Velveteen

Pixie dust on wings
Pretty pieces of magic
Patterned, arrayed intricately

Speckled, burnished
Some wearing the sky
Or the blue, gold and orange
Of a flame!

Tremulous
Tantalizing
Making me fret
Caged within barred windows
Speaking words
When I should be wearing their colours

Velveteen.
Dotted with pollen
Never still
For the beauty
Still to savour!

Winging
Weaving
Kissing blossoms
Sipping fragrance

Sybaritic?

Yet.
That I could savour
Just this sight
Drink this enchantment
And find a song...

My caged soul
For now

Wears those butterfly wings. 

29 September, 2014

This is Day 3, written for Ramblings in February :) What is that? Click on picture :) 

For Hope

Hopeless,
He said.
It's hopeless.
The determined lines of 
Reality etched on his face,
The furrows of an
Unploughed fallow land.

Listing, ticking off on his fingers,
He mentioned why.
She listened.
Smiled, when he pursed his lips

And disagreed.

The Class sat up.
Ah! Not begins the Circus-
Interest suddenly puckered brows
And stretched lax lips into smirks.

She's going to get it!
She's asking for it!
They thought in glee.
(For there is nothing that
Compared to comeuppance
Delivered deftly, through a defiant, errant,
Articulate learner
To a nerdy teacher! :D )

Face off time.

He spoke; argued, intelligible
Passionate, persistent.

She held up her hands.
Now, he smiled.

Not in surrender, she explained.
The smile became a grin
Echoing hers and 
Forty six other grins!

Hopeless? She enquired.
My two cents?
Not hopeless.

Confusion reigned.
The grins asked - can we vote?
And a young voice piped up-
Teacher, a debate?
A thumbs-up, mentally, to that,
She asked for other voices.

A perfect brainstormed map
Bloomed on the green board.

Gazing at faces, now not bored
Till  suddenly- a thought nudged-
She had an ace up her sleeve-

For the pessimist- albeit realist.
She had a perfect salvo.

This.

(Please watch! -LINK!) 

Hopeless?
She asked.
And smiled as she left.
Looking rather smug :D :D

Sometimes, it's such fun 
To take the wind out of another's sails :D

29 October, 2014
(6th period :P )

Doodle

This has got to be one of the silliest ever in terms of rhyme, so please bear with this rambler!

When words curdle
From their easy flow
It means your thoughts scramble
From feelings that strongly blow.

So letters detached
From words, once attached
Create mayhem in meaning
(And) the rambler in confusion, wondering...

What went sour?

The words?

Or their meaning?

26 September, through to 1 October :D

Words, to Read

Words leap out
From pages
I have not read;

Seek me, reach out
Softly settling on my skin.
Lost, I jump out of it-

When they touch.

Those are pages
I cannot read.
Anymore.
Why? Because they
Read themselves out?

No, no. No, no.
More, perhaps, because
I'm afraid
Of what it might
Take to read.

The undercurrents would
Drag me, drown me.

I shall be lost. Lost.
To Them.
I am already lost
With Them;
Just knowing they are there. 

What it would do-
Knowing Them
Is the risk I cannot take.

They're the fallen leaves.
On the road I cannot take.  

27 August, 2014
One of those "Class" writes. :)

Gridlines

Neat, clear, legible.

Shall I 
Contain my content
Within them?
Content. 
Content?
Doubts punctuate
The easy distribution
Of the sky of notions
Of clouds-
Storm gatherers.
The bubbling angst
Of liquid molten emotion.

Do I lock my universe
In a grid?
Or go-

Right off it.

Drop by determined drop.
Blur the lines
With my own es-scents.

And let the storm
Pour down
Wear down
Obliterate

That, which would 
Contain. 

Content?

Content. 

4 September 2014
(You guessed right - words spiralling out of control, from silence of an exam hall :) )

A Poem, Buried

It came to me
A poem.
Crept into my 
Sleep,
Surfaced in the 
Sub-conscious

Tantalizingly
Softly caressing
With a lover's touch.

I remember smiling
Then shushing it.
It faded.
(Slept on, with me!)

Then why did I feel
A heaviness
A hurt
Singeing, searing
Under my eyelids
When I woke?

Why do my eyes
Seek it?
Why do I feel 
That crushing
Sense of loss?

I buried a poem
In the soft loam
Of lost words.

