My poetry.

The rigor of rhyming
Without negating
Poetic pulchritude:
Excuse of a stubborn,
Asinine attitude.

Now that I think
Why am I so compulsive
About rhyming and I
Discover the roots
It's the way that I live.
And the beliefs that I built,
Infesting
Themselves in my words.
Exposing
My innermost worlds.

Calling out, pleading for change.
Break all bonds
That hold and hinder.
And explore...
Wander...
See...
Seek...
Unbound beauty.
Not just a change in the way
I pen my poetry
I liberate my life...
I let go of rhymes...

Teachings of a Toddler

The past midnight moon that I sleep off to...
The slothful sun that I wake up to...
Cartoon Network my loyal aide...
'Neath scarring sun Cricket played.

The beautiful days too good to last;
A weekend from now they will be past.
And as I trudge on my way to school
Holiday-memories make me drool.

The school awaits with open gates.
Joyous reunion of school mates.
The merriment of friends who meet.
Set up our castle on our seat.

The classroom caper and the playground games;
The backbench banter and the paper planes;
Delight of a different kind,
Vacations vanish from the mind.

The good times past we tend to rue.
We still enjoy the things we do.
Though complaints never cease to flow,
Mirth of mundane never fails to grow.

Though life will play its puckish ploys.
Battle them with those little joys
That help us through those gloomy lanes
And make it worth living... despite the pains.

Let go the grip on yesterday.
Make everlasting memories of today.
Nostalgia of departed days
On the present cast a haze.
Live for now… and the days to come…
The lessons learnt from the toddler ways.

First Times

The first kiss you kiss…
The first cheque you earn…
The first cigarette tip
That you burn...

The memories we might berate.
Or with nostalgia celebrate.
With affection or with frothing anger
First things of life we commemorate.

The harbinger of
Hundreds to come.
The first remembered more
Than the hundreds' sum.
The direction set
With that first time.
So before the leap
Just think awhile.
For better or
Should it be for worse.
Whether you cherish
Or you curse;
Whether you smile
Or you frown
On the scheme of things
A decade down,
Depends on the dream
That you dream tonight.
So ‘fore the journey set
The rudder right
Make the first of life
A memorable day.
Relish the step forever
Taken today.

Music Sings

Bruised, battered, from battles that never cede.
A lone warrior in his alcove with verve deplete.
I embrace him in my arms, my melody surrounds;
Unravels in my bosom humming heavenly sounds.

A rambunctious youth; An Alexandrian conquest.
An unstoppable march, victorious, shall he rest.
My beat ups his tempo, propels him ahead.
A symphony for success that crowns his head.

Aged in body; with youth replete.
My tune of the yore keeps him upbeat.
Relives his days with the songs of the past.
Yesterdays roll ‘fore his eyes shut fast.

Enemies engaged in a brutal battue.
I palliate ill wills that 'tween them accrue.
Bridging divides with harmonious ties,
From percussion and strings oneness arise.

Anger and happiness, Love and hatred,
Some emotions I heighten, some end up abated.
A therapist, a companion, to heal your heart.
No boundaries to hinder what I impart.

I am all around. I am everywhere.
Sounds of the nature conveyed by the air.
Or from tubes or membranes, or metal, or strings,
A mellifluous melody incessantly sings.

Am a genie you can, evoke any time.
At your disposal my rhythm and rhyme.
Submit to me, concede your concerns.
With the balm of my ballad heal your burns.

Will make every trouble little easy to bear.
Shed tears with you; or maybe hum a prayer.
I live with you in your every breath.
A part of your life from birth until death.

Mundanity

The twister sucks incessantly.
I dodge and dribble helplessly.
My rebellious spirit tugged away,
In the vortex of mundanity.

In endless cycles days are cast.
Quotidian years pass so fast.
Before the realization dawns,
My bacchic days well in my past.

Time I lost I can not gain.
Though my past I lost in vain,
Will satiate with zest and zeal,
The days in life that remain.

Will escape the bonds of common place.
Will grant my heart all that it craves.
A gleaming life to light up the world;
And fulfilled, to death it slowly fades.

Shades of Life

Black and White - too defined;
Shades of Grey lure my mind.
Bourns between the black and white,
Shackle me. Blinker my Sight.
Greys appeal to the roving eye;
Proffer horizons infinite.
Fettered by binary bonds;
Seek escape in boundless fawns.
Black and white don't lay the rules.
Adventure fraught in varied hues.
Flout the don'ts and the do's.
Let shades galore in life suffuse.
Walk on the path that you pave.
Live your life the way you crave.

