I find love

I feel you like I feel the sunlight
On me when I close my eyes.
And I find you behind the one
(Amidst a hundred doors), I
Choose to open.

I feel you like I feel the rainbow,
In the invisible summit of rays and drops.
I find love in serendipity
Of the words yet to be born from
The seed of my thoughts.

Black city I

You have been used, abused
And exploited by your own.
Mistreated and humiliated
By those who’ve been inside you.
Raped and assaulted
By your own pimp,
And even by those you’ve fed
Your own milk and those who reached
New highs by stepping
On your corpse-like remains.
Yet flooded in tears, wounded by arms,
Slit into pieces, into sects and segments
By those who’ve grown up in your lap,
You crawl to them with open arms
And give them your last breath.
Those who took away from you
And never gave back.

Anthem for the lost

Who wants to sit in a rocking chair
When there’s a see-saw in the garden,
And you can go up to days of love
And down to lusty long nights
One thing at a time.

Who wants to be a raging bull
When you can hit that elusive bulls-eye
With your charming archers arrow.
Who wants to walk the oft-driven path,
When you are that doped Alice
Discovering your own burrow.

Who wants to follow the misleading compass
When your heart can show you the way.
Who wants to weigh the pros and cons
When all you want to do is play.

Who wants to bury her gift of art
When life is one big Broadway stage.
Who wants to go to the end from start
When there’s mystery in opening a random page.

Who wants to build an earthly nest
When you are fixed to the wings of fire.
Who wants to stick to measured flights
When the winds can take you higher.

And who cares for those who think you’re strange
When stranger things have happened to you!

So trip through the marathon
From monsoons to summers to frost
And stroll past the last lap,
Singing the anthem for the lost.

Smile

When dark clouds surround you
And there’s no sign of the sun,
Smile, it’s going to rain on you.

When thoughts cry out
In the lost alleys of your mind.
Smile and renew your spirit.

When fears of fire
Burn your soul
Smile and pour the water of life.

When the pain of the past
Covers you in shrouds of shadows
Smile and hug the present.

When you’re blinded by light
Close your eyes
Smile, and see with your heart.

When too many voices ring
And you are deafened by chaos
Smile and feel the silence within.

When you are lost
Alone and have nowhere to go
Smile and look to me.

Unsung Heroes

Their cries were silenced by
The fire shots of cowardly power.
Their silence shut up by
A mother’s cries.
You were lined up and shot
And brought down like a card
In a pack of jokers.
Fallen prey to serendipity
Of unfortunate events played out
By the Gods of violence
And makers of hatred
In a world created by the devil
Of power-play by those
Who know not that life is about living,
And not taking another life.
And you died fighting or fought dying
To a struggle for peace, unattainable
In this world where love
Is only a puppet in the hands
Of those unidentified faces.

Tears freeze in the spectators' eye,
As you perform the last dance of glory
Going down in the song of your obituary—
And become yet another unremembered name
In the midst of a thousand unsung heroes.

Silence

Down, down, down you go.
Go to the depths of the dark well.
Well of grim thoughts.
Thoughts that grow on trees.
Tress whose branches run haywire.
Haywire words falling to the ground.
Ground of dead leaves.
Leaves that fly to the tune of the wind.
Wind bound in an invisible force.
Force that drives you to madness.
Madness that takes you to far off lands.
Lands that end in the brutally peaceful sea.
Sea of unfathomable silence.
Silence.