he threw my camera in the well

this is a dark copy  of the midnight’s train
when my face opposed the overhanging steel roof
and images crowded like people ,in the mind,
as the noisy train fan whirred pointlessly.
on the narrow berth there was a bellyful of dreams,
the dream-son who threw the camera in the well-
opposed to the son who would do no such things-
the very glass eye which captured a made up past
the white robed monks came from nowhere
they were not dream stuff ,but real men
with real cloth bags full of  worldly possessions
a woman with the hair mop of a daughter in her lap
my recent past is now  made up with my camera
my remote past is made up with colored dreams
my camera I have now retrieved from the well

The other woman

Her white-washed house,on the town’s edge ,
Was warm and luminous in the evenings
Her window-shades hosted dancing phantoms.
The hibiscus tree in her backyard yielded
Deep dark red flowers meant for worship.
She complained of green snakes ,now and then,
These green snakes,they do not harm.
Children played in the compound,collecting
Warm twigs for the ensuing festival bonfire
During the festival , colorfully caparisoned bulls
Came accompanied by frenzied drumbeats.
Love was truly a splendorous thing
Behind closed doors and drawn curtains.
Colored bangles broke piercing her wrist
And the muscular elevation of his chest.
At dusk light cream-colored mosquito-nets
Hid shadows coalescing into each other .
Outside the window, the autumn leaves fell
One after the other, carpeting the garden floor .
The fat book on the table opened its mouth
With wide-eyed wonder at the trellis of shadows
On the marble floor cast by the chandeliers.
At night she burroughed her face in the pillow
As they dreamed together their joint dreams
And some times their separate dreams.
Green snakes haunted her dreams,slithering
All over her, dropping from the hibiscus
Of course they do not harm ,these green snakes
But their slither-feel is so much disagreeable
And they merge so effortlessly in her shadows.

The cherub in inverted spectacles

The portly gentleman looked at himself
In the bathroom mirror and smirked.
In the shrill voice of his childhood
He made some really funny noises
Which yuckily merged in cistern sounds.
He tried to think simple like child
He will go out and pick some berries-
Bleeding berries from the red mountain
But mother says Banti it is sleep-time
Will you now lie on your back and sleep
How can one lie on one’s back and sleep ?
It is fun to wear spectacles upside down
The world looks so much different.
Not for me the complicated transactions
These grown-ups are terrible bores.
I will now dig deep in uncle’s backyard
I will find several nuggets of gold there;
These teachers are sometimes stupid
They ask funny questions in their class.
The big gentleman looked at his paunch
This time the child is not coming back
Everything is once again complicated
The cherub in spectacles vanished
In the mists of time , not to come back.

River noise

River noise

River noise and river silence
swept by leaning trees and rocks
carry ashes of our living since dead
rice balls are carried in rapid water
reaching distant rivers in hills
our fire is lighted ,our rice cooked
for our no longer kin but airy spirits
we chant strange words ,sonorous
words that release airy nothings
from real bondages ,strange.
words are airy nothings too
the body is nothing ,just sleeps
and it turns into ice and ashes
swathed in ice that holds body
while it does not smell ,quietly
bodies that look at the sky
disappear the next morning
in ashes of flowing water
we tried to collect two urea bags
full of she who bore us into the world
the boat enters midstream
without looking back we hurl her
her ribs were trying to hold
after the fire they are cinders
we scoop her in our bags
all the while we chant strange words
that mean nothing to us or to her
our words are ashes ,our love ashes
a bag of of yellowed bones .

Trying to make poetry from a joke

Afraid of the seething world within
I took pictures of my pulsing bagpipe
A white ghost with a tail in his neck
Watched the geometry of my heart
On the flatness of a luminous world
In this bath we are all naked and frothing
He with the cat’s eyes had his own geometry
I co-swelled with him in creative pride
In our separate apostasies we fell prostate.
Everything fell in place except this joke
As love’s summers passed for wintry nights
The joke is now on me prostate and falling
As I try to make pretty poetry out of it.

The Window

The window existed in the opacity of the wall
While blood flowed in the body, dizzy and moving
And words struck quickly, as in a morning breeze.
On the morning was the jazz music flowing freely
And as the music went, the pipal leaves danced
The breeze struck beauty in the sun’s ambience
Shadows flowed in the tree’s exquisite motions
The world danced, the tree danced , the wall danced
On the wall the elephant danced with his tail high
The kings of yesteryears rode on camels that laughed
On the opposite wall yesterday’s man and woman
Joined in the life’s chorus from across death’s borders
Space merged with time, fragile images with solidity
Water flowed in the gardener’s hose, silver and soft
With a flowing sound that smelled earth and water.

noontime stories

trying to read stories
in the noontime,when
least rain is expected
there is a hot chimera
on the tarred road
a lone woman with a
metal pot on head
poetry strikes now
in the whir of the head,
a body posture replying.
the sky becomes hot
in the pipal leaves
pictures are now colored
thin and brilliant
like dreams of purple
when nothing happens.
all that happens in
the transience of the hem
in the corners of leaves.
the body posture replies,
the question posed
then the reply ,in the body,
in the way it crouches
and in the colored back

The making of the road

Hot were the words, mixed
With liquid tar and boys in the shade
Their eyelids closed and play-heavy
This man turned the drum of liquid
The fires crackled and black smoke
Went up above the tree and red wall
Then smoke became walkable
Smooth and black like a snake.

The Wind

The wind blew in our direction, shadows played

It is the eyes that lacked the answers, in the contrast

At the eye of it all I knew my borders when the sun blazed

The morning sun went quickly, the noon would soon come

There was wind in the hair, my thoughts fell into the skin

When everything happened nothing actually occurred.

Up there the cosmic egg flickered beyond the trees

The blue emitted golden rays in the silky clouds there

As if I could collect all that in my past canvas bags.

Yesterday morning a little bird shrieked on the wire

My garden was full of them and under them, below the wires

Meanwhile the loops continued endlessly in my mind

While the summer season seemed to be undecided

When the monsoon would begin in the salt water and hills

And journey across the mountains and windy coconuts.

My words are silly giggling girls playing in the moon

Together they do not sing but hum like the pipal leaves

When the wind comes from across the the distant hills.

Refusal

I know you have said that enough
In the day’s heat and moon’s eclipse
In the horizon I looked far enough
And deep in the tree’s silences
The leaves rustled in the night.
What can you do again and now
Unless art has not left here as yet
And senses still matter to the mind.
In the hollow of my downy back
Your after-being remains as refusal
Senselessness hurts in my fingers
As though my senses are conscious
And are offended deeply by refusal.