The Quest for Beauty

Torrents of time,
Biased, unkind.
As I weakened,
Immortal, it shined.
Jibes my age,
Cruelly reflecting,
Disease of eld
Slowly infecting.
No trace of beauty
Left within,
Wrinkles suffuse,
Ruckle my skin.
Crippled by time,
My body it taunts.
Its deathlessness,
It wickedly flaunts.
Reflects my frame
And humiliates.
The sight of self,
Infuriates.
Propelled by fury,
I obliterate
The mirror of truth,
I decimate.
Countless mirrors
Adorn the floor.
Sum of the parts,
Hurt even more.
A million shards
Now laugh at me.
Magnify
My agony.
My ugliness
Now multiplied,
Each piece of mirror,
With glee reviled.
Driven insane,
Let out a scream;
At sixty I crave,
Beauty of teen.
I long for something,
Well in my past.
Mourned the beauty,
That did not last.
It’s not my skin
That the mirror mocks.
The object of jest,
My shallow thoughts.
Bewitched by blasé
Depravity;
Perished in self-
Vanity.
A withered corpse;
In death I rest.
A wasted life;
In beauty's quest.

The Flow of Time

An eternal foe;
It races ahead.
I hopelessly chase,
But the chasms
Remain unbridged...

I have an end.
Bourns I cannot exceed.
But it races on,
Outpacing my kin;
My posterity.

Washed in the flow,
My body and my soul;
I defend its blows.
But it leaves me scarred,
Wasted,
Weak.

It drains my body,
Steals the gloss from my skin.
Skin as fragile
As butterfly's wings,
But devoid of their beauty.

The feet that held me upright,
The head that held high,
Looking the world in the eye,
Now droops like a flower,
Too heavy for its stem.

Sounds circumvent.
Engulfed in emptiness;
Haunted by silence;
But the steps of the one I chase,
Ring clearly in my head,
Getting feeble,
As I fall behind in the race.

An eternal fog palisades,
Clouding my vision.
The sunrise and the sunset
Blurred to a meaningless glow.
No different from a bulb,
That listlessly shines
In the attic

The greatest debilitator,
Also the greatest healer.
As it renders the panacea.
Frees me of all my woes,
My miseries, my pains.

It gives me
My anodyne.
It gives me
My death.

Fly On...

Eggs that lay in a cozy nest,
Bore fledglings tiny full of zest.
Filled with exuberance unbound;
Awed by every sight and sound;
Trifle scared
Of the distant ground.

Food that flew right to their beak;
Pillowed on feathers, snuggled to sleep.
The little birds now growing fast.
Their brethren flew, whizzing past.
The nest so small,
With the sky so vast.

Desire to fly filled them all.
The bravest one answered the call.
Gingerly, on the edge it stepped.
Took a leap and vigorously flapped.
Mid-air the entrant
Grimly trapped...

The wind gods rushed to help it fly,
Buoyed the bird to kiss the sky.
The siblings gazed with delight
Their brother's smooth, graceful flight.
Defying gravity;
Gaining height.

Far, a gun intently traced;
Followed the bird as it paced.
A gunshot cut the silent sky.
Panicked birds pell-mell fly.
The pilot screamed
An unheard cry.

The bullet soared, its target found.
Plummeted to the dreaded ground.
The first time flier flew its last.
Froze with terror, scared, aghast;
The birds that saw,
A brother grassed.

Fear instilled by the gory sight,
No one dared to take the flight.
All cowered in their mother's wings,
Till courage the morning sunlight brings;
The tragic past
No longer stings.

One more bird leaps from the edge,
Following the nature's pledge.
Plethora of dangers cloud the sky.
Though destiny the perils deny.
Did not deter
The bird to fly.

Disasters come and strike us all.
It matters not how far we fall.
Life goes on despite our loss.
We move on too after a pause.
The past begins
To gather moss.

Fear and sorrow do not last.
Future heals traumatic past.
So spread your wings and soar away.
Don’t let the wounds of yesterday
Hinder the joys
That come your way.

The See Saw Ride

The see saw sways, back and forth
Seeking my soul to betroth
The good awaits with open arms
The evil lays hypnotic charms
The good of good,
The good narrates
The good of evil,
Evil orates
Goodness the good
Permeates
Overbearing evil
Manipulates
Undecided, I
Equivocate
To convert me, both
Altercate
Gains the good advocates
Seem too trivial to the mind
The offer that the evil makes
“Don’t let them go”, the heart opined.
Wealth, sex, power, fame
Rewards driving me insane
The lure of devil
Just too strong
The wrongs just didn't
Seem too wrong
The mind that hears,
The louder voice
Takes up the wrong,
But lucrative choice
The good hangs its head in shame
The evil victorious at this game
The see-saw tips to the evil's side
It’s every craving I abide
Millions ride their see-saw this way
To the devil's side they sway
Immersed in our self pity...
Convenience wins over gallantry...
More than our own felicity,
Is important other's misery...
The roots of greed penetrate...
Love replaced with crimson hate...
Selfish desires rule the mind...
Power renders people blind...
The evil deep in our hide
Outweighs the good, convincingly
Firmly pinned on the devil's side
A game, the seesaw cedes to be

Sleep Denied

Dancing wild…
Music loud…
Graceful moves…
Swooning crowd…

Sleepless nights…
Raining cash…
A drunken bar…
A drunken bash…

Some money earned…
A Family fed…
Thought of as base,
Yet all reveled.

