Bus Stop

Moonlight grazes,

The paper yellowing
With a girl's outpourings.

The soft golden spheres of streetlight
Bear witness to the
Boy and girl exulting, in
Their own emotions.
Enraptured by their own poetry.

On an introspective winter's night.

The darkness is our friend, and
The light: our mistress.
The dark rain falls
Outside; they are cocooned in
Their orb of vicarious love.

Sheltered against
The mottled external;
Close enough to observe and derive
Joy, but far enough to not
Feel the humiliating
Vulgarities of reality.

The boy writes of a frustrated
Passion; the girl loves another.
Both timidly scared of sharing
Too much of themselves
With the
Other.

The romance of the setting is
At odds with their
Relationship;
They're lovers, just not of each other.

...

The moon is a solitary sentinel.
The streetlight flickers in warm
Understanding.
The rain falls down.

Where The World Ends

I sit looking at the clock tower

Terracota tiles.

The leaves are rusting

The bell tolls,

reminding them of their closing hours.

Muted warmth

grows

strengthens till it's visible.

Gold precipitates to your sight.

Sunlight.

And when it swells

Its living warmth

imbues everything.

And when it weakens,

leaving the tiles, the tower, the trees

bereft

There the world ends.

Copyright © 2012 Ambika Sharma

Guest poet

In Absentia

Goodbye
Is pathetic consolation;
Inadequate to the point of being
Deceptive.

The memory of you
Dances on the doorstep
Of my thoughts.
And, fueled by amber liquid
Teases me, in times
Of contemplative melancholy.

Would it be, that I could be
Bereft of this subtle torture.
I deal with your absence by
Suspending thought.

There’s a worm inside of me
And it burrows, deeper and deeper,
Until I forget you
In sheer self defence.

But then you collapse
Into my thoughts again, unbidden,
Like musty honey chocolate
And I miss you again.

Want vs. Should

Flighty heart
Insatiable, thirsts for adventure;
Never content,
To just be, and soak in
What is good, and what is Real.

Instead, looks without.
Desires what I will not let it have,
I am aware of its masochism.

And because I know:
Ignorance grants exoticity;
Distance imparts charm.

I console, and remind it
That the forks in the road are too far
In the past.

But it won’t cease struggling.

The more I build walls, the more it complains
Like a canary in a cage
Thrashes more, the more it’s chained.

In trying to overreach,
Will fall.
Will ruin Reality in pursuit of Fantasy.
Will ruin me.

…

Let logic wash over you,
And wrap you in a coldly comforting embrace
Preaching compromise.

Bored

I can scarcely remember
Yesterday’s happiness.
It is but an idea.

Mere specks of fading light,
They count for nothing.
Flotsam on the immensity of life.

…

Still searching
For a pursuit.
Still searching
For a reason to exist.

Give me relief from
These cycles of day and empty night.
The years are rolling past.

Give me something
Greater than myself.

Give me something, or
Someone
To love.

Winters

Shared laughter
Hand-drawn on the river banks of
Eternity.

Chilly philosophical evenings
To the music of old kitsch
Will be remembered days after.

People now animated and
Full of life, shall
Be gone tomorrow.
Like
Autumnal leaves, plucked
Off the Tree of Life, by
The inexorable hand of Time.

To be reminisced about
With other people, who shall
Pass away too, as silently.

And you.

All shall be reduced to mere
Dewdrops of thought,
In your head.

Everything shall fade away, like old linen
And pressed flowers; will exist only
In your head.

People and music and thoughts
And feelings and emotions
Shall melt together in uneasy comfort.
And
Shall pulse across time and space
And shall torture your present
Make you desire yesterday.

Yesterday is already dead
The future is growing old.
And today is lost in poetry.

…

Cursed is the poet
And the thinker.
Happiness is in smothering the brain
And losing ourselves in the people around us.

Summers

The summery soft sunlight
Shimmers
Off my lemonade.
Breaks,
Into a thousand shards of citrus.

The warm breeze whispers in my ear
Plays with the locks of my hair,
Caresses them.
Mocks the blank parchment in front of me.

But what can I do?
Life is infinitely more beautiful than
Poetry.

…

The sunlight breaks into a thousand shards,
And I’m in love with every one of them.

Stars Die

This poem was written on the day of the launch of the rover Curiosity. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory.

Rising on a

Pillar of white smoke,
And the collective intellectual efforts of
A thousand individuals, and the hopes
Of the entire human race,
Curiosity rises.

Rents apart the placid blue sky.

Onwards to the heavens.
Onwards to conquer new worlds.
Man and machine, together in pursuit
Of knowledge.

Armed with that most fundamental of
All human urges:
The need to know.

“The heavens have become a part
Of our world,
And it inspires us
To bring peace and tranquility
To earth.”

Unfettered by politics and
Concerns of diplomacy,
Curiosity rises.

…

We must know, we will know.

Self Righteous Suicide

When there was nothing in this
Bereft aching heart,
It was you.

When I wandered lost within myself
It was you, it was you
Who found me.

The happy, happy faces glimpsed
At lit squares of familial warmth and fire,
What did they know of my cold? This
dark stranger.
It was you, it was you.

Who gave me a home within
Those sparkling, smiling eyes;
In that carefree touch.
It was you, it was you.

Who helped me discover myself;
It was you, it was you.

You whom I cannot fully see,

You lie in wait of me, wait
For me to absorb the light.
Wait for me to become the Light.
O, how much longer shall I have to wait!

To love you.
To give myself up to you.

It is you,
Whom I find
In the stirrings of the lonely minstrel’s lute;
Singing of his love to his Lord.

It is you,
Whom I witness
In the solitary caterpillar’s flight to freedom.

It is you,
Whom I hear
In the bleating of the lamb, and in
The soft song of the pursuing shepherd-girl.

It is you.
You whom I feel in the silk
Of the spider’s hand-woven home
Which dissolves so prettily on my touch.

You who grant the birds their voice
The antelopes their grace
And the nubile maiden, her
Precious innocence, and her
Delicate beauty.

Take me within yourself, so
That I may cease to be.
I’m tired of living, and wearing these masks.
Kiss so that I may taste freedom
And for the first time,
Let me be me…

…

By not being.

My God is Dead

Son
Photograph
Diwali
Happy times.
Memories…

… Dead.

Doesn’t exist.
Will never come back
Home.
No longer a call away.

Dead.

Should have kept me home
Next to you.
Should have.

Dead.

No longer a student.
No longer an amateur photographer.
No longer moody.
No longer anything.

Dead.

Shared memories,
I’m a memory.

Dead.

Not fair.

Not.

Dead.

Just.

Dead.