eXit (in the memory of my late father)

X

 

 

Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015]

 

Since that day

you passed away

the world has changed

in a strange way

 

my soul has altered

it seems

with the same eyes

I see different things

 

At a public place

under an EXIT sign

an old man

on a wheel chair

head bent

waiting to be

taken somewhere

 

and all I think

is about

you and me.

 

and the exit

 

that was bound to be

 

please continue

 

to live in me.



Feet of Clay - (in the memory of my late father)

F

 

Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015]

 

 

Had long ago read a poem

about Ozymandias

"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies..."*

 

As I grew year by year

The halos of my parents

did gradually disappear

 

I now saw them whole

as humans with their flaws

their feet of clay**

and all the faux pas

 

Now as a parent

I have to come to terms

with life's full cycle

when my little one

turns around

 

and sees me

as a regular woman

who has her flaws and

is less divine more human

 

 

I forgive you Papa

as you had once said

- "because none of us is perfect

what matters

where we are

we give it our best."

 

* Lines from the poem OZYMANDIAS by Shelley

**Feet of clay is a reference to the interpretation of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, by the prophet Daniel as recounted in the Book of Daniel.The analogy is now commonly used to refer to a weakness or character flaw, especially in people of prominence

 



et ceteras (in the memory of my late father)

E

 

 

Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015]

Medical bills, legal wills etc.
lotions, potions
unwanted commotions etc.
joining letters,
transfers, promotions etc.

black and white faces
in forgotten photos
numbers unknown
new fears born etc.

lists and payments
questions and arguments
incomplete forever
lifetime etc.

touch that was lost
fragrance remains
moments gone
memories remain
pain etc.


 



This isn't a post- 3 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SERIES

Like toddlers of all generations singing the same or similar nursery rhymes without actually even understanding what most of them mean, we go through the motions of life generation after generation. Women grow up to believe love is selfless service like the legendary mother India and men grow up with the entitlement to that service as fathers, brothers, husbands, sons and lovers.

When I read DAFFODILS by Wordsworth as a student and much later when taught the same ( how can we ever TEACH poetry?) to my students on my first job in a college I realised I had never ever seen a real daffodil and yet here I was propagating the farce. Why can't we instead/also talk about the flowers that are more close to us like the humble Delia or the sunflower?

The ghazal on a loop in my mind has a line " जो बीत गया है वो गुज़र क्यूँ नहीं जाता " ( what has passed why doesn't it pass ". If all that has passed was really past us none of us would be burdened by the invisible baggage and the tinted glasses with which we see the world and others.

Fault finding the easiest of activities of  being "holier than thou", none of us let go of that wonderful opportunity of mud slinging without realising its our hands that get muddy even before the mud reaches the other's reputation. Sometimes letting out the venom helps but write it down and hit delete or better still write it down on a real paper and flush it down. breathe and without doing any damage LET IT ALL JUST GO.

This isn't a post-2 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SERIES

All the monsters, each one of them known as "I" live in an ivory tower, up above the real life on the ground. the life that does not accept or need boundary walls and wired fences, the life whose activity is not small enough to be captured in the security cams.

It is so easy to limit and so difficult to set free ,freedom is threatening because in letting go you could fall, bruise or go through an irreparable loss but boundaries are toxic when they are imposed for too long or too severely. Expression always contains the risk of being in the wrong but repression would the never be right.

Maps and routes and more maps and more routes, the destination is always within, the journey inwards into the troublesome landscapes of the past and into the challenging cliffs of future. The cacophony of instructions ,directions is often deafening and in the noise the innermost voice called instinct gets killed.

Each one of us intoxicated in our own personal opium ,your opium works for only you mine sometimes doesn't work even for me. Poetry is such an elusive opium sometimes it may churn your guts and at others just black tic-tac on a white screen- absolutely nothing.

NOTHING.


 

This isn't a post- THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SERIES

why do I write? why do I need to write this, that or anything?
Why I commit poetry?
Why I commit life or why life committed me about 35 years ago?

Are why's the most important questions or are the hows and wheres important too?
I ask and words tumble out as if a dam of sanity has been pushing them back to the subconscious for long where they wait as a pool of experiences bubbling, stagnant but pushing at its seams to find that one moment of letting go of insane carefreeness.
when I coin my own words or I use a few for the first time and many for the infinite time do I make sense?
I am looking for meaning of all this of the cosmos in chaos. Why it doesn't pause and just like the constantly revolving and rotating earth it gives us only a semblance of being the same each day.
the learning is fun but sometimes when the lessons bruise and wound ,when there are weak moments of giving up, of disillusion, the mind wanders to the mundane- the lonely plant on my window sill or a perfect cup of tea that is sweet without sugar only because it has been waited for and cherished.
The bearings of being the beginning of being, all a never ending wasteland. The old copy somewhere in this clutter, the one with my younger handwriting of notes around it oblivious of what Eliot would mean to me many years later.
life is fond of me it seems it chooses the grind for me afresh every day so that I become a chiselled student , who writes and has a voice and isn't afraid of this madness.