A ban imposed
For sanctity.
Victim of your
Hypocrisy…

No food to feed…
All time to sleep…
At Stars I stare…
As I weep…

No blaring beats…
No leching eyes…
All holy but,
The body dies.

A struggle ensued…
Of work deprived…
Empty Nights…
Yet sleep denied…

A Farmer's Demise

The sweetly burning sun
The smoothly flowing sweat
Blithe blisters in my hands
From untiring ferment.

The bosom of the earth
Fed with foreign seed.
My heart that awaits
A crop of bettered breed.

Seducing the land
The beat of the rain
Like a debutant father
I wait for the grain.

But the soil bears no fruit.
I have no crop to hay.
Hopes buried with the lies
And traps that they lay.

It wasn't the scented soil
And thorough was my toil
The seeds' prevarication
Mothered destitution.

My family foundered
Perishing in poverty.
Victims of seed-sellers'
Greed and Apathy.

The price of poverty too high
For honest work to suffice.
The deceit of the rich
Celebrated my demise.

- Himanshu

Autobiography of a Knife

Snuggled in a sack all packed and dark.
My metal gleamed white and sharp.
Illuming innards for us friends to mingle,
As we joined our master on his junket to jungle.

As the troop halted and camped for the night,
I was summoned on the scene for my might.
Skinned shallot and spinach and snake gourds too.
Played my part in feeding the crew.

Inscribed initials on a barren bark,
Leaving signs of sojourn to this park.
Heading back home all marched along.
A detour decision proved to be wrong.

Miserably mislaid. Environ hostile;
With me they flayed, vermin vile;
Shrews and snakes on the poisonous path,
All smitten by my valorous wrath

Famished for food were the unfed.
As the hapless horde moved ahead.
Energy exhausted, my master weakened.
His uncaring companions felt brutally burdened.

A fellow friend took me from my master,
Pretext of preventing any damning disaster.
Separated from skipper and a second later,
Possessed by a poseur I turned a traitor.

A devilish design the scoundrels schemed.
Versus my will took me in their team.
Stabbed in the stomach my skipper I slay.
Others fed on the flesh of my commander's clay.

Was I a villain in a saviour's disguise?
Or a traitor who caused his master's demise?
Served with a purpose all life long;
Cast as a sinner for someone else's wrong.

Unkind, unfair, the world we live in;
Though pure at heart yet we sin.
Enslaved by circumstances beyond you and me;
I am not the devil I am made out to be.
.
.
.
I beg of you.
Please do not judge me

- Himanshu

The Painting and The Shoelace

The twirl of brush,
The swirl of a lace,
Furrows of concentration,
Dug deep on their face.

An artist at work,
On his greatest creation.
A toddler tying his shoelace,
With utmost frustration.

The battle between
The virtuoso's skill,
Pitted against
The neophytes will.

Colours burning alive,
In the outline's shackle.
The lace neatly bound,
In an orderly tangle.

To be hung on a wall,
The painting sold.
Earning the artist some money
And a dent in his soul.

No witness for the child,
His achievement unknown;
But strutting proudly,
A notch he had grown.

An acknowledged greatness;
Happiness denied.
From a victory unnoticed,
Pleasure derived.

- Himanshu

The Unreachable God

A desperate devotee seeking solace,
A minute with God was all he yearned.
To escape the worldly profanity,
To the divine his soul had turned

The burning sands, the cruel sun,
Charred his skin. His feet were torn.
He marched along, to meet his God,
The only one he could call his own.

Erupted, from the flat horizon,
The temple top, rising high.
Tornado of glee in his heart;
He could sense his God was nigh.

Stepping through the temple gates,
Faced by an un-thought of sight.
Throngs of hapless encumbered ones
Come to shed off their plight.

Withheld in crowded chambers
Impatiently the poor lay.
Rich ones shelled out their lucre,
Bought exclusive right to pray.

The mendicant robbed people;
As well as did the priest.
The rich "bought" ambrosia.
On leftovers, poor feast.

A long and crowded queue ahead,
Claustrophobic our devotee felt.
But the thought of reaching God,
His spirits high the pilgrim upheld.

People pushed, shoved, cursed, abused;
The serpentine queue inched along;
Assuming their quest for God
Justified all that was wrong.

The struggle and penance fructified;
His God, the pilgrim had barely seen;
The guardian of God broke his prayer,
"Move along," he let out a scream.

