The Vashi Window

Inside a joint, if there were a million eyes:

"Sometimes I think it runs more than twenty-four hours, Where my eyes - two of them are fixed, on the simple computer of mine.

'But, it is pleasant, more than ever, to sit by a barricaded window. This looks out to not more than wheels.'

'In this bright yellow hue, I might never recognize the form of this written piece. But, I have realized that I am very much at home."

: all this and more would go into the oblivion far far away, with a drag and a gulp of coffee. Written on 03.01.2009.

If you are a circle, you live in a square

Everything I've read for the past couple of years has brought me to back to two of my favourite poems, dramatic monologues: Ulysses by Tennyson and Journey of the Magi by Eliot. However, here is my attempt at verse writing, after a very long time.

Some Lives

I.

Morning is awakened, by the pungent robes

Of rain, dropping dew and dancing clouds.

The empty window frame calls out

To his slit vision of words, thoughts, and pens.

The writer looks beyond the succulent

Red of bright extinct roses, through the beady rain,

A girl sits there with an umbrella.

There she sits, in a transparent and scary

Loneliness. One believes in her emptiness,

Lays a God, but even a lack of purpose.

Black cloth sewn on the cane matches her suit,

Perfect, elegant, and strangely alien to him.

Catch her with a purpose in those empty eyes!

Perhaps a new maid, the mistress of Mr. Timberland,

The mother of the abandoned twins in the dustbin,

Or a passerby lost in her passage. Why?

She is not a rhodora, rose, or cloud, but

A mere woman of a history, past, and hazy present.

Contemplations burnt to the buds,

Packets of Camel cigarettes lie done.

Alarm rang – alert, appointment, meeting, run!

The writer ran down the stairs,

Missing every second one in a forgotten question. Why?

Unprotected he ran into the dance of the clouds,

Into a slushy street, but did not get wet.

There she stood the girl with the umbrella,

With her eyes like water and her breath like the sea,

Protecting him and the rest under it -

Purpose is one of simplicity.

II

Rain clears to a sunny dome,

Fog opens a lattice window, through which

One’s watery eyes can watch.

A maiden rejoices in her reflection,

Her brush blushes her cheeks,

Shapes her eyebrows, and reddens her lips.

Luscious and barren, the day lies open.

She wears the silken dragon robe

And steps out in grace to struggle.

The divine waits feel her sinews

And feed her the bitter wine.

Why is she? Who is she?

She hangs onto the last warps and wefts

Of her robe, cutting her tender, fine fingers.

Her hips and loins hurt in the brutality

Of this struggle and the many to follow.

Speeches and resolutions, systems and papers,

Nothing saves her from this vulnerability.

She could be gay, coloured, transgender, lesbian,

Straight, mother, sister, wife, male or female. Or merely, she is that person,

Staring at a lucid mirror, showing her

Red translucent beauty.

She, the prostitute, mistress, courtesan

Of struggle, is us – you and me.

For all, life, a struggle,

Offers us threads and strings

To hang on to and cut,

But also eventually transcends,

Weaves into a fine dragon robe.

Here, struggle is one of beauty,

One of grandeur and of colours.

But it lies undone on a fragile loom

That bellows every time

The shaft heftily weaves.

Struggle is one of vulnerability.

III

From any struggle sprouts an overgrown potato,

Like the one that lies forgotten in your fridge.

Now, turn your heads swiftly, her feet are too dainty

For this meandering, sandy path.

Is she too young or already too wise?

Gilgamesh plays on her toes,

Pushing her to search for answers…immortality…peace -

But even to wish for peace

Is peaceful, and to look for an answer

Is satisfying.

But she does the mistake as any other,

She makes an ascetic of herself.

Productive, reproductive, political and social

Are abandoned. She is new,

But definitely not herself.

What could it be that she started?

Was washing dishes all she did,

That her past was so distant now.

As ascetic, she had to accept all,

In a pilgrimage, nothing becomes distant,

A residue of her past, she is

But from a struggle, she has bloomed.

She lives tiny and single on her rose bush.

No teacher, no answers, no definite

End or beginning.

Tougher than the worldly struggle,

The path is rugged and uncertain.

Will she reach? Will she let of herself?

Will she let go of every kind of herself?

After every struggle, she waits,

And that is the plain point of it.

Pilgrimage is one of stillness.

