A Night

 

Once I seized a night

with all its darkness and stars

its semicircle moon and promises-

I gulped down its love words

in a man’s voice…….in gallons-

till my intoxicated soul

was drowned in a heady dream

of a never ending night-

where my words were songbirds

snuggling together to stay warm

to make it through all life-

Posted for my prompt Carpe-Diem / Seize the day @ Poets United Midweek Motif

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Voices

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My inner voice is a male Asian Koel,

always unseen, always hidden

in heaps of leafy, nonsense thoughts—

 

I don’t often get to hear its mellifluous note,

as those gibberish leaves rustle and nod

making me caw, rattle and click—

 

I cannot be happy with the subsong I make,

with words of hoarse alphabets and voice

while all the while there’s a Koel within me—

 

I have seen those moonlit moments too,

when within a span of darkness and light

all leaves are still, all alphabets sleep—

 

peeps the blackish Koel holding in its beak

a rapturous joy I often dream to speak.

Posted for Susan’s Midweek Motif ~ Voice @ Poets United

My Words Of Silence

blue-throated-barbet

 

are in monochrome-

they forever sit

on their haunches

in this dark space

of grief-

I watch them closely-

I let them be-

it is possible,

one day they will rise

from this noiselessness

to be a blue-throated-barbet

 

Posted for my prompt Word @ Poets United Midweek Motif

Shoes (A Haibun)

Vincent van Gogh – Shoes (1888)

 

My old companion is a pair of sandals I use with my Sari and Salwar-Kameez. I can’t recall when I brought them home. All I know is that they have stuck with me through thick and thin. They are as sweet as my ageless home flip flops and the boot. They smile at me and never feel abandoned when I neatly keep them on a little shoe-rack and walk barefoot in extreme heat. Neither do they feel forsaken when I have to wear my boot on the uneven Himalayan path for they are certain that I will always return to them. These omniscient pairs know of my Achilles heel unfit for stiletto. They know my fear of Falling from Grace of a still unscathed body. They are aware of my ambitionless soul to raise myself a bit higher. They also know how tied I am to my comfort zone of old, unbroken and never failing friendship.

 

 

in storms and rains

not a soul by your side

but old friends

 

Posted for Susan’s Midweek Motif ~ Shoes @ Poets United

Hometown Haibun

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I wish to downsize my living and move to my hometown where I grew up. To do that, I have bought a tiny apartment with plenty of sunshine and southerly breeze. At old age what more do we need than that? The town has changed though. My old school is still there with a new and spiffy look I had not seen before. All school friends have faded out; some from memories and some out of this world almost like the thickets being vanished with their birds and fireflies. There’s no horizon to see the sunrise or moonrise but there is no shortage of brooding high-rises like eyesores. Lusterless stars blink half heartedly. They seem to be scared of manmade light. Local markets have thinned making rooms for big malls where young ladies in designer clothes tip tap the mall floors with their stilettos. Whatever happened to the beautiful Saris? Stray dogs are aplenty but not so with the cats. Where have they gone? People are moving into small or big apartments selling away their ancestral properties to promoters who are always on the lookout with their hawk eye for such lands to erect their skyscrapers. And quiet flows the Ganges, here, as before like the Changeless God. I wonder though if the Ganges-dolphins are still there like they used to be when I was a  child.

 

 

Through a pall of smoke

Two bluetail damselflies dart

Towards a wetland

 

Posted for dVerse Hometown Haibun hosted by Mish