Three Poems

Hi Caferati,

here are the three poems I had read out day before yesterday [6th September 2004] at Pranay Srinivasan's place, Andheri, Mumbai :-

FREEDOM

My bedroom window swelled up
once after relentless rain and
became elastic later
boomeranging back shut
with every push
for a bamboo bush
had collapsed on it
like a drunken neighbour
having slashed through the bush
whose leaves used to slither in
from chinks, silent and menacing creepers
looking more sinister at night
I breathed more freely at last
I wonder how
it would feel
if I pull down all those
bramble bushes of suffocating relationships.

----------------------------------------------------

A Wish

Yes I’d like to be a volcano
sit still for a couple of millennia
cooking up firestorms in my belly
enticing sombre forces lying dormant for ages
take a deep breath
and then
burst forth in a blaze
my exultation touching the sky
my roars churning the oceans
my shudder shaking up the planet
in an orgasmic fury
only to cover the naked earth
with a blanket of grey ash
guided solely by an intent
to convert it all
into a hotbed of creation.

---------------------------------

WELCOME

My house is dark with a strange darkness
that fluorescent tubes or measly bulbs
cannot hope to remove
it’s a darkness which is alive
which slithers and shifts with
an intelligence of its own
it’s a darkness
which breathes down your neck
like a drunk in a train
passing through a tunnel
it’s also a darkness which slips
through a million fingers of light
through the slabs of unbroken silence
through the brickwork of screwed up courage
through the unseen barriers of prayers
through the gaps between your heartbeats
it’s a darkness forever hungry
and hungering for more voids in yourself
do not show your empty spots
for voids mingle into voids and
create an absence bigger than a hoarding
it’s a darkness which suits my black cat
for he revels in it like a buffalo
would wallow in mud and slime
it’s a vaporous darkness
which moulds itself
around you hugging you
feeling you caressing you
seducing you; if you succumb
a sleep thicker than a coffin
will slam shut around you
wherein even dreams dare not peep
but it’s a darkness certainly not
from the devil’s own arsenal
for it courteously thins and disappears
into itself
whenever a silverbell voce
tinkles, yin and yang move
into each other like presence into absence
it’s not dark inside a womb
it cannot be.