Author: Uday

Water was watered down
flow arrested and molecules
could not romance
with the banks, plains,
and marshes anymore.

The native man was
asked to wear the hat
of larger good
and give up land,
little animals,
rock cultures and so on
and stand for the hydro-power
that darkens their valley forever.

Sure, they were shifted or “Rehabilitated”
skeletons progressed to new homes
but the spirits keep on rocking back
to and fro like a pendulum.

Turbines gave a new life
project reports
gave a dose of concrete morals
to fishes
and the economists
called it a “Renaissance”

— Drunken Salmon in a fish ladder.

---

The legal — black inked
yellowish inert pages of the constitution
sitting in a lotus posture
inside
national museums
could not catch
sight of —

kaki lathis on the roads
bullets jaywalking
on the sinful skins of people.

Citizens mutilating
flesh on earth
in the name of the holy-spirit
on some — nebula world.

Tongues that chant mantras
but
cancels the dignity
of the genders.

Paper bureaucrats
with loaned power
from people
never paying back the interest.

State
with
a veil of silence
a baton of arrogance
and
a flag of violence.

— Drunken citizen.

---

O’ Reader
pick the pain, not the plot.
rub the wounds, not the words.
take the walk, not the paths.
lick the pages, not the passions.
feel the perceptions, not the reflections.
copy the chemistry, not the characters.
cook the lies, not the truths.
feel the tears, not the trash.
lose in love, not in lust.
carry the wisdom, not the weights of wit.
drink the absence, not the amusements.
open the doors, not the damnations.
make the trouble, not the noise.
swim the sands, no the salts.
ring the bells, not the betrayal.
yell at the page, not at the painting.
cross the bridges, not the tunnels.
sing the melody, not the song.

Fly. Float. Fade.

---

The train
halted
it’s electric engine
at a 15th century town.
Strangers — graphic men and women
in a state of jubilant festivity
were celebrating something.
Kids
flying on the ground
like seagulls
who expertly dance
on the surface of salty waters.
The senile soil
and the snooty flowers
were playing with
the winds and the stones.
Some nobler minds
were busy unfurling
their neural wings.
One fellow
adjusting his bum
and attention like
an old grammarian
leapt into the lazy pond,
alarming the Koi fish
and the native dogs nearby.
While the distant
turbines
were quietly
caressing the westerlies,
I
took out the wet, medicated
music melodies
to put down
my maddening heart
in a sleepy maze.

-When the engine gave up.

---

Oil spill in the sea
a man’s or a machine’s
mistake.

A black carpet of death.
A black spectre’s haunting
and the hunting began.

The writer went back
unable to find a muse
in a black dream.

Tunas poisoned
by the 007 trickery
of killer-sapiens.

Sensing the fossil sickness
with their magnetism
birds skipped
toxic pregnancies and births.

Benzene
Toluene
Sulphur
in the kid’s lunchbox.
(Perhaps a ‘crude’ love)

Oyster
making a
Xylene pearl?
<><><><><><>

and the devilish rainbows
starting the nemesis.

and the Romeo and Juliet
never met in the black fumes.

---

Ting, Ting
yells the machine
for every open.
People press
1,2,3,4,5,6…
all kinds of buttons
and some hit them
even when not needed.
Head nods and head shakes
with strangers.
We go up
and come down
as caged birds.
some mess up the
air with farts and fears.
some mess up the
love with their lust.
and some mess up the dress
with coffee spills.

We all want to say
hello to that someone
yet no one does that.
but it’s fine
as no one knows it.

And there are these
strange glass elevators
that I hate.

I thought lifts are the
only places in the universe
with some privacy left.
Glass elevators rob that.

When the power goes off,
not even ghosts
trust the elevator.

There’s a charter of rights
for every elevator — 
4/6 persons only.
that means at any given point in time
only 4/6 asses should be lifted.
but none
respects that.

I like the idea of the elevator
because
ladders are scary for me.
I cannot take a ladder
to climb 12 floors.
forget about coming down.

---

Self Suspension happened
after a few miles
On the X-axis
mind was
meeting itself
On the Y-axis
matter was looking
for a gospel.

The thieves are thieving
The babies are behaving
The retirees are believing
and
The bellies are improving.

Now I’m 29hrs
more older.
Still
not yet wise
in the moment.
only
after the moment.

the slow movement of the engine
disturbed the
hard-won nirvana
after the food
but Mary Oliver’s
words have hit the heart

“Things take the time
they take. Don’t worry.”

but the raging atoms
hardly listen.

Attention is a phoenix.
It perishes
and rises in a second
at least it does for me
while I’m
pondering.

Behind me
was a bald head
swimming in the newspaper…..

I guess these are
those times
where nothing happens
yet we see something
in everything
in anything
even when there’s nothing.

---

We are
meaning
wanting
beings.
we cannot
take in a zero-experience.

Omelette burnt?
divine decision.
Owl outside the window?
angel’s curse.
Omen?
Amen?
common man.

A rock
be it
igneous
sedimentary
or
metamorphic
isn’t
just a rock for man
but a supreme interpretation.

Pending file
from the art of seeing
is karma.

Long queue
from the mysteries of mindfulness
is Wu Wei.

Always a thing
in nothing.

---

Death is
the crescendo and the zenith
of life’s wave.
The crest and the final spring
of soul’s journey into the
stars and the stones.
No, it’s not a pale poem
or a coldly thing
but a redolent perfume
perfected by the
the flowering of finished fates.
The captain did not
leave for a final dignity or
damnation to stay with phantoms
but just took a tiny repose
in the synchronous unity,
to again give ear to
the primordial songs of silence
and the melodies of the multitude.
it’s not martyrdom
not a flight into oblivion
just a
post carted by the continental
and the maritime air masses
to the infinite.
A small pause in the
comet’s cruise.

---

Under the sullied moon
the uncivil ways of the heart
stormed in
like the French revolutionaries
marching the Bastille.
the insomniac shadowy passions
concealed beneath the pillows
swooned the being
and reddened the rage.
the tipsy tongue
the Machiavellian mind
and the arrowed thoughts
woke up the wounded waves.
Freudian dreams
came in a starry caravan
very muscular but unnerved
yet
the sodden ones
could not do much.
the tousled and the wintered
hallucinations
drenched me into
sweet abysses
hitting the divine jingle bells.

---