Our Myths

Sad, a sadness we have drunk
from the prehistoric times as you say.
For ages we have been looked down upon
by the world that was growing up
as we regressed.
Reminders have always been greeted by us
about how backward, inept and sad we are,
a nation full of polarities, contradictions and paradoxes.
On the eve of the day we became free and got divided too,
I welcome your judgement of me and my country
in a spirit of a humble traveller of the road
who is at the end of the time allotted to me
on this earth.
In a few years I may vanish from the net, or in a few months, who knows?
But my country and your country too, have yet to reach their farthest goals.
My heart is with both.
This may perhaps be a day nearer to my end of the days on G+ here. Nice to see you

UNTITLED VII

UNTITLED VII
Bulging shadows
over ocean's waves;
and the ocean agitating, swearing
to the gods in the sky.
Hypnotizing, mesmerizing
roaring waves and the maddening sea;
I have always watched from the steady unwavering coast,
imaginary spirits reigning over  the waters and the sky.
Distracting images of mermaids, mariners, siren's songs;
Haunting, casting a spell
on the memory and the mind;
bewitching, like a rock risen waywardly in the place where the tide
ebbs and rises again.
Withdraw from the waves
and just watch everything change, everything motionless and still.





Image credit+Kostas      

Kostas Michalis's photos

Memory and Time

Constant change has a body, shape and a figure,
an instant's imprint
that holds on in the stream
to the rock of memory
like an indelible print.
I have no quarrel with time;
I have no quarrel with change;
it's all in the nature of things.
But so it is with the memory I own, my very own thing in the midst
of all that changes constantly.
Memory modulates , moves, resonates to the spirit of change.
Memory too is a flow;
changing, holding, pausing midstream,
flashing before the mind's eye
the glimpses of time;
and time stands bewildered
in the vice-like grip of memory.

Sushama Karnik

THE BIRTH OF A DRAGON

THE BIRTH OF A DRAGON

Once upon a time as you sat
near the window, counting on your finger-tips
the names of all your buddies at school
I wanted to tell you a fantastic horror-tale
disguised in the fairy hues
Once, little boys and little girls
wanted to grow wings on their Nike shoes and fly.
Once the elephants wanted to grow talons and hunt like tigers and cats.
Once fairies wanted to have a mermaid's
 tail and fins to swim.
Once the mermaid wanted to trade her immortality
for a transient human soul.
And the horror was that the children were without a wing;
their shoes got worn and discarded soon.
Elephants could not have talons
and had to make do
with a heavy trunk.
The fairies could not swim in the sea,
nor could the mermaid have the love of a human prince.
Some poet came and seized  all those dreams;
put them in a magic box and drowned them in a potion of a witch's brew
And lo! A dragon was born and everything fell in place

THE ROD

A dark zone in the heart
your sadness.
I know,
I know its edge.
That was where I dwelt.
"The edge is where life begins, because the pain begins"
you said.
The edge is where we find the sorrow dissolve in the arms of grief,
"A taller wave  casting a shadow as the smaller wave recedes."
Is dissolution meant to be the end ?
Is it not the beginning of the quest?"
Perhaps a beginning of a finding anew.

I know my words would have made a sense
if uttered in that moment long ago.
Now, a silence, a covered face.
not a ray of light that finds escape.
A blank space.

The trembling hand now holds a rod,
a rod of light pointing a way
somewhere towards the edge
and I recall,
"What may we hope to find at the edge?"
From behind the covered face came the word,
"Perhaps we may find God."

 Image credit: Sogyal Rinpoch

Untamed tracks 

Image credit: Kevin Walsh and Caty Pham


Untamed tracks
left in the unploughed field,
its sunny edge lined with a misty wood,
not a soul standing around
anywhere on this wistful, abandoned ground,
From here till the faraway cluster of trees
not a shadow thinks it fit
to wallow in this loneliness to follow the tread
of the remote sun who never bothers to leave his footprints behind.

And these wild tracks in the mud
narrate a story of a traveller who went by night
carrying a burden of sorrow
too heavy to bear,
too precious to be left behind.
A grey narrative penned in the ink of tears
the page is still redolent of the moisture
the weight of gloom the heart couldn't carry.

I have copied the words, too hazy to be read
even in the brightest sun.
I must tarry no longer;
my feet are aching,
the wind, hot and sultry
is already scorching my skin.
The untamed tracks may have chosen not to speak
the story that the night was told when the field was quiet and cold.

The White and the Brown

One hand light , one hand right,
one hand holds the stars of the night
the other holds the bright day
the dark hand will never betray
the secrets the night
left for the day.

One hand white
one hand brown
and the burden of the white hand weighs down
the songs the brown hand would sing
One hand recalls and and drops a word
for the other hand not to forget
"one never steps in the same river twice,
one never deciphers the blind spot again."
The bright hand spills the pearls carelssly;
the darks hand gathers cautiously.
The white hand punches recklessly;
the brown hand nurses quietly.
The dark hand hides the white hand's bruise,
the white hand inflicts
 on the brown hand wounds.
The dark skin is the dark skin
as the white skin is always white
and the twain shall never meet.

SURREAL WHISPERS 1 to 3

SURREAL WHISPERS

SURREAL WHISPERS 1

Surreal elephants, surreal life.
Dreams are a quilt,
a forest humming with the glee of elephants swimming and crossing the rivers in floods.
I sneak under my quilt and slyly listen to the sounds of the woods,
careful, lest my silence betray
my presence in the corridors of sleep while the woods awake to the drums of the day.
I will wander in disguise, wearing the hood of sleep
The elephants will follow at daybreak
and cover my track under their massive footnotes on my hazy script.
They will trample my script underfoot; leave their imprints,
a stamp of endorsement, of foot advancing, stepping on my life
declaring, "Flat, this Life I felt here, it was flat."

SURREAL WHISPERS 2

A SURREAL ANGEL, A SURREAL DREAM
Too much of tenderness hurts;
too much of hurt heals.
I had to be taught by a surreal angel
the wisest of the lessons of life
that a lotus is not a human being,
nor the heart a lotus in spring.
And before the cruel disaster occurs,
the heart, the lotus and the surreal angel
have to meet and feel
in a silence
an ascendent curve of a life
bidding a joyous farewell, each to each
and dispel the widening shadows of gloom

SURREAL WHISPERS 3

REAL IS THE SUN AND REAL THE SEA

And on the dark fortnight
the surreal angel came to my town, to my humble home and said,
in a clear whisper that could not be mistaken for a human word,
"The sea and the sun,
they love everyone.
They hold your secret and mine.
When the summer is dry, and
the particle of sand blinds your eye
do not call it tears.
Neither the sun nor the sea
roar in a pitiless fury.
The wave will come running to you
crash on your shoulder where the sun has scarcely touched.
Drops of the surf will fall on you;
do not call them tears.
That will be me come to you flying over distance,
whenever a distress will visit you on your shore

Create a new page

A new day on a new page

And a surprise waits
when you open the window on a windy day,
open it just a wee bit to look out how far away is the sun from the hill,
and before you can spot the truant sun
peering behind the cloud,
the humming bird has spotted something else,
and I spot a smile
in the humming bird's lilting voice.
How could I miss what the humming bird saw and already knew
before even the absconding sun knew?
The bells are chiming
on the distant river
I changed my name;
I changed the face;
and I threw my whole being in the river.
Now I am here and there and everywhere;
Call me now by whatever name;
I will still call back
even if I do not know your name.
and the happiness comes floating on the wings
of thousands of butterflies making rings,
whirling and rising and holding little lamps of flickering lights.