A minute with God was all he'd asked.
An eye-blink was all he got.
Depressed, angry the pilgrim felt,
Convinced, his impure soul would rot.

Then far, to nowhere, the pilgrim went,
Where no human defiled the air.
Cried silently for the want of God,
Thinking almighty did not care.

"I live in ones who know to love.
Can’t help the ones who fabricate
Evil schemes to rob the world
Their lives, themselves, dilapidate.”

The serene voice awoke his soul;
Struck with realization divine:
His God was with him all along.
An elaborate hoax, was the shrine.

People outdistanced themselves
On paths of evil when they trod.
They wandered out of His reach,
And they call Him 'the unreachable God'?

The God-men and the holy pyres
To the divine, do not lead.
The only way to reach your God
Is to live him in your every deed.

- Himanshu

Hate

A confinement, a bondage,
A self made prison.
A blinding emotion
Obscuring all vision.

The reasons so trivial
On which it breeds.
Needs no nourishment
On itself it feeds.

A feeling that outlives
Life itself.
After your death
In progenies it dwells.

Destroying all
That lie in its path.
Replacing love
With merciless wrath.

Vengeance and anger
Reek from your gaze.
As blood it desires.
Death it craves.

Don't succumb to it.
I beg. I plead.
In your grave it will cause
Your soul to bleed.

- Himanshu

The Eagle's Plight

I want to fly, fly unbound,
Over the clouds at the speed of sound.

Endless space surrounding me.
My unhindered spirit, roaming free

Abruptly I notice the void around,
With nostalgia I recall the ground.

The school of hens, the gaggle of geese,
Sparrows together playing on trees.

Birds below of a same feather,
Migrating home flocked together.

I and my brethren fly alone.
Wind whizzing by in a drone.

You are the king perched at the top.
You glance below and miss your lot.
The fun, the love and the care;
The togetherness that was there;
You earn all treasures that you wished.
A Laugh with friends is what you miss.

Airborne high loneliness found.
Do I really want to fly unbound?

- Himanshu

Thank You

An unlikely setting,
To cause introspection;
A bus that I boarded
For commutation.
As I bought a ticket,
For an extra second I lingered,
Thanked the conductor
For the service he rendered.
He gave me stare
Of utter disbelief.
As if I had chanted a curse
To cause endless grief.
Coming to terms
With what I had said.
A widening smile
With a scratch on the head,
“No one ever says that”
Aloud he exclaimed.
“Thanks for your thanks
My day is made.”
As I alighted,
A teacher I remembered;
Mrs. Chaturvedi
And a lecture she delivered.
Asking us
To thank all we should.
Cause the world was lacking
In deserving gratitude.

I think of my teacher,
And the teachings she lent.
Today I know,
What she had meant.
“Thank you teacher,”
I silently say.
“For it was you who made
The bus conductor’s day."

- Himanshu

Why Do I Have To Go

Why do I have to go, and leave the people I love?
It just seems like today that these people I met.
I was getting to know who they really are.
With an unstoppable tide I am about to be swept
To far away where only memories I'll have.
Which I fear forgetting and being forgotten I dread.
I want to be close to the people I love.
I want to be missed; a tear could be shed
To just tell me I am wanted; to tell me I am loved.
And it hurts them as much, my absence will be felt.
Hope my memories will make up for me when I am gone.Everyone shall stay in my heart where they've always dwelt.

Fuck Myself Again

Though I love to joke and laugh,
Sometimes I want to turn them off.
And then I let in the clouds of doom,
Spreading in my head, I let them loom.

All the pain I inflict upon myself,
And then I cry out aloud for help.
Unknowingly, the pain that I have fed,
Nothing real, it’s all inside my head.

Thinking of things that aren't there,
Blinded to the beauty everywhere,
As the pain mounts inside my brain,
I choke as I fuck myself again.

The evils of the world stare at me,
I try to battle hopelessly.
A tunnel engulfed in dark,
At my misery the world seems to gawk.

Finally I try to sleep it out,
Try to clear up the clouds of doubt.
I wake up, completely sane,
I joke and laugh... till I fuck myself again.

Me, By Myself

Deafening silence,
In my ears.
Friends I seek
Among my peers.
Their only care
Compete and race;
Be the best,
And the winning face.
They cut, they stab,
And move ahead.
Not a glance behind,
Not a tear shed,
For the ones they hurt;
For the friends they lost.
No room for love.
No place for trust.
Judging people
By their usefulness,
Other virtues lost
In nothingness.

They don’t care.
Neither do I.
So let’s not bitch.
Let’s not sigh.
No need to cringe
With helplessness.
No need to harbor
Bitterness.
Just be wary,
And move along.
Be merry.
Sing a song.
Don’t need no friends,
Now I see.
I have myself
For company.
No deafening silence
In my ears.
Smile on my face
Mocking my peers.