Take a quick dip
Watch the swirl colour past you
Feel enchanted by the myriad shadow
Of your being
Wet and whet
Set up in white
With hints of red
Go meet the green
Create profusion
Of long lost woods
Just a dash of brown
Their clasped embrace
That quivering drop of dew
At the tip of her hair
Did you create it?
Or its make believe?
Paintbrushes and canvas
Or taut, touched and framed illusions???
I send you couplets
Full of hope and joy
I wish you the moon,
Sun and the ever changing sky
I serve you the last saved up
Piece of dream and cream
I see you in the mirrors
Of the soul
I paint you with
The faintest shade of pink
Least you recognize it
In your sleep…
Least your blue quilt
Faintly gives off
That quaint smell of
My stale unshed tear
I fear you’d raise your hand
And let me play
With the mirages of destiny
And simply clasp my fingers
At the first tinkling of laughter
Ours…
And then lead me back
Into the streets so bare
Through the latticed alleys
Of time and prime
Into my own world…
I shall cherish that oasis of touch
Always…reminding myself
That you were my last indulgence…
Let the night go on…
Let the darkness sing its mystic song
Be there always those twinkling stars
Silence in its velvety coat
Be there always the dream in a dream
Let the night go on…
Let the roles come alive
Be there always buzz in the memory hive
Being in its trance like form
Be there always overlapping visions
Let the night go on…
Let the waves of solitude regale
Be there always the old moon’s ale
May the actor always prevail…
Be there masks and more masks
I have to wear them all….
Let the night go on…
They tie wishes to trees.....
Flags of good luck and desires
Colorful and fluttering in the Himalayan winds…
Oh the land of monastic yearnings and deep rooted passions
I seek thee…
I seek thee there….
I searched you long
I sought you in stories
Poems and songs
I sought you in the dark alleys of time
I sought you in the diamond mine
In the bazaars of Mathura
In the Kaashi of my soul
“Have you seen him ever?”
“Have you seen his golden shadow gliding by?”
“Did you catch the glimpse of the glistening sorrow in his eyes?”
I asked one I asked all…
“Have you seen him at all??”
He promised me to return…
He promised me the moon
The rainbow fabric and the deep blue lagoon…
A simplistic verse, a word slipped out of emotion,
The unsung melody gifted these to me....
A sky painted with a defined blue,
Water with a greenish hue,
Petals of stars and flowers dipped in dew,
Is all the verse which i could give...
A string of couplets and pearls of joy,
Was his next gift,
A mountain painted grey,
Dawn breaking at day,
The purple of trees
And their rhythmic sway,
Was my reciprocative way....
Emeralds of "bandish",
Diamond dust of the "raagas",
The melody filled my soul...
An incomplete poem,
A few unshed tears,
A cup of our passion...
Was my parting gift...
To,
My unsung melody....
Wisdom bred within us
We learnt about the life’s battlefield
Well in the womb…
We learnt the best way
To enter a battle’s fray
We learnt every move
Every single groove
We learnt to watch our enemy,
That danger came from within
We learnt to conquer fear
And drink the potion of life
Sounds were vital
They may have a medley
Of the death’s knell
The bows and arrows helped
Archery coursed through our veins
Targets were always moral dilemmas
Of that even father couldn’t tell
The grasp was good for an unborn
Was all that we can sum up
Stuck in there
Surrounded by suffering
Pain and assault
We knew not the way out
“Thou shalt enter
They will fight thee
Ye shalt attack from every angle
Break the maze thus…”
What next…
We are in the maze…
What next…
Why does memory fail?
Mother; let me enter your womb
I need to scrounge for the signs
For my way out…
Mother, this maze is overpowering
Do you least recall?
What next?
This maze is ours
We have entered with supreme will
Now we shall succumb to it
Now we shall use the wheel
Blows rained from everywhere
Where do I seek refuge?
Father; what is the next move
Can your knowledge be of use?
This is our maze….
Eternally it shall be
Like the wound on the forehead
Flowing endlessly
Why my forehead seems damp?
Why my fingers wet with warm blood?
It’s been lifetimes
Yet this wound is fresh
Eternally….
Learning life’s alphabets
A for Abhimanyu......
A for Ashwathama….
I feel
I feed
I do
I undo
I love
I move
I don’t
I want
You feel
You feed
You do
You undo
You love?
You move
You don’t
You want?
A few words too many
Importance of question marks..
Eyes closed…
Round and round
The hand turned me
Round and round
I kept counting my turns
To keep a track of directions
To know which way will I go?
Once the turning stops
And suddenly it stopped
Abruptly
Mid circle
I undid my tangled feet
And senses
Till I could put forth
My first step
I heard the cries
Each one calling me out
Each one probing and poking me
Cajoling me to come to them
There I stood
Faithful to darkness
Rather compelled into fidelity
Thought now I shall be right
As they say loyalty nurtures relations
Hence I began my journey with the darkness…
One
Two three
Four five six
I thought I reached out to someone
Suddenly it gave away
The place where I thought I had rested my hand
Three four
Five six
There I feel someone again
Suddenly I hear my name
I swirl around
Was it you?
