A drop

I am

a drop

coursing through

the vein of life

lifted, swirled

peaked, troughed

in her flow

a hot ray

finds me

and i evaporate

i watch, i breathe

a cool stone

i seek

where i condense

formed anew…

A fineness of grace

A dewdrop of love

condenses upon

a cold heart…

A spring of hope

suddenly sprouts

in the desert of despair…

In a moment

a man decides

to die

so another

might live….

A father-husband

saves families

while his own

perishes….

A policeman

chooses death

so a terrorist

might live

and tell the tale….

The darkness

of inhumanity

is illuminated with

a fineness of grace

a deathless determination

a fearless compassion…

A little girl

A little girl

brushes crumbs

off her skirt

Carefully, patiently

gathers them

in her tiny palm

And squats before

a line of ants

weaving their way through

the single-window room.

Here, take this,

she whispers,

in language

that’s still babytalk

and folds her hands

and bows her head…

A painted bowl

A painted bowl

a chronicle of life

a micro-earth

its rim, the horizon

its curved insides

the playground

of animals, humans, insects

one turning into another

men growing fangs

and lizard tails

salamanders who love

like you and I

lines, crisscross, zigzag

spirit paths for shamanic flights…

A painted bowl

– a macro-sky

a deep desire

a pit-stomach cry

of earth convulsed

into life,

like this body

fired by breath?

(This poem is inspired by the painted bowled of the Mimbres Indians, who lived in southwest New Mexico until the 12th century.)

Cold comfort

Winter’s here. In May, when the earth baked and the sky simmered, we thought we’d never live to see the heat die down. And now it has. The very air feels too cold to breathe. It goes through the nostrils and I can feel it chilling my lungs through and through. At night, for the longest while, the toes and soles of my feet are numb and frozen under my heavy quilt, my razai filled with beaten, fluffy cotton. 

The fingers that tap on the keyboard feel like two twigs, cold and lifeless. 

My mother the zen master is sick of hearing me complain about the cold. “Yesterday it was the heat. Today its the cold. Tomorrow it will be something else. Why don’t you learn to be patient?”

Ah, patience. And the art of surviving the cold. And the heat. And the heartbreak. And the suffering. 

Not just surviving. There’s something more, something else. Finding beauty, perhaps? Or the kernel of heat that lies enclosed within cold, the moment when one stops gritting and tightening against it, and allows it to flow through?   

Madwoman of my heart

The madwoman

runs through the bazaars

And when she finds

thoughts of my Beloved

wandering the muddy lanes,

she swirls and twirls

and throws her arms

up in the sky.

Primal sound

He comes on stage, folds his hands in greeting, sits down. The light shining on him is too bright, too harsh. It won’t allow his magic to take root, grow, flow. They have to be dimmed. There, that’s right. Just enough so we can discern his form in still motion, and the expressions that arise and ebb on his mercurial face.

Silence hovers over the crowd like a krishna-hued monsoon cloud, heavy with anticipation. It’s rumbling with thunder now, unable to contain its own fullness. As his voice, and his hands, move from the earth to the sky, the cloud bursts into warm flashes of rain, drenching us with the furious beauty, the momentous suddenness, of his music.

Somewhere deep within, a snake uncoils and frees itself, rising all the way to the crown chakra.

Somewhere in the universe, a sun implodes.

Somewhere in the ocean, a pearl forms.

Somewhere in  our collective consciousness, love begins. Once again.

First light

The fine hair

on the reeds

the delicate drops

of dew

on the bamboo leaf

the flurry of feathers

on birds’ underbellies

the clouds engaged

in erotic embrace

your eyes

my eyes

all catch

this first light

this first warm kiss

between

earth and sky…

Fruits of anger

I’ve had enough of anger. Violence and aggression. Others’, mostly, some mine too. I’ve changed newspapers, switched off news channels… nothing seems to work. Somehow, through some silent crevice, some crack somewhere, anger seeps in. Perhaps because I get suckered into watching an ‘award-winning’ film where somebody’s killed every two seconds. Perhaps because I can’t navigate away fast enough from a channel that is showing a mob lynching a hapless ‘thief’. Perhaps because I can’t look away when an angry driver brushes past my car and gesticulates obscenely.

Fruits of anger fill my heart, make it weary. Today I will let things be. Close my doors, switch off, opt out. Perhaps I can find a way. Transform my heart. Unburden it of its bitter harvest. Uncover its pristine original state. Develop fierce compassion. Perhaps then, I could let the world in. Love the mob and the thief, the beauty and the beastliness. 

 Until then, let me be…   

Any day now

Any day now

I expect

the great mother goddess

to rise in revolt

in this ancient land

that she has nurtured

with her breath and milk and love

whose rivers carry her blood-benediction

whose very earth is her body

in her we all exist…

Any day now

I expect

the great mother goddess

to shrug off her benevolence

and turn against her children

a terrible beauty

astride a rampaging tiger

or perhaps

the old crone

who dances death

any time now…

For, hasn’t she taken offence

at far less provocation

than presented by

scarred wombs

from which

have been ripped out

her own emanations

stopped from being born

because they are

what she is — female?

Any time now

I expect

the great mother goddess

of this ancient land

to fill the breasts

of us ordinary women

with her divine rage

her unstoppable courage

and then we, her daughters

will rise

ululating and angry

adorned in red

millions of mother goddesses

carrying our emanations

 in ironclad wombs…

Then perhaps

this massacre of innocents

will stop?