April after a year's gap

It will come around again

the April of cruelty, the April

of loss and memories. 

It will come back in trees 

bursting in flowers, as if it 

never bypassed spring. 

Those of us that return here

will be an older version of 

Aprils past. Flowering out of 

spite, softened in sap, more 

careful now, minding the gap. 

Haiga

 

The Conspiracy of Colours

I heard someone say

they are terrible at yellows.

I boasted to myself, I do okay.

 

Barefoot in flaxen fields, gold,

honey, dandelion, mustard, buttery.

Then there is lemony lime called 

chartreuse. I am sure you've seen

a yellow that’s nearly green.

 

Emerald, forest, jade and pine

juniper, moss, sea foam, and brine.

Just as you revel in how green you feel

green quietly turns to teal.

 

That’s the beginning of the blues.

Azure, cerulean, electric, turquoise,

hold on to the sky, the steel, the poise.

 

Before long, strung on the colour wheel,

you tell yourself: this is life, deal. Deal.

Trapped by yellows and wracked by blues

Get off, walk away. But first find your shoes.

 

Haiga

 

Solving for X

If you are like me
you are always solving for x. 

Grounds shift, paradigms change
feet you thought found are lost again. 

But then if you are me, you know 
I’d take an axe to all the factors of x
and end up with a pile of logs. 

You start to build again. 

Resolving to build around x
letting x be. 

haiga

 

On a bridge between starshine and clay

(after Lucille Clifton) 

One end of the bridge is 

starshine, the other end is clay.

Walked on it for quite a while 

Don’t know what’s left of the way.  

Made up of starshine and designed 

to be dust, I don’t mean to be morbid

but I fear, I must.

Which end of the bridge did they 

start me on? Was I starshine destined

to land in mud? Or hoping to reach

the stars, a clay dud? 

Either way its all still dust. 

There’s no reason to be bitter. 

When you move far enough in space 

even dust begins to glitter. 

haiku

 a young boy runs past

rattling a stick on the fence …

seconds hand on clocks

---

one day while looking 

at your own old photograph…

old becomes how young 

haiku

cursing all the birds 

on a weekend afternoon -

hosing down the car

---

in this monastery 

living life in detachment –

indoor prayer plants 

---

look a flying kite -

with a sharp flick of the wrist 

arm wrestling the wind 

Pumped, a sonnet

You inspire deep inbreath 

that I express in breathing out 

Not out of breath in death 

But finding life in moving about.

Grease is necessary for the joints 

The cutting of grooves for tires 

Movement needs what oil anoints 

but without friction there aren’t fires. 

Staging a comeback for being gone 

Seems to be the right thing to want 

The first hurrah is the day’s dawn 

That the afternoon will not taunt. 

Rev the engine, pull the lever

This last call is for now or never.

This line, this link (ghazal)

Give me some water to drink my friend 

Give me some room to think my friend 

Skating on the thinnest edge of ice 

Where’s the scope to blink my friend 

Fighting in this battlefield for so long now 

Not the armour, I wear the chink my friend

Yesterday I wrote a tortured ghazal

that I wish today to un-ink my friend 

Throw me the line, Anannya says 

take this hand, this link my friend 

Tanka

black screen afterwards…

cannot be brought back to light 

a fall too many 

frail old person in a bed 

or this my broken cell phone 

Is that you? (ghazal)

Who’s knocking on the door, is that you? 

I’d answer if I weren’t sure, is that you?

We had quit the game halfway through 

Back to settling the score, is that you?  

The storms are not surprising anymore 

but when skies turn azure, is that you? 

The heart’s malaise is to harden 

would there were a cure, is that you? 

Anannya, staying holed-up here with

nothing left to immure, is that you? 

Signs signifying nothing

There are days you reach into your heart and don’t feel a thing. You want to grab at anything that is floating, flowing, beating; but you grasp at empty space. With each attempt fingers close into a fist, but when you bring it out, your hand opens to nothing. You sense a thudding under an ocean so deep that the sound barely travels back to the surface. 

mechanical toy 

running on a battery - 

windowsill orchid 

There is sign of life, but you want the signification of living. 

Ageing

The peepal tree has 

burst into new pink leaves.

It filters the hot sunlight 

into burnished gold. 

There is not a hint of green

in this rugged old tree. Its roots 

circling out in gnarly feet. 

There is nothing youthful here. 

But on its branches is the pink 

of infancy. Dimpling delight

shaking in the breeze. 

No matter how old and deep it grows 

how many losses it grieves. 

This Peepal adds a ring to its trunk 

and renews itself in leaves. 

 

Staying Soft

like cotton saris washed 

over and over again for many years

like ice cream swooshed into

a cone

like pliable play doh 

like moisturised heels scraped off

of all hard callouses 

like the healing gauze on the wound. 

Tanka

live infrastructure -

hatchlings in a sparrow’s nest 

demanding fuel 

in the open savannas 

a lioness guards her kill 

Every town is a hometown, all people are kin

(after Sukirtharani) 

Not for those that drop the bombs
from the protected fortress of their selves
But for those devasted 
that every town is a hometown,
all people are kin. 

Anyone may do anything 
in confidence, in empowerment 
in the pursuit of happiness. 
And so it has been. 

Sukirtharani calls to the bloodied
Buddha, sheltering in refugee camps
home among kin.

Kodai Andal of Srivilliputhur

Born of garden soil by a 

Tulasi bush, so the legend

goes, Kodai came to human

parents of her own accord. 

Of her own accord 

she loved. Loved the God the

others became devotees to. 

Garlands of woven jasmine 

she put on herself first,

the legend goes, before 

putting it on her God. 

She showed up at his door,

his marital bed,

demanded to be loved back. 

Even the God gave in. 

Stepped out of his bounds

walked to her 

to bring her to the throne. 

Ruled by what could 

only have been love. 

In her temple, stands Kamadeva

wielding a sugarcane bow 

and arrows of flowers. 

She rewrites, to this day,

rituals of worship as demands of love. 

Allegory of the cave, in haibun

A shaft of sunlight falls on the white hospital-tile floor of my living room.  It falls along the side of the drawn curtain through the shut screen door. In that lighted rectangle of a slanting lightbox is the perfect upside-down reflection of my potted snake-plant and the desert rose. I couldn’t resist a walk on that lit-up runway to the balcony. I turn around to see my sharp shadow on the floor. Expected. But what’s that on the ceiling, next to the fans?  My shadow, upright, standing on a watery mirage. How did I get up there? Upside down on ground and the right way up on the roof?

without the picture

a heap of jigsaw pieces …

Plato's belly laugh