లేనిదేమిటి?

నువ్వు లేని నా ఈ గీతం లొ

శ్రుతి వుంది, లయ వుంది, భావమూ వుంది

మరి లేనిదేమిటి?

ఆప్పుడప్పుదు తొంగి చూసే నీ వూపిరి

నా ఎదొలోనే వుంది, ఇదిగో ఇక్కడే

నీ స్పర్శ గుర్తుల్లొ, నీ చూపుల సెగల్లొ

నువ్వు నడిచిన ఈ లొగిలిలొ

ఇదిగొ ఇక్కడే

ఆగి పొయిన నా ఈ జీవనం;

ఇక్కదె వుందె,

మరి లేనిదేమిటి?

For you, yet again

How many questions will answer my quest for you?

I have craved only for you, the warmth of your breath

Your yearning and my desire entwined

In the only manner in which life ever matters

 

Meandering through the many lanes of being,

I have even come close enough to smelling the musk of your skin

Have tasted honey at times, in the tears I shed for you 

 

I see you at the end of that rainbow, in my child's smile

In a silken tune of melancholy

When the music ends, why does the rainbow fade?

When I replay the song, why don’t those colors return?

 

Riding these dark waves of ceaseless hunger,

I may even have touched you once.

When that hunger sated, why did you disappear?

When it returns, why does it not bring you back?

 

 In the forgotten episodes of childhood,

I search for all my answers now and then

That departure, her rejection, were they the reason?

Or was it the exclusion not always  explicit? 

 

I know I yearned for you then, as I do now

Halfway across the world, in forbidden alleys

I trace my way to your threshold

Each time a door opens, why do I run?

When I return to that door, why does it stay closed?

 

With desperate claims to propriety

Pleading for empathy, I cling onto you

I dream often of your journey to where you belong

Why do I wake up and find you alone?
 

Just how will any question answer my quest for you?

Running down the memory lane

If I run along the length of time,
These mists of memory barring your image,
Can I drench myself in these hues of the haze?
Will I bask in the warmth of your breath?

And when I come to that corner yonder
where the road bends around a nook of desire
Is it you that I will see?

or is it my image?
half-hidden among those
many-coloured bubbles of whims,
secrets and slient spaces?

If I run along the length of time
Will I reach your memories?
Or would the long winding road
lead to nowhere?

Space For None

You came and you went
I remain, a little revived;
perhaps a little dead too

Many are the moons that came after you
Yet it is the moon that you had brought with you
That still lends light to my every despair
Still colours every happiness, a light melancholy blue

I wonder what had brought you to me
Loneliness, A thrill of discovery;
Words written in a space for two;
Or perhaps a bond from beyond this life?

Spaces for two; space for one
There is no space for others and beyond
Neat little packets of love
Only to one, one for one

And you had to go
Leaving behind
a space for none

 

The Psalm

When things came to me -
friends, glory, love;
I laughed in the face of life and said
"Behold you are mine"


And she walked with me like a new bride
Humming sweet tunes of undying passion
Secret desires filling her expectant smile.


When one by one they left me-
passion, honor and an eagerness to explore;
Life came to me and said
"I truly am yours"

And she held me like a mother nursing her first born
Muttering hoary psalms warding off gloom,
light in her sleepless eyes leading me forward.


"What is yours has always followed you.
What is not yours, will never come to you.
Your urge to work confounded
by your need to win;


A human need to be useful, the former.
A mere whim, in fact greed, the latter.
Ask not of me what you desire to gain
For I bring you more precious gifts

How would you know what they are?
Until you embrace me and say
I am yours. I am yours. I am yours."

My Creater

In an instant it is done:
be it murder, suicide or a road kill.
Some deaths linger on though;
and there is more to them than the final event.

This death that you have written for me
Is it a little like that?

Why am I not allowed a lone tick of quiet?
a secret nook to mourn my loss?
a passion to claim my propensity to life?
Why am I not allowed to ask you why?

This death that you have written for me
Why doesn’t it kill?

To the end

Do you remember that moment?
When your eyes drank the depths of my soul?

Above those heads of incessant chatter,
tangled voices and smiles,
That glance that set into motion
An era’s glory; a life time of longing;

Sometimes now when I go about
walking on a familiar road,
humming forgotten tunes,
dawdling in the midwinters sun;
There is still an ache that wont be quelled

How many words and glances have followed that?
Words that thrilled the very depths of my being
Glances that castoff the ignominy of unfamiliarity.

There were words that shattered too
squints of revulsion, a hand raised in disgust
a voice shivering with odium.

And yet today if I think of you
it is only that thirst that comes to my mind.

Truly we forget only what we want to
The rest we carry with us to the end.