Answers in the Abyss

In the hollow of singularity
Where Time seems slow,
I swing to the rhythm of my mind
The sound of music and
The lightning before it
Water emotions dormant in the abyss.

The darkness is the mystery
A conscious, psychotic pain
Being a psychedelic lie
Gives you wings and
Makes you fly
Searching for a broad view of meaning.

I could be faster than hope
Faster than dreams
If only I was faster than light
Time soon catches up
Snatches away my search-
Pushed into an abyss of seeming oblivion

The mystery grows and shrinks
Is there nothing here
After the end,
No food for my thought?
Or is the end the Answer itself?
For when existence ceases, the real search begins.

A Poem Sans Metaphors (hopefully)

I used to write poetry in metaphors

From chains to chimes, from freedom to silence

They came out to be too deep to define

After two days I used to question their depth

After four days I used to question their meaning

After six days I used to question my sanity.

Couldn't I have looked through the eyes of change?

The words which had flown around in my mind,

The words which had finally landed on paper,

Were too blurred a memory for me to understand,

A long-gone past I could not fathom.

I once witnessed Calvin saying to Hobbes,

'Its funny how day by day, nothing changes

But when you look back, everything has changed.'

The words I wrote, were a mark of the present

Of every second that passed, every millisecond its part.

And as I couldn't fathom those marks beneath my fingers,

Couldn't recall what I felt at that very moment,

I woefully accepted the truth which clawed at me

I couldn't get back the past, no one could, really

(Unless, of course, physics, my salvation

Provides a path which confuses everything further).

And so I penned down this poem, an effort

To write something down every mind could understand

An attempt to travel in time, to get the past back

To define the slope clearly, to give me an idea

Of the bigger picture I've been craving, but failing to arrange.

A Freedom which Limits

The tracks, they danced to the roll of the train
Who, gaining momentum, wished to escape
The powerful wind neighing with tears of denial
Crossed with the calliphony of lovers' farewells.

The rocking coach did cradle my departing tears, which
Complimented the neck craned towards love
Love - now but a speck in the adventurous eye
A spectacle for the skeptical, wandering mind.

Yet reminded I was of the way that lay ahead
The 'road to freedom', is what they still say
To discoveries to explore, and marvels galore
To be gone with the wind, yet have your control.

And as the nights passed on by, filled
With new species of seeds blossoming into thought,
There came a night, when in a cherished dream I
Mused of love, of what I had left behind.

A sacrifice so selfish never had been made
Whose innocent wings, seeking enlightenment
Often fell to the ground, for they had left behind
The part they most loved, now but a hole in the heart.

And so was freedom marred by the beatings of love
Grasping for its identity, in hapless thin air
For is freedom as whole and free as it could be
When following your heart is subject to slavery?

What could be often limited wasn't freedom at all
How could then love make you question being unfettered?
Nothing could be more powerful than this devilish angel
For it was love down deep, nothing is more limiting,
Nothing is more free.

Ice Cream, and Other Clichéd Musings

This evening, my mother asked me a rather striking question which surprised me and made me excited at the same time. 'Let's go get some ice cream,' she announced, which seemed to me a perfect relief from the changing and oscillating weather and from my worries about my postponing habit during the exams.

Till now, a walk with an ice cream in hand was a common experience for me, whose school had so fortunately installed a Kwality Walls stall right next to the canteen for the hungry, sweating students. A daily detour to the stall was not uncommon, with a thought of bracing yourself to enter the deep throng instilled with the passion for ice cream.

And so, that evening, what seemed to me a completely normal 'journey' of sorts, turned into a deep revelation. When we reached the ice cream vendor, I asked for a Choco Bar and a butterscotch Cornetto through the hole in the wall the people made in our colony in order to buy ice cream from within the gates, a mark of prevalent laziness and a promise for safety.

As my mother and I walked under the deep, blue sky, each one immersed in the fresh taste of cold ice cream offering an official start to the summer, I couldn't help but notice the unusual, long-lost atmosphere that confronted me. The yellow glare of the street lights, mixed with the routine sounds of kids playing in the park and street dogs barking (with an occasional one following you, never to leave your side) stirred some childhood memory.

Here I was, with my mother, in the absence of all materialistic pleasure and electronic distractions, simply walking down the street, slurping ice cream. A moment ago, I was thinking of my prospects for the future and how I had lost any chance of getting into a good college. What dawned on me next was how thinking of the long run, I was missing this absolutely beautiful moment, which probably won't cross my mind in the future.

How could I enjoy and work for myself in the long run when I couldn't even do justice to this undiscovered pleasure of the present? Too immersed in acing the long run, I had miserably failed to take the shortest step. In an effort to offer some consolation, the next thought my mind welcomed was, 'I'm not alone.'

Sad Optimism

'I want to feel death', said a glad boy
'Free the weight pushing me down,
Let it fly, give air to a life of reality.'
In my heart, I could sense a frowning smile
How keen he is to be strong, know strength
To fall down steps, and claw back up
Embracing the world all this while,
I thought. So very naïve, that innocent dreamer
Smiling at the gift of suffering he
Was yet to receive, from skeptical hands.
My mind, it laughed with mocking pride,
'You, who deemed end as escape,
You, too weak to live with a hole
Too wise to see the innocence that
Resides in you, fearing alone.'
Easily said, I mused with apprehension.
Unexpected, heart-breaking, he knows not
About all logic turned to dust and woven into hope.
Easily said, I mused yet again
He knows not about the suffering of death.
And with an earthy jerk, I began to realize
I had reached the bottom, the end of the steps
But he was climbing, clawing towards the sky
Those steps he was preparing for all his life
Were already beneath him, vanquished with joy
For even death couldn't defeat that sad optimism
Brought on by naivety, to be nurtured by strife.

Farewell

Dimmer and dimmer and dimmer
The stars, fading from view.
The moon glittered with scrambling light
Shimmery hands failing to recall.
The stars did wish to hold on tight
In the end, they had to fall.
They shook along, with talons bright
The moon to their abyss.
Visions of hope, deceiving, blinding
Gave acceptance a goodbye kiss.
The future, hid in shadows of meaning
As empty as the brimming past,
For which the moon kept rambling
Its hugs returned by distant darkness.
So sang the moon to empty space
Retaining the little light it had,
A faded memory of the stars
Invisible, in mourning clad.

Grudging Acceptance

Life flowed on like the chattering river I was used to
Images of past moments, pale, and the mind pale and light.
Heavy breaths and beating hearts seldom came into play
Being free with ordinariness, quiet petals flowing along.
Then the messenger brought me the change I could never swallow
Of time, of personality, of thought altogether.
Standing still as before I was, yet my universe somehow altered.
Tears defied the strangling steel talons of disapproval
Yet the future kept darkening, forgetting its old self.
Yet now, lying in this inevitable future, no tears blotching my face,
Its the past which lies forgotten, hidden in dark, invisible chambers.
Laughing and crying as the good times evade temptation,
My hands run across the demolished walls of happy memories
And find nothing but the present, as unbelievable as the truth.