Weary words that dropped
Overworked, but under-used
Heavy with nuance
Staggering, weighed with 
Too much meaning.

Lost thoughts, groping 
For expression
Mourn that poem.

Other poems come
Squeeze like tears 
Through ink
Asking to fill the void. 

I give them space
And try to flatter myself.
Attempt to smile
And live. 

In vain. 
For, it now comes to me.

I am that poem
I lost. 

22 September, 2014
Would you believe this crept through eyelids a few nights ago, and left; revisited during invigilation time, yesterday morning. Too nonsensical, surreal maybe. But a goosebumpy personal favourite for me, now.

Burn-ished

The promise of life.

Burnishes, glows
Grows
In you.

Ripe
Autumn coloured
Fullness flavoured
Still
Poised
All knowing.

Ready to dive
Maybe float?
Or Simply glide
Perhaps Soar?
Leaping like a flame
Rapture, into it!

Eventually settle
Claw
Into the Earth.

Merge
Nourish
Nurture

The promise of Life. 

19 September, 2014
(Watching that leaf, poised, on the Badam Tree opposite my class, while invigilating for an exam. The photographs were taken afterwards, in the evening when the campus was empty :) )

The Ballad of the One Who Stayed

I watched "The Lunchbox" recently and was reminded of this write here, called "The Nit Picker's Ballad", which I then shared on my Facebook Wall. That in turn brought me a couple of requests for a different ending... or the extrapolation of the narrative with a different ending. Here goes :)

On the shores, bereft, he stood
(Though it should be she
He having left at her honesty
At her gift of love)

Gazing long at the loyal waves
That came back again and again
Asking him, beseeching sometimes
To find his peace.

He was young, they seemed to say
Love will come around,
Their quiet murmur consoled
The soft splash had nothing to do
Really, with the twin trails of tears
That found their way down his eyes.

Oh no! Not love. Not forever.
He knew they did not exist.
It was a lesson he was taught.

But.
A niggling doubt, a tiny seed sown
By her yearning eyes. Her silent plea.
By her unshed tears, and brave smile
As she watched him back away.
As she watched, and did not cling.
Did not pursue. 

Was he wrong?
Must he unlearn?
He would try, he had to try
He knew.
Else there would be no way
To ease the agony of his heavy heart.

Back he went, his footprints
Erased by each happy wave
That egged him on, to seek, to love
Then hold on, and never give up
Or give in, to the
Traitorous thoughts that reneged
On faint promises made to himself!

He followed, swift, the trail of wet prints
In the soft moist sand, landwards
Till he came upon her, seated
Knees drawn up, chin on knee
A faraway sadness enveloping...
In the shadows of her thoughts,
And the small fishing boat!

May I sit? hesitant, he asked.
Mute, she nodded.

May I simply hold your hand?
His voice trembled as he asked.

I couldn't stand for you to then leave, she said
I won't, a soft whisper from him, if you'll let me stay.

Let you stay? When did I ask you to leave?You walked, away, away...And will you, again? she did not look at him
As her pain reached out and pierced his heart.

I couldn't leave, I couldn't leave...
I went away, but couldn't leave, Hoarsely he repeated over and over...

There were loveless shores of such emptiness
He'd wandered, that he knew, unlearned,
And learned yet again...

Trust or not, Love or not,
Forever or not...
His survivor's heart needed her saviour's heart...

And as they simply held hands
Leaned into each others' love,
A flash of insight struck his mind -
He who was doomed to wander ever
Would now find safe harbour

In his sails wafted promises of another day
Another moment, another soul
To love, to be loved.

How glad he was
He chose to stay!

Online, 29 June, 2014

Under 500 words. :D

Photographic

If I could photograph

Each drop of rain, from when it fell

Parting painfully from the cloud

Of like minded thoughts in drops

Falling down, down, down

Barely seeing. 

Just zinging down.

Kamikaze

Of a different sort. 

If I could capture

The colours that drop caught,

In tandem with a million others...

Slip into the rainbow then,

And live those emotions.

If only, if only,

I could then save that drop.

From being spattered.

With my eyes, and through my lens

Keep it frozen, right there, 

When it deflects, reflects,

Not genuflect to the scheming

Insanity of those who don't 

Quite know, 

The magic. 

The absolute beauty.

Of how that drop came to be.

15 June, 2014

Online, prowling the www, on FB, and seeing this picture on Jeevan Mohandas' profile :) :)

Of Words and Wishes

My wishes are dragons
Breathing fire,
All consuming
Sometimes violent
Always intense!

