ShadowRain

Moving

2006-02-01T08:37:00.000+05:30

I'm here.

map 2

2005-10-24T06:39:00.000+05:30

All the land is changing
and the maps can't keep up
All the places I knew and loved
are being overwritten
I have remedied the situation
I now carry the country
On my skin

bells

2005-10-16T09:26:00.000+05:30

As I was walking past an old vacant house last night
I heard the tinny symphony
of the wind chimes hanging off the porch.
They sound like bells.
Little fake bells.
Bells always make me uneasy-
they always summon something.

This time they unearthed an image,
an image that was buried so deep in my brain
that I was startled that I remembered it with such clarity.

Stuck so high up a mountain's side,
in a deserted village of stone.
The night is yet to grow firm
and sleep is dancing just out of reach.
Half awake, half asleep, half dreaming,
I hear the bells summon the shadows-
that slide slowly silently across the snow.
I hear snips of whispered conversations.
I hear the odd staccato bark of the mountain dogs,
and catch a glimpse
of lanterns on the snow.
After a while the bells die down,
ebbing away with the wind.

A bell summons other bells.

fever

2005-09-19T11:10:00.000+05:30

what matter if the skin is warm as fire
when the bone itself is chilled as ice

samsara

2005-08-27T11:17:00.000+05:30

I see you gazing too often
at the labyrinth of the world
The walls are whispering;-
calling you into the world
We've all heard that clever voice
We've all stood in this very place

But still, you say,-
'I wont get lost,
I'll find my way
Already I can see the steps
of the route I will take'

But hold on to the shining thread
No matter how dense the world
Keep your heart on the shining thread
And perhaps, someday,
when the walls run thin
I'll meet you on the other side.

a map

2005-08-11T11:34:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, fate, that whimsical goddess
shows you a map
to keep you from wandering
too far beyond her ken.

Mine's made of marble
with rivers of gold
with cities of black gems
and lakes as azure as the sky

The chart is my comfort
though the lettering is all foreign
and the land- one I've never been.

The Memory of Happiness

2005-07-30T13:00:00.000+05:30

The trick, the old man said,
is to still time,
to hold both ends together
and ever so slowly, so gently,
press them together
Till there is no difference, no distance,
between the past and the future,
no present even.
And then
you no longer have to wait
for the long view of time
to recognize these moments
as the happy ones.

speaking in tongues

2005-05-26T09:10:00.000+05:30

I intercepted a code today
It was clever,-
For a while,
I thought it was
in plain speech.

on the starship

2005-05-26T09:08:00.000+05:30

[for R]

Said the A.I.-
'There's been a glitch
A minor malfunction
It's not serious
It's just that
You and she will wake
At different times
We regret the inconvenience'

hope

2005-04-25T17:43:00.000+05:30

We walked, once, on the same earth
we gazed, once, at the same sky
I see you still, bending over the water
as I add another twig to the fire
It was home, it was a pleasant dark
and your eyes were gleaming with light

I'm left with only that memory of light
and the forest is now merely charred earth
Everytime I seek you, it's suddenly dark
I grasp at your silhouette in the sky
Is this fate mine, this trial by fire?
Will you pass by, like flowing water?

I'll wait for the rain and its promise of water
Surely there will be a change of light
Surely I will gather warmth from the fire
And I'll walk lightly again on the earth
Would that I see a glimpse of that sky
And slip by your shade in the dark

Without you, this house is all too dark
The walls echo the tap's dripping water
While the mid-day sun in the hot sky
makes only a pretense at light
I'm far far away from the solid earth
I'm still bearing the scars of your fire

But I miss the crackle of that fire
I'd forswear the freedom from the dark
For a minute spent on the old earth
A moment spent in the same water
For, where there is you, there is light
And my heart bluer than the bluest sky

Now my life's as open as the sky
I'm a dry twig, waiting for a fire
Another day, a world in new light
I have hope,- who needs the dark
I'll seek the river, my secret water
In time, I'll be strong in the earth

Trust the light, and face the sky
Smell the earth, and the dying fire
Shun the dark, and be like water.

