Dear Regret:

On the small-screen a younger hero, 
saves the dowager from distress and dereliction.

How unwedded is reality from fiction,
poor decision, unspoken requests, misunderstood, misinterpretations.

And a wasting of opportunities to be that hero, as you wasted and bed-sored, broke bones and were abhorred.

A family that cannot care, is doomed to despair.

Dear regret, there is no peace for the damned.  I know you are aware…

A triptych:

He writes in bytes.
A bit, dim-wit
attempt to pre-empt
a result, an insult
to Art. To depart
from convention, quill-wielders detention.

A constraint, a restraint,
perforce to chant in six, rant
in eight, a strait-
jacketed, net-less racqueted
game of shame, one would
not partake of, unless the stake
was a distraction from infraction,
from convention; quill-wielders detention.

So he runs, trips and shuns,
feeble submissions, remissions, revisions.
If there were no fire, would one still hire,
Responders and Warriors? Ponders
as carriers,
Infect and inflict, in conference
and convention- a quill-wielders detention

Cocktail

A heady concoction of desire,
love unrequited and ambition unachieved;

A maudlin medley of the mournful and merry,
a life less lived.

This cornucopia of events.

A recipe.

Shakti

If you are not famous, it is the fault of an ignorant social order,
You are the primordial, the all-pervasive and omnipotent;

Revered and respected, worshipped and venerated,
I have known you closely.

Acquaintance is more a matter of experience than of proximal, tangible contact

(xvii) lucubration…..

Love –

“nights in white satin
( never reaching the end….)”

Faith –

“and you want to travel blind.
and you know that she will trust you,
for you’ve touched her perfect body
with your mind…..”

Conflict –

rejection
and the silence beyond words.

‘al di la….’

(ix) Have you heard the mountains cry?

‘Tis loaming and an ill-paced sigh
sobs adumbral patterns in gloom,
and rising from the crags on high
a heart-rending sepulchral cry,
as an echo, whimpers to its doom.

From the magma-ocean, mantle plume
rising to cool this febrile core,
as a surge of verse, parsed-pantoum,
like some drama enacted sans costume
wells up in eyes – rolls to the floor…

(x) Gold….

All that is stramineous,
runs in crooked, fine, veins
beneath the mantle;

All that is precious above
the vaults, of her daedal earth,
is less compared to the lustre
in her eyes when she smiles.

All that is auricomous,
gathered as ochroid dust,
by her minions, when she in
languid disgust tosses her mane;

sets worlds afire, with nonchalance….

(xi) hermit

I would lead you gently by the hand,
tip-toe through that mystical land;

walk through mist and dark intrigue,
another mile, a half a league;

til the journey’s end is done….

and we are never, ever again,
alone.

(xiv) love, naturally….

moss gathers stone wall in it’s arms
…there is the verdant summer embracing her.

the softness of her form,
the firmness of her throne;

and the beauty the season wears…

(xvi) one word

An aeolian enterprise;

perse-tinged zephyr,
the caliginous expanse
of night’s tresses pester;

coruscation in her eyes,
sculpt each venial qafir
to a penitent impasse;

as softness of lips whisper,
plot a subfusc surprise…

Aeolian enterprise….one.