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She felt the cobblestones like braille beneath her worn boots' sigh,
her shadow stretched, a thin companion, 'neath the bruised-blue sky.
The spires clawed the clouds apart, stone fingers scraping light,
to catch the fractured evening sun in panes of jeweled might.
Her steps grew slow, a pilgrim's pace on faith-eroded ground,
then silence roared – that holy hush where all lost prayers are found.
You should know what you’ve brought me—
whether by purpose or accident.
I haven’t felt like this in so long,
forgetting its normalcy,
forgetting how rarely it comes
unless you go searching.
I have little to give back.
Patience was stolen from me,
understanding eroded—
I learned to mistake karma for coincidence,
love for passing conversation.
It’s hard to hold on to something
as simple as kindness
when it’s offered to someone
who isn’t used to it.
But your beauty makes me lighter.
Your attention makes it real.
You don’t ask me to explain it.
You’re in my life now.
You should know
how much it changes me
to be respected,
to be seen.
What I would do
to make you safe,
to make you comfortable—
would shock those
who’ve never been given
what they quietly miss.
Please, don’t leave my life.
And if you must,
not until I’ve learned
how to carry
what you’ve given me.
I opened the door
it was unfamiliarly wet outside
the water eroded the memory
I have opened the wrong door
each door has a history
didn't know that
so I accidentally changed the story
now I'm entangled
it feels like drifting through the ocean
while seagrass has taken over your body
pushing you back
I don't want to go back
it is dark and wet
the sky is pouring heavily
compressing my lungs
I don't want to go back
I'll be forced to open my eyelids
and see
how mothers are wearing their children as a hat
… your mother
while the walls are detouring from our house
may keepers hold you safe
we didn't know better
The night arrives unexpectedly,
Shrinking the meadow,
Gradually, we become shadows,
Our youth, enthusiasm, and vitality eroded by time.
An evening spent with my father,
Time has transformed him into a sage,
A craftsman slowed by age,
He makes me reflect on the futility of vanity.
Each passing moment is a treasure beyond measure,
Yet we often fail to grasp this
Until our frail bodies teach us to count our days,
And we gently ease into the night.
CHORUS:
Oh, how time moves and changes everything,
Oh, how the days slip away, and eventually we take our final bow.
Let’s cherish the time we spend together;
We’re closer to the last door than we think.
July 21, 2025.
We walked under the same sky,
but carried different forecasts.
your silence was a sandstorm
and mine a drought.
Yet we mistook our survival
as our strength.
I was parched with waiting
and you were eroded by wind.
World saw our resilience not the cracks.
How I begged for rain or
How you vanished behind gusts.
They said strong woman is "silent"
They said strong man is "violent'.
Neither of us asked for this climate.
But what if one day, we looked up—
and saw that the sun never chose sides.
Suddenly a face in the mirror stares back,
You're growing old...silver hairs in black.
Evening twilight fades into a dark night.
Why do colours no longer look bright?
With small dark rings under sunken eyes
the peach sunset, is just a weary sunrise.
Taut cheeks drooping, wrinkles everywhere
Carefree youth abandoned to old-age care.
Life keeps melting like a flickering candle,
a new generation, my wisdom can't handle.
Fatigue of arthritis, a feeble body groans,
dull senses slow down, time eroded bones.
I no longer find people to sit and talk,
nothing new happens round the clock.
Crevices and corners I can no longer reach
I change the ways of thoughts and speech.
Rejoicing the memories of low and high tides,
a vast field is visible where the horizon hides.
Decrepit days and months turn lonely years,
in doorways of nostalgia, future disappears.
I am again a child, longing to jump and play
my soul grows stronger, on every birthday.
In the deluge of the surging river of life
Flooding me with devastating agony
I feel my senses sink deep within
With the debris of somber spirit.
As from the eroded banks of existence
I see my time disappear in the wreckage
I hear the distant bell toll relentless
Waft faintly in the still air, calling me.
And then the music of life gets silenced
In the broken violin that I lose in an instant
Submerged in solitude I hear the murmur
Of the sonorous stream within my soul.
As I search for me in introspection
I hear it whisper the swan song of perception
Resonating with the penultimate rhythm
Of the soulful melody of the last symphony.
I transcend the limits of time and space
Yearning to embrace the perpetual peace
I talk to my soul to attain holiness for me
In the stillness of inner sanctum silence listens.
Life is an Act
As life marches on swiftly
As clocks tick incessantly
We, the shadows of existence
Act out our scenes
On the glorious global stage.
Are we heroes, are we failures?
Does the audience applaud or do they jeer?
Or do they bawl?
Our acts can enthrall
Or it can decimate us.
Are we role models?
Are we unworthy actors?
Do the youth stare in awe
Or do they cringe in horror?
What lessons are passed down?
What values are cherished?
Culture is eroded.
Language undergoes change.
Morals, ethics and values are mouthed
Devoid of meaning and understanding.
Words are spoken without feeling.
Actions robotic and plastic.