IV

A life leads to a beautiful black hole

Of pondering ideologies, thoughts, and a life.

Questions seem to stream out

Of our eyes, ears, and all senses.

Withdrawing she becomes the ultimate,

The end of all, the beginning of the unknown.

Again, who is she?

Like every woman, she lays a mystery,

To be buried in a coffin.

But there her greyness covered in white,

The symphony of cries around her,

Young widow in her death.

Stark cruelty of life, to take all

And just keep taking.

Does not the divine know to give?

He gives the life, the struggle,

The brain to think of purpose, and

the heart to think of valour and Love.

We roll on the crust, and rip the leaves,

Then fall in a pit – Hell.

We take a pilgrimage of Sins,

The sweetest, the best, and most fruitful,

In some vain hope that we shall,

Yet again, be born to live this again.

Rather, in this purity of life and death,

One understands the story,

The pure feminine fable of the May fly.

Living for a day, to copulate,

Not to eat, digest, or excrete,

But simply born to recreate,

And then to die without an answer.

Where is the purpose, struggle?

Pilgrimage, thought or death?

Does not one have to start out

A life and then deal with that death?

Is that young widow’s life full?

Disappearance is one of inevitability.

rajasthan village woman who fed me dinner - bhajra rotis

I found this woman in the sky, the land of the stars, where the milky way was mine and hers! A secret revealed at 5.30 a.m. Is a secret of Suns and Moons and Flowers new?

Who makes me fall?

No way here or there, life tumbles down the hill to where Birds and sunflowers and bees, Embrace my life, as it sees That I was born to love this and all, And to love me Earth makes me fall.

Urban Dusk

One by one, a thousand at once, Flooding the streets and over-head bridges, Windows, hoardings, and cars Light up the land below, For a dark dome Of sleeping dust. Coast rushes in a breeze, Blending in battle with noon’s Wave; Confused and loud, Dynamically proud With a brimming species, On two feet, wearing faces And masks. Like the wheels of train, All unchanged and same toil, Rolling on and on, The two feet ravage about. A million feet above Concrete builds cages: Human zoo of colors, Paints, and plastic sounds. Metallic breezes blow beneath A dusty dome, Where in a lived spirit, Music still runs. Something stays alive, No sunflower beds or swallows, None of the bright daisies, But within the caged expanse Of footprints, many spirits Lie and tear apart these walls.

Magi, Him, and us

"A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The was deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter."

T.S. Eliot starts by speaking the words of Lancelot Andrewes, a 17th Century divine, who spoke on the dangers the Magi faced, in his Nativity Sermon in 1622. Eliot, in his middle age, needed a recluse from his hardship, confusion, and drudgery. He converted to Christianity, and confirmed his catholic faith in the Church of England in 1927. 'Journey of the Magi' is a dramatic monologue by a Magus describing his journey to see the Birth of Christ, but the words delve deeper on a spiritual journey that is the need of every human. After the hardship and rumination, Eliot claims Christianity offered him a journey to answers, a spiritual calling, and something that transformed his life.

Journeys that transform lives, callings that direct people on various paths, can never be explained to the larger reality. It is a personal experience. These journeys involve an eventful path of difficulties and conflicts. Eliot known for his obscure imagery details the Magi's hardship, yet again based on Andrewe's sermons. Journey of the Magi is the story of the three kings of Orient, believed in legends to be Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar.

The lack of logic, and pure spiritual absorption, reeks in the fact that they set out in the dead of winter. The camels, vehicles of the desert, traveled on their soft hoofs through thick snow. The calling was only powerful enough to drag along the three kings, who are believed to have brought frankincense, gold, and myrrh. (According to Mathew 2:1-12 2: 1–12, the magi are not specified as three, but as the first Gentiles to believe in Christ were venerated as saints in the Middle Ages.)

The camel men could not be torn apart from their material desires and homes. They ran back to civilization, to their sexual pleasures, and intoxicating habits.

"The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women"

Even the Magi, still clouded by their desires, regretted going to far from their palaces, especially not knowing if what they were heading towards was a fruitful calling. Practical rationality always tries to defeat instinct, passion, and a drive towards misty goals. Here, Eliot hands out an interpretation of life. The mind will constantly create conflicts of two faces, but sometimes the pathless goal is the right calling; like seeking truth, which is always a pathless land.Abandoned by their camel men and camels, torn away from their comforts, and stuck in the middle of winter, their journey is not understood by anyone. The dramatic monologue is delivered with the undertone that even years after the journey, it cannot be explained in any way that could be understood. Understanding is personal, justification is personal. Spirituality is personal. God is personal.