It was a sing-a-song way
Of calling my name
Just like you do…
I take one step
But…I stumble
It’s not you…
Illusion perhaps
Now again the calling begins
I wander slowly
Arms wide, flailing…
Round and round
Further away from the chaos I went
Till I bumped into
Someone…
I imagined it was you
Strangely enough
Fell my band which covered my eyes
It was him
The way I never wanted
Yet he was the catch
I won the game they said
While I wept for you
And cursed the cosmic game maker,
Who put me in the arms of a stranger…
With an allusion that I chose him….
Blind man… and the cosmic bluff…
I have landed! never safely as usual but yes again down the dumps and am happy that I have finally come to acknowledge that this round of being Sisyphus is done…have successfully let the rock roll down…and well I put my foot willingly to get it crushed as well!!!
I thought only I could be such an emotional fool and genius at one go…now once you have left me I find the world at large is full of such! And especially this city where each one seems to fight his own lengthy battle, some acknowledge it and some don’t…
I feel the void, I once proclaimed I loved to be alone…I must have yelled at you one zillion times…leave me alone…and today what poetic justice…I am left all alone…
And this solitude is different, it doesn’t feed my soul, it doesn’t fuel my creativity and worse still it doesn’t care if am sick or not and whether I like the solitude or not…
My option to be alone is truncated and it’s now the only option that I am left with me….
My sensibilities have frozen…dead and well preserved….
How long did time pass? How far have the rivers of time and space flown? How many events and people and carcasses of ideas flow by me…I remain there on the shore totally untouched by all this…I lost so many things so many of them…trust went first, friendships few, relations many and realizations anew..
Today!
I read what he wrote; I think he wrote with the blood of loneliness…with the intensity I knew was his…totally pure, phenomenal and animal like
I loved his aggression and his passion and was surprised to discover that he was the destination of my search…he was around always too close but that prevented me from seeing him objectively I guess…
He wrote about connections, he wrote about passion, his words flowed with dynamism and his music interlaced with the strains of raag marwa…sung deep in the nights in the womb of the day…
Then I saw him paint, just a stroke, but what grace what force I was almost aroused…to his being, his ability to create and his potency of being human…
Evolved is how I found him, nomad is what the world terms him and piya is what I would like to term him…
I sought him and was thrilled to have found myself in each facet of his creativity...in each angle of his solitude and every trace of his existence
He can’t be plotted on conventional graphs, he aint two dimensional, he has a life force! his third dimension, his Z plane…
From where I plunged and fell into the very valley I pined for so long…
Losing the track of existence sometimes carries us to the purpose of existence….
I was totally lost with him. I discover afresh the reason of my journey...the sojourn I undertook centuries ago…
The spiritual journey which we began is now in its last stage…
It’s been centuries and I feel so familiar with his scorching look, his roughness and uncouthness that it still holds appeal, evokes a primal desire which I feared I had lost…
He got it back to me rekindled the fire within and I shall ensure to keep it burning all the time…
The fire that melts the hardest ego, that casts the softest principle and that fire that burns illusions of power and yet holds the potency to thrive life….
I shall be his…I shall keep by his side…lead his nomadic ways and love his wanderings…in losing ourselves we shall soon discover the joy of being…the primal need and energy that brings and keeps two beings from dying out…
I shall survive and keep the fires burning till he returns from one of his journeys in search of his being….
Is baar nahin
Is baar jab woh choti si bachchi mere paas apni kharonch le kar aayegi
Main usey phoo phoo kar nahin behlaoonga
Panapney doonga uski tees ko
Is baar nahin
Is baar jab main chehron par dard likha dekhoonga
Nahin gaoonga geet peeda bhula dene wale
Dard ko risney doonga,utarney doonga andar gehrey
Is baar nahin
Is baar main na marham lagaoonga
Na hi uthaoonga rui ke phahey
Aur na hi kahoonga ki tum aankein band karlo,gardan udhar kar lo main dawa lagata hoon
Dekhney doonga sabko hum sabko khuley nangey ghaav
Is baar nahin
Is baar jab uljhaney dekhoonga,chatpatahat dekhoonga
Nahin daudoonga uljhee door lapetney
Uljhaney doonga jab tak ulajh sake
Is baar nahin
Is baar karm ka hawala de kar nahin uthaoonga auzaar
Nahin karoonga phir se ek nayee shuruaat
Nahin banoonga misaal ek karmyogi ki
Nahin aaney doonga zindagi ko aasani se patri par
Utarney doonga usey keechad main,tedhey medhey raston pe
Nahin sookhney doonga deewaron par laga khoon
Halka nahin padney doonga uska rang
Is baar nahin banney doonga usey itna laachaar
Ki paan ki peek aur khoon ka fark hi khatm ho jaye
Is baar nahin
Is baar ghawon ko dekhna hai
Gaur se
Thoda lambe wakt tak
Kuch faisley
Aur uskey baad hausley
Kahin toh shuruat karni hi hogi
Is baar yahi tay kiya hai
... Prasoon Joshi