Since you have been gone
A lot of water has passed under the bridge
A mixed bag of events have occurred
Leaving behind earth-shaking calamities
Difficult to quantify
As confusion like whirlwind
Keeps spreading and threatening
The very fabric of National Cohesion
Nobody knows what to believe anymore
As looters of our commonwealth
Keep spewing unbelievable theories
From two sides of their mouths
Shamelessly going back To their vomit of years gone by
To satisfy the cravings of their current masters
While citizens continue to wallow in abject poverty
Confused and traumatized
Where their next meals will come from
As their purchasing power has been eroded
By the demise of the national currency
Clubbed to death by inflation
And market forces
Never experienced in our chequered history
They kept a record of time,
They were history’s shelves,
They were memory pages,
An honour that ran through the family.
They sang songs of the land,
To them, the sand was more than the traveller’s pathway,
It spoke volumes of the human’s quest and final rest,
They understood how to commune with the spirits of benevolence and goodwill.
They said history is a canvas of dark and bright hues,
The dew of the search for the veiled,
They said that it’s a house whose doors lead to the tides of the heart,
They adore nature,
A nomenclature of wonders untold.
A beautiful old past,
Eroded by a change in clime,
Everyone is occupied by the new way,
The day speaks to saddled minds,
Held by the reins of life’s turbulence.
January 6, 2025.
The migratory mind indomitable,
the spirited surfer on surging waves of life,
creates the curled crests of fractured moon,
and the dark troughs of sinking fallen stars.
The swell recedes with the ebb of time,
seeking the secluded depth of the past.
The shifting sands etch the seaward footprints,
contoured as the corroding design of decay.
The time arrow finds the destined course,
seeks the serene topography beyond the shore,
away from the eroded wilderness abandoned,
where emptiness engulfs the hues of hope.
In the weed-webbed terrain deep within,
piles up the wreckage of life unlived,
turns the flushing garden to template of wasteland.
The pathway paved outside its frail fence,
waits to be walked fascinated,
reach the mesmeric meadow of tomorrow.
The innovative memory then invents
the arcane acumen of alchemy,
glitters gold in the rusted existential ruins.
Marigold blooms in the aureate junkyard
on the scrap stack of the bleak being,
with the touch of the Midas mind.
Unhappily trapped
In a crumbling relationship...
The love that kept them intact
Through highs and lows
Eroded by doubts.
--------------------
The effervescent incandescent aspirant longing
spreads the ardor spectrum in fervent firmament.
Spring-soaked beguiled brush paints passionately
my heart’s canvas, portraying the chromatic life.
In cracked cinnamon ground parched to the core,
my desert of desolation pervades, sneaking in the sly
within faded sanguine veins of fragile fallen leaves,
echoing the evergreen hymn of hope in their rustle.
The eyes weep the unseen tears in a torrent within,
fill the fathomless cauldron of pining pathos,
but forlorn life’s remnant essence remains verdant
in the thicket on the eroded bank of streaming mind.
In its tranquil depth I drown the dregs of despair,
the rivulets of rapture flow in my derelict depression,
as beguiling breeze braces me with whisper of bliss,
divine moonbeam suffuses me with gracious gleam.
The cascading cadence of the symphony of zephyr,
drifting from the harmonic plateau of exultation,
makes ripples of melody in the lilac lake of heart,
pulsating with the eclectic tune of endless ecstasy.
The paths of my mission would be rows of roses, I thought.
To my shock, in tipsy turvy twists and turns, I got tossed
Didn't I desire to know the known to know the unknown?
Each wish of mine, like worn-out shoes of a nomad, got torn.
The moon of joy in my gains should have been at the zenith.
Struggles, like palms, tall-grow. Bliss, like dried grass, peeps from beneath.
Like iron-rods in saline waters getting eroded
The weakness of my will, like pumpkin buds, is unfolded.
Virtues, as fallen scaffoldings, are disintegrated.
Absurdity, like the blood red moon, is reiterated.
My vigour, before my puniness, like a dewdrop, fades.
Apprehension and anxiety, like gems, I adorn.
Pessimism lifts its head like boom-slang cobras from burrows.
Coffins and graves compose knells. The deceased have no repose.
Death and decay have become the blessed norm of the day.
Despair and disappointment, like thorns, pierce through every way.
Self-confidence is erased like mud paths during monsoons.
Will the Times, like the rainbow chromas, bring multihued boons?
The existential bird in the supreme sky
flies abandoned with the rhythm of swan song.
The tapestry of time wraps with eternity hue
the innate immortality essence,
etched for the uniqueness of being.
The winsome whisper of the extant wind
rustles the lively lotus petals of perpetuity.
In solemn space of sanguine solitude of mind
deranged clamor subsides
in the eroded silent sanctum of entity.
Beneath the worn out layers of individuality,
thousand suns shine perennially in blissful bay.
In the seraphic sky of divine perception,
ageless consciousness dances
with the rays of nirvana.
I am then the immutable hymn of sanctified soul,
echoing through the melodic strata of consciousness.
The devout mantra intoned in the temple of heart,
resonates with the symphony
of the sacred spirit indomitable.
I am the essence of connected oneness,
transcend the self-seeking perimeter of identity.
The cosmic creator of resounding silence of eternity
makes my awakened soul proclaim the divine decree,
I am His absolute definition.
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