Mask
a house on the river
waves lap at the door
red grass smiles tall
sunrise brush-strokes paint purple
diamonds glitter
on noon’s proud chest
radiant peacocks open petals
winged dahlias in twilight bloom
earth bathes in a rain of stars
chirping birds perched on moon
rainbow across the night sky
all unseen, unheard,
beneath
the masked surface.
skyward
I smile away
the familiar pain of love
transient like moonshine
and walk back into my dreams
love’s crest illumined on high seas
lends light
to floating, dancing stars
the melodious rhythm
of moon-washed waves
matches Ganesha’s cosmic dance
I steal a look at the rising winds
in carefree abandon
and say a silent prayer--
“build me a ladder O winds of time
so that rung by rung
I can one day
reach and touch the skies.”
Child Bride
her first smile of freedom
takes shape in the music of
her kaleidoscopic glass bangles—
dream come true
the bangles belong to her
but they are crushed into
a thousand fragments
under the weight of
his naked unleashed passion
on the very first night
she’s stifled in the punjent smell
of loveless desire.
the broken remnants of glass
scatter multiple colours
on the crumpled bedsheet
but mark her innocence
with only red.
like a million arrows shot at once
her shrieks of terror
pierce the uncanny silence
of the dark expanse outside.
Cookie-woman
alluring manicured roundness
chocolate and raisin studded,
the cookie was once
a shapeless mass,
a function of
the oven’s volcanic fury
of the master baker’s
no-mercy sweeping gestures
woman,born, reborn
and born again
all in one birth
a function of man’s desire
seeking sense in
sometimes-loved
othertimes-ignored gestures
shaped, chiseled,
to suit her master,
is the manicured cookie
relished bite by bite until
dreams defeated,
she is a shapeless mass once more.
hope
time tires
ghosts of darkness
spread their night-rug
over a million blinking stars
the quietly-burning
light-lending candle
in a shimmering thatched hut
does not lose hope
bent under the weight of
aloneness and familiar pain
the frail woman
offers a silent prayer
as she waits for the moment
of everlasting reunion
with her long-gone child
hope steps onto her threshold
once again and promises that
the brightest sun shall shine once more.
