Sonnet XXVIII

Were I to tell you what I am inside
And what my love for you has come to be
Pray, tell me, would you still come home to me
And unto me your heart would you confide

For I no longer dare to dream galore
Nor light my sunset lamps with laughter pure
For long since have I eschewed the allure
Of starry nights, of morning dew and more

All I am now's a bouquet full of weed
That cannot bring delight to ailing eyes
A journey man who's lost his love for skies
A fallen fruit that has no flesh nor seed

So tell me would you push to me that rope
That binds at one end love, at other, hope?

Sonnet XXVI, XXVII: Ballad for the Loner

I met them, friends of yore, in times of love - 
Them snow flakes weighing down on me with glee.
They melted. Then some more, until above
My line of sight, the sky could see through me

I saw then, friends of yore, through orange veil - 
Those sparkling shadows blinding me with hope.
They vanished. Left me gaping at the trail
A fading star, and darkness then, to cope

I saw then, no one, heard no gait nor call
Of whistling wind atoning larceny
They slept. I started walking through the sprawl
Of jilted leaves, derelict memory

And as I pass, I slowly understand
I've been a stranger in a stranger land

A land with trees all stripped of foliage
A land that shackles fondness in a cage
A land that's now a vapid progeny
Of lucid dreaming in melancholy

Melancholy that grinds me to debris
Melancholy that robs all my belief
But I'll endure it as that naked tree
That shadows still, with just that single leaf

A leaf, once torn, that will not find its home
Though myriad promenades it might adorn
With sprightly hue. When quietly turned to loam
Will humbly coalesce to be reborn

Reborn, oblivious of that odyssey 
Perhaps to lead a life of ecstasy

Homecoming (IX)

"It is not something that will go unnoticed. Were I to try and ascribe an adjective to what I make of this lifetime, it would not be much different than dull. Why then, you would question, is this likely to get instantiated at all? Because this is how we live - vicariously through someone, someone who we think is far removed from what we are, a life that we secretly wish was a part of our definition of self, only a little covert. For certain things are pleasurable and hurtful alike to all of us; for certain things wouldn't necessarily be wrong - just that a surrogate experience would make us that much more complete. Who I am or what reasons had I to eschew a life more meaningful, in certain respects, should be peripheral to you. That I am giving you something which shall go a long way in defining you in your moments of indiscretion should alone be reason enough for you to savor this."

This had, over time, stopped being funny to him. What had germinated as an idea of excusing himself from the real world into Elysian Fields had now started blurring in vision. The glass underneath had started cracking and the soot from a charring life had started darkening the air. There was no quick fix. Rather the only one he could think of was the absence of smoke. Unsurprisingly, he would himself have to come down. All this while had been spent procrastinating. On a second thought, not really. All this while, a larger question of making a choice had been impaling his mind. A now-imperfect world lay on both sides with a fractured glass film somehow holding them apart. Which of the two he wanted to see through to fruition was the question that had made him dispassionate about either.

“I am not going to lay blame at anyone’s feet, and there is no reason for that either. I was born, and with me were born certain identities that I carry with myself – that I lend meaning to. The metamorphosis into what you read now is perhaps a little simpler than what it would seem. I seem to realize now that we are all bodies floating somewhere, with or without its cognizance. A nihilist in me would go to the extent of calling us all the constituents of the Styx. But I pull back. Some of us do – we fight against a force which does not exist, towards a cause that now seems an empty ecosphere. What are we to make of our lives? The dichotomy here is if chance is all that separates us, and to what extent. From where I see, it’s an external agency that causes ripples in an otherwise perfectly harmonized flow.”

He got up to get a glass of water. Some people have the knack of finding humor in craziest of instances, he thought and laughed aloud. Glass and Water. A quick gulp and he felt the smoke getting doused. Life has its quirks. He was distracted by this little stream of consciousness. On the way back to his table he dropped a gaze onto a sleeping wife and envied the peaceful state she must have been in. He saw his kids lying on the mat in the other room, and cursed his inability to prepare a more comfortable bed for them. As a consolation, they would have never known what difference that would make. All they knew, he sighed, was a particularly capricious princess who would not sleep on twenty stacked mattresses. He could not decide if this was a welcome break.

It was getting late in the night, one of many when he had tried to write something. Anything. He absolved himself of any shortcoming, though and declared to himself just what he had written – his life had largely been dull. What he wanted to get across through this effort was that there is a spectacle in everything. He thought he could do justice – and had been struggling to find this in every one of those notes he had been writing since. A couple of those nights, he thought, were more about indulgence than urgency. This was slowly turning out to be one of those.

“I will begin by stating that I failed in almost every major decision I took towards forging an identity for myself. I will start by calling out every decision I took as being thoroughly moulded by stories I had heard all my life; a desire to live long after; a wish to hear people talk about me in the same vein as those stories and a hope that I would be alive to see all of this unfold. My name is Mantu.”

There is no point in conjuring up an alter ego, a thing of myths he thought. 