Eliot's vivid description of their loneliness and physical hardships are a symbol of their psychological turmoil. This turmoil is owned by anyone who asks questions, and searches endlessly, with no path or maps, just some single light guiding her (Star of Bethlehem), not knowing within the question lays the answer, and the significance lies not in the answer, but the process of asking questions.

In the second stanza, Eliot sinks into his comfort zone - symbolism. It is highly metaphorical and requires a deep understanding of biblical imagery. After experiencing the hostility in cities and villages, the magi travel in the dark (no light of understanding). They reach a temperate valley, a symbol of the birth of spring, birth of something new and blossoming, and the coming of God. They pass a water-mill beating the darkness signifying that paganism, idol worship, and magic will be beaten to ground by the New Spirituality. The three trees on the low sky is a symbol of the crucifixion day, when three different men were put on crosses on Calvary; Jesus, the compassionate son of God dying for the sins of humankind, the stubborn thief who even considers Jesus as a man of magic and trickery, and the thief who understands his sins and confesses to be redeemed of it to reach God. The old white horse galloping on the fields is the Holy Spirit who spoke of the gifts of humankind, and the second coming of Christ as in the Book of Revelations.

The Magi, eventually, reach a tavern (an inn/bar) with vine leaves on the lintel, interpreted as the ancient Jewish custom of hanging vine leaves to announce the birth of a child. Guided by the star they assume they have reached the place and enter the inn in triumph, but all they find are intoxicated sinners.

"Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins"

The six hands are those of the soldiers gambling for Jesus’ seamless cloak and also a mark of Judas’ betrayal. The inn is filled with men drunk in their pleasures and slurring in intoxicated trances. They are the people with empty wine-skins, those bodies with no souls into which no new life can be poured.

The most momentous ingredient of this poem is Eliot’s interpretation of Birth (physical and spiritual) and Death (physical and spiritual). Christ was born in a manger, well among the lower class of the society. Seeing this, the magi are merely ‘satisfied’. All the prophecies lie fulfilled, making the magi those of an alien kind, and truth lies asleep in a hay crib, in a lowly stable. They are dumbstruck by God’s plan. They have only seen the births and death, purely physically manifested, that all of human race has seen and will continue to see. This Birth of Christ creates a Death.

The poem is not a physical account of the magi’s journey. It is indeed written in a confused chronology, of how an aged magus’ memory may aid him. It is the agony and transformation that each magus went through when all their beliefs were put to torturous death. Christ awakened the birth of the Kingdom of God. His teachings broke the vertical hierarchy and made everyone a person of God, a vessel of God. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

“This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death?... this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death”

Old ritualistic manners of clutching to one’s household gods were murdered by this Birth. The beliefs that the kings had laid all their life and growth on seemed to be buried and hanged. Witnessing the birth, and the death of their systems, the moment was agonizing. Under the Kingdom of God, when the return to palaces, their kingdoms seemed of an alien race and system. Everything they lay their cards on in their kingdoms seems untrue, unfamiliar, and lacks the understanding of God.

The magus (Eliot) still ardently hopes for another death, large enough to happen in every human’s conscience. This is the spiritual death of prejudices, sins, rituals, ignorance, materialism, discrimination, violence, and resentment that dies deeply rooted in human-made systems. Change is the only goal one must await in a quest.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi#cite_note-9 http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/eliot.htm#biography http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/w/e/wethree.htm http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/291.html http://mariannedorman.homestead.com/Star.html

Went to the Market

I bought a wing in a flea market, They asked me to get a pair. So, I searched and searched. Too big Too small Too fluffy. Not same. And then I asked the Gods for an angel, they asked me to get some wings! A little girl sat on the pavement smiling at me, told me: "I'll search." Was I thinking too loud for this globe? So, we searched and searched. Too thin Too short Too long. Not found. I want a wing. She was Chinese. I was Indian. Not like it mattered! She crouched on the floor. I have a pair. We have some. The one who owns or one who makes: all angels with origami wings, bought in a flea market.