My words, they lag
They linger
They've gorged on too much emotion-
They're dead-weights sinking in the
Mire
Of too much meaning.

Then they meet.
Those wishes, seeking words.

For all fire, for all the fire
And all their intensity
Nothing quite comes to be.
Dragons are too much of a myth
Too scorned. 

My wishes.
How different would they be!

And so, seeking that sense
Of being real; of being tangible
The dragons meet the words.

And the predictable happens -
Violence in words, and
Emotionally handicapped dragons.
Words spewing fire. 

I could have stopped it.
Them.
The meeting.

But perversity. Ah, the very thing.
How it haunts and pokes
And pushes. Me.

Right over the edge.

Till the trails of wispy smoke
Tell you, if at all you care-

The wishes met the words.
And consummated
The love that never was to be.

9 June, 2014 

Settling into my skin

... is easier said than done!

When you know you
Not matter that others don't
Or perhaps can't
And sometimes won't!

But
Do you know you?

Do I know me?

Existential questions aside
I find I always surprise-
Sometimes the daylights :P -
Right out of me :D

And then I find
I need to mould again
Moult too, at times
As monstrous as it seems

Exfoliate, perhaps, not just my skin
But my soul, and seek afresh
A cleaner, leaner self. 

The quest, for me, I know
Shall go on...

The Holy Grail shall I find,
That too, is known :)
So, what of it?

That's quite the least of it. 

What matters, is just this.

To know, and love,
Each new me. 

29 May, 2014
As always, absurd, and online with it :P

Strum

I wear music
In notes you'll never
See.

Or notes
Perhaps, that you could have
Tasted.

But chose not to.

And so I shall touch
That soaring pitch
And watch you fall

Fall once more
In love, listening
To the colours you
Think you've painted me in...

And all the while
I wear the music
That my fingers strum
On chords taut with pain. 

23 April, 2014
Online, when music moves and words blur;
All because of a song. Thanks to Dan Drake, who who shared this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psiILfa-G1c&feature=kp

I know. It IS absurd. I've even tagged it so. 

Tumultuous

Those words-
They roam - restless spirits
While burgeoning,
Suffocating feelings
Try to pin them down.

The tumult, within,
Of these wandering, wayward
Wanton, vagabonds-

They will not let me be. 

I shift.
Stretch.
Bend. Struggle.

And my heart fills.
Chest constricts.

Then,
The lull. 

The eye of this hurricane
It is too still. 

My dearest
You'd better stick around
To pick up the pieces.

Soon.

22 February, 2014

When papers chain one down, the only thing to do is go bonkers, with writes like these :D

Once Upon a Time

It wasn't to be
The storyteller had it all wrong.
It wasn't thataway.
The words weren't right, for that song.

Music, in soft violins and harps
Played in enchantment.
Perhaps, perchance, their tale
Would find denouement. 

Till then, when stories lullabied
In hope of creeping into dreams,
They meandered, in that very hope
And played on, in plotted schemes.

Would they be, what they were meant
Where, they were meant, in that tale?
Of a happily-ever-after? Did they really want to?
And into the sunset, afterward, sail?

Did they just! 

And that was just another one to add to the list
Ever growing each year, in words, in hearts, here
While this rambler, scores yet another number
Singing, or trying to, of Love, pretending to be a seer!

Let love shine on.
Let love love you.
Let there be just that one, too.
Look! Turn around! There!

Love will find you :)

14 February, 2014

A gift, this day to all who love :)

Approbate

You give, and I take.
An even deal or not-
That's how it's always been.

Till when I knew
That only taking
Meant I was losing. 

And giving, well,
As strange as it seemed
Made you richer...

The homily wasn't lost on me.

And happily enough,
We still have time
To approbate a new deal.

24 November, 2013

Pic courtesy Google Image search 

Release

Dry, flaky, thin and long

So unassuming -

Quietly, it lay.

Knowing, with baffling certainty

Someday, one day

It would be chosen.

Today. It was.

Allowed to finally free itself

It long and drab form

Transferring, transforming

Fragrant in release.

Filling, fulfilling, its destiny.

It burns. Gladly.

You know that.

Because you sense it. 

That joy.

In the fragrance of its soul,

That quietly permeates, often,

Into your own. 