Sonnet XXV: Elegy written on the death of poetry

Before I lay this flowery wreath on you
A carcass now, and painstakingly still,
Before a drape this mourning black anew
O Poem! Wouldn't you rise again and fill 

For one last time my heart with ecstasy,
With rising suns and promised lands afar,
With pain of loss, despair, melancholy,
With hope that rises, healing every scar.

I find no rhyme, no rhythm drums its way,
Into my soul, ravaged by words that snore,
And unto me no artistry convey,
So one last time o! Heart let me implore,

From ashes rise and rid us of this curse
This blasphemy, the blemish of free verse.

Wartime Stories

As an aside
Let it be known to you
That I don't like you
Or I don't know you
Perhaps I've never met you
But I see you drifting
Drifting anachronously in rain, in shine

As an aside
Let it be thrust upon you
That your will was sabotaged
Or you never realized your self
Perhaps you never had one
But I see you pushing
Pushing your way through with unfounded determination

As an aside
Let your eyes rest upon the scape
Which is not quite deafening
Though a thousand throbbing hearts burst out quietly
After a last shelling or the ensuing palpitations
Laying bare your identities
Identities that were born with you

As an aside 
Let it crush you, the leaden air
Laden with blood. With tears.
But certainly heavy with inertia
As faces fade and rise with the day
And trespass into pandemonium -
Pandemonium that their parallel universe is

And when you chew this
Let me get myself across to you
And let you know that I am dead
And not because you killed me
But because you don't see my person
Because without your self, you push through -
Through bodies floating in the river

And now, to the point.
You are no different
In that you are like the rest of us.
Floating. And conflicted.
In that some day you too will wake up
Hanged. Drawn. And quartered.

Sonnet XIV: Love begets...

While there's still a few drops left, of darkness,
And the moon rubs off its face the sunshine,
While sleepy stars with brooding trees entwine,
To paint what's left of your unfurling tress,

Let me sit back and take a calming breath.

I see in your eyes a dwindling fire,
A sense of oneness with the dimming grey.
Morning falls, I see yourself retire,
Into my arms, submission you essay.

I whisper in your ears few notes of love,

And call your name with passion running deep.
A mumble and a snore is all I get.
To turn you over and find you asleep,
All I can do is simply fume and fret.

Sonnet XXIII: The Bird in the nest has found its sky

It's often in the chiming wind that I
End up not finding blissful solitude
And straining, striving midst a multitude
Of humming birds and starlets to defy
The concoction my love that you've become
I find myself ensnared.

For songbirds cannot bring to me the joy
Nor starry nights enlighten sullen keep
They are but torpid instruments that weep
Dissonantly, in absence of your touch.

So tell me how I bring my pen to write
And summon notes of passion all alone
When every word is now a hapless plight
And all my notes your absence do bemoan.

Sonnet XXII: Till Death Do Us Part

He turns his head to acknowledge the thud
But finds no soul nor shadow lurking there
It's all so silent. But the wailing moon
Which keeps on screaming, blazing in despair,

Embraces him. He flinches nervously
And wipes off gleaming drops that scour his face
He chose this moonlit cavern purposely
But knows when he's done he should leave no trace

With trembling hands he pulls her carcass down
And smiles at himself, kissing her blue lips
His fingers get entangled in her brown
But silky hair. He chops her head and quips

"Your dying shall not ever do us part,
Your head, my love, is, simply put, the start"

Sonnet XXI - Gore

He ran his fingers on her supple breasts

And singing softly, gently stroked her hair

While submissive she lay, curled in her dress

Which splattered red and melted with her flair

He slowly unbuttoned her, took her cloak

And turned around to light the dying flame

But ere he could, he felt a strangling choke

Dismembered, saw her naked gleeful frame.

A stream of blood ran down his broken nose

And bloodshot eyes burst out of gaping holes

His punctured lungs spewed moistened reddish prose

As he begged mercy, holding quivering bowles

She nailed it on the cross, his lifeless form,

And walked out smiling midst the raging storm

Sonnet XX: Redemption

Sometimes I wander into emptiness
Inside my head, tiptoeing timidly,
And sneaking over edges, acquiesce,
In thoughts of life and death, and vividly
Sculpture the cliff with epitaphs. Sometimes.

And at others, I track back, hearkening
To what sails in the wind, flutters and chimes,
To whatever's left amid darkening
Dusk, the orange, eviscerated sun.

The lure of the fall's never been stronger,
Never sweeter the desire to shun.
I smile at that precipice. Death monger -
Hoping to trip but failing in gumption
Absolve me, pull me to my redemption.

Sonnet XIX: Turn the page!

A panoply of words and chest of love,

A tumbling gratitude for bygone days,

To expiate those thousand years thereof, 

And restitute the awful, wretched ways

That bore the brunt of dwindling passion's rage,

And distorted what comfort meant to me.

I stand at crossroads, still to turn the page,

Musing what is and what was meant to be!
Come, save me, lest I wither in remorse
And hear me out for all I have to say
And though your love might just have run it course
Your tenderness for me cannot betray

That while it was, it was a fiery spark

And when not, it would strive to quell the dark