(My first attempt at a sestina)

doors

2005-03-30T08:52:00.000+05:30

I have witnessed many doors
but this is the first time
that I have called one to me

bush dance

2005-03-16T13:29:00.000+05:30

And even the ravens mock me
As I stand here waiting
Should we perchance link arms
Together but for an instant
How close you seem
And how far you are.

my first attempt at an acrostic, which is why this poem sucks :)

on waking

2005-03-16T13:28:00.000+05:30

All it takes is a
single steady ray of light
and worlds disappear

loneliness

2005-03-16T13:22:00.000+05:30

All right, you win, come close
I'll wrap myself up with you
You've always been by my side
and now you'll be my cloak
I've been fighting you too long
ignored your caresses too long
I thought you were mocking me
with your dark brooding self
But you were only welcoming me
into a covenant with the night

How the world shifts...
what a simple twist...

talons

2004-08-27T15:47:00.000+05:30

Talons that hold the world and
prevent it from bursting
into bits into fragments
of dream laden lives
These talons are shining
in the mist begotten light
And slowly, ever so slowly
they stretch, they twist away
to reveal only
a mirror twisted
shadow of a world.

figure/ground

2004-08-11T23:31:00.000+05:30

[dedicado a Claudia]

She said
she couldn’t put it
on paper or in english
why she had to leave.
She sent me a tape
filled with her voice

sometimes, I dig out my walkman
and the tattered earphones
and listen to her foreign words
but all I need to hear is
the silence inbetween.

sliver

2004-08-11T23:29:00.000+05:30

I was injured in last night's raid.
'These barbarians don't even know how to kill',
the medicine-woman said,
as she pried the crude wooden arrowhead
from my chest,
'Don't worry', she said,
'this too will heal, in time...'

A darkdream filled night later
I knew that I would not
see the next moon
A sliver of wood
had entered my blood
and was even now
flying into my heart.

portal

2004-08-08T00:04:00.000+05:30

I stumbled across an ancient temple
halfhidden by forested ravages
the portal beckoned to me
and I entered willingly
what hands wrought this wonder
what minds conceived this grace
I am but a lone traveller
stumbling into a different age

FinchSong

2004-08-02T17:06:00.000+05:30

Cursed with a beak too small to crack the nuts
that my mother brings me,
Faced with the certainty that I must be different
from all those around me,
I grew up, somehow, but thinking
All this will change,
Spring is just around the corner,
and i'll finally leave this wretched fledgling life behind,
fly away, find a resplendent mate,
to carve a niche, all our own.

But the song I learnt
first from my mother's beak
was not my own.
And the tune quavered,
as the females twittered,
and flew away
and I, too spent to follow.

Cursed with a song that
no one recognizes me by,
Faced with the smooth shining wall
of a language barrier,
I await my doom here
on this lonely Galapagos isle

[inspired by Jonathan Weiner's Pulitzer Prize winning book- The Beak of the Finch]

An Entry in the Dictionary of Unrequited Love

2004-08-02T17:01:00.000+05:30

Tamara. n. [origin obscure] a mood, a feeling of Lightness
1.of walking on rain-kissed cobbled streets
when the four-o-clock sun
promises a rainbow
2.of the sound of a girl's laugh
in a lull in the chatter
of a crowded sidewalk cafe
3.of a momentary briskness in my step
when I think of you

La abeja y la orquidea

2004-07-29T17:47:00.000+05:30

Mientras vuelo por la selva
buscando alimento, buscando amor
estoy arrestado de repente,
por la vista
de tu forma curvada
por la escencia
de su aroma inequivoco
Me vuelo hacia ti, anhelo...
por las gotitas de felicidad
robadas desde el dia sin fin
'Despues'
solo mucho mas tarde
note el resplandeciente polen amarillo
pegado a mi...
como sangre

One night stand (spider song)

2004-07-29T17:27:00.000+05:30

That night, at first, you were so angry to hear me
you didn't care who I was, mate or prey
But as you listened to my gentle strumming
you liked the tune I was singing
slowly peace settled on the web
sounds coalesced into visions
of love of togetherness
of a world devoid of loneliness

That night, we met for the first time
If only I could trust my skill
in keeping the spell unbroken
I would have stayed.

perspective

2004-07-29T17:26:00.000+05:30

Like the ancient star namers
I too thought
That the brightness of your star
meant that you were
very close to me

But, years later,
After they invented telescopes & such,
I realised, with sorrow, that
We are not even
in the same galaxy.

afternoon love

2004-07-29T17:25:00.000+05:30

Old haunts but we be new people
familiar tunes but different flutes
A series of moments, garlanded, threaded by "nice";
smiles from the wells of eyes;
and games of guessing, half wishes...
Afternoon gentle sun; million blues crash against the shore,
strands of her hair, mingle with the spray.

Warmth, intense, intimacy, cosy as cats
as close as a strangler fig, as all pervasive,
songs of our lives, the small steppingstone stories
a declaration-a kiss-a pleasant half asleep silence to race canoes on
with words gently dipping ""plop"" into this
murky twilight riverside world

Discovering a skull

2004-07-29T17:22:00.000+05:30

Yet another dawn to fill the void
by scraping fragments of the shifting earth
(fingers bathed in gentle dust)
I seek but a hint
if only a secret mirror-twisted clue...

My scalpel brushes away the surface
to reveal a skull. A feline skull.
Eyeless, it gapes at me- eternal and mocking
my meagre efforts to seek its identity;
its place in my time.