Undated (about a year ago, in 2012; discovered while hunting for something else, entirely :D )

Picture: Google Image search for 'incense' :)

Waxing (Poetic?)

On your full moon night:

I marvel at how

You entrance

Blemishless, distant,

I think.

Yet, I know, fact says different.

I'd rather be poetic-

For nothing else can I be

When you adorn in 

Simple gold.

Tonight, I shall enslave

Myself, in you. 

You make me think in clichés 

In much-used, oft forgotten similes

All revived, when you finally come

Into your own

Every twenty-eight days

That's an interesting number

Woman-wise.

Veiled in references of a vulnerability-

Veiled in- and from.

Beauty that must be hidden;

Smothered.

But can never be held back,

So you tell me

As you climb, in your

Slow orbit.

Only, today we are in orbit-

Awed by your magnificence.

And so, you out-climb

Out-shine those grey wisps

That would confine.

For how do they know-

From you, off you, shines

That brightness - which,

No matter how they try-

They never shall steal.

Not tonight.

And, as brighter yet

You pour your light-

Lighter yet, my heart is...

Pushing aside 

Clinging cobwebs

Of an oppressed, submissive me.

Shine on, dear heart-

And so shall I.

This night. 

19 September, 2013

When the full moon shone, on 19th Sept, 2013, dispelling those grey grey clouds; and I could not help but wax eloquent :)

Photographs credit: Moi! :lol:

The Queen of His Heart...

... and a princess in mine, no less
That is my younger DIL
(love the way it reads too, in Hindi,
That's Neeti, for you!

Lovely, lissome, with a sense of humour,
Wit that cracks me up whenever, wherever it cracks :D
A generosity of the heart;
Empathy, deep and sincere!

These are her gifts
Ones she shares unconditionally!

She is undoubtedly, the only
One
Who can tame the Lion
With just a word, a hush
A look!

When all the Mother Lioness can do
Is flail, roar as loud as he
Not to mention, sulk - Lion-size
Just as he!

But she? Oh no!
All she needs is say
Why, A---, Why!

The clouds lift
The frown fades
The smiles return
The Queen, she has quite

Charmed the beast.

Absolutely no quarrel on that!

My dearest gurl
The day you found him
And so us, is when, truly
We've managed to get a lid
On the tetchy and till-then confounding
Situation that arises
When two Leos refuse to back down

Ah, yes, both those aforesaid Leos
Love 'Never Back down'
And so they don't!

You know, of course, exactly what happens
When that happens!

No more, Thank God!

No more!

From the movies to the songs
We've shared and enjoyed
Slices of dialogues we gorged on-
"I'm a gooo gurl I am..."
And the epicness of RDJ...

Wooohoooo, gurl!
Is what you make me say!

There's an uncanny sense of
Sweet sorority, not really maternity
I feel, you know?

You know.

(Now, your Lion's going to have to figure that one out)

There are soulmates, in our friends
In the everydayness of familiarity
In the anticipations we hold
With those we love...

Though, especially,
When they aren't family!

It's never been that way, with you
You're an alter ego;
Someone who's so me, sometimes
That it's a joy
A reaffirmation, if you wish
Of my belief
There does exist, an alter-ego

And, Lo!

She can be family too!

Though, perhaps, too much, there is, then, of us?
Let me hoot a bit here
(I know you're joining me, as you read)

My dearest Neetikutty
Let me this day wish you

Pretty promises that come true

Dreams fulfilling, Monsters running!

Loads of love to envelop you
Linked arms and hearts to catch you
Each time you think
The bottom's going to fall out!

May you be strong, and healthy
May the joys abound
May the goodness of faith protect you
And

May you always find love.

Always, but always... and then some more.

We love you, dear one!

Happy Birthday!

(26 August, 2013, through 27 August, 2013)
For 30 August, 2013 :)

Stumbling into Sense

Living on the edge -
Is hardly the way.

So you tell me.

Constant thoughts of flight
Will always gnaw at roots.

Honestly. Honestly?

I shall always wonder, you know,
Why you deem it necessary
That I'd need instruction
To function. 

Indeed. Seriously. 

I've always, but always
Been that fully capable, you see
On my own steam

To stumble
To fall
To then rise.

No, I am not phenomenal.

But. Yes. 

I always will make

Sense. 

For myself. 

P. S. In case you wondered:

That is all I need to do. 

(Forgive me if I don't thank you. )

25 August, 2013