Blue zone imagery

When I'm feeling all blue, and insisting on wearing black - Just watch me, intently watch me. I'll be bending over the wooden railings, the barricades of the rooftops. You're making me an onlooker, the one who listens to love, I hear a hundred snakes coiled, grinding against each other making dust. Feel that dust with me. It's not fine gold dust, it feels like powdered apples dried in your sun. They glisten like lizard eggs, sleeping in hollow branches. Clean your panther eyes, sterilize our visions. So, let them join and sink in hotel beds (the random one I walked into). Drink chilled dry coffee in the morning, and talk to me. Forget that I'm showing you my back. My heart is in the moon. Let me run away, fall asleep on a cloud. If you don't want to be one ( a fluffy floating cloud), then perch yourself on a street light, and watch me float away, with wings on my head.

Lookers, Watchers, and Lovers of this Elf

A looker, a watcher, a lover, are you?

I see you perched on the same trees,

every day and night.

Sometimes you climb down to hold me,

tight in your arms, like you -

you would never let me go.

That's when I swirl you off my arms,

I let you slip through the winds,

I watch you disappear.

Am I a looker, a watcher or a lover?

Many old voices ask this elf.

I sink in my pleasures, can

but only smile.

Flowing hair, calculated walks,

I know this world,

as it knows me true.

Are we lookers, watchers, or lovers?

Those who live true,

who breathe,

are we?

*work in progress or shall be abandoned in this state.

Watching

Blue trees blow in the wind, We don't ask them why. Paths may lead to nothing, but old golden fields of rye. Solitude of a painted cloud, like seers sing for a sky. Raindrops fall into vision, watching a dead star die.

The days

How many yesterdays? How many tomorrows? Clockwise or anti-clockwise, are we running around the town? Those calendars, and these dates - A history and a progression! No revolutions, no excitement, No changes, no storm - to make us jump. If (to)days were more? They are..where? Where? Here? There? Everywhere? ...Run. Jan 16th 2008.

A glass.

Silver plates clanking, we all sit in rows, today and day after, just to be served, forever! The crows tear the curtains, Flying in - angels of the Sun. Think further than the glass, it shows you to us and me - Opposite of you and same. Caught in the films of sand, polished and blameless - a wish far from true. Run away, break the mirror, Destroy and forget to live.

Incessant

Putting a child to sleep, Putting a child to sleep, believe me Needs to rhyme like a bee. You see, bee, me. I know it's all so stupid, Like a diaper wrapped cupid, But these children never listen, They say, "Suess is missin.'" If cruel I am, I would whack them to sleep, But these wretched cute things begin to weep. Babysitter trials are the worst for money, You'd love it so much, it's abstract and funny. Some children are too wise for an owl, Some want to act silly and growl. It's nice to play along and let your hair down, You're not too far away, just don't frown. Jump up and down sofas, and roll around, Shake your head till nothing is bound, Shout out and bellow till the roof, Try to sing or just bray, neigh, or woof! Have some fun, that is the rule, Piggy back or pin tails on mules, Learn to tell stories and laugh aloud, No better teachers than children around.

Anatomy

A rope hammock oscillates With her corpulence at rest Triumphant melancholy abates Clenches to dreams, the best And ephemeral known spring Existence, here too transperant A sleep of tied smiles bring To end, the day that is current Ektara's phantasmal repetition Notes sloping down her drapes Block patterns, fantasy version Of alchemy on demonical napes Hidden thoughts swimming true Forcefully engulfed, rivers' lust Dreams and anitmony we brew Pebbles tumbling down to dust Some kind of a fake Coleridge syndrome. I fell asleep as I was reading Marquez' Of Love and Other Demons, a fabulous novella. I woke up with a string of images in my head. And here they are. Only thing I wasn 't doped by opium. ; )

City

A river flows outside my room, I bathe in it every morning, The daffodils next to it bloom, As dew dies for the evening. None of the above is true, I hear horns and wheels pass, Trees and birds are but a few, It's all just the traffic of Class. The noise tells me my home, Among other forts and caves, Beneath a heat and dust dome, A path this tar endlessly paves. There is a mountain next to my bed, A golden eagle visits me every night, Moon herself caresses the lovely red, Dreams beckon me to leave, I might!

Typed out..

When the trees go to sleep, The wind hits the ground, And we take all in our palms A prentence of holding it Drapes of reality falling For that leaf on my feet As it slips down into that pond A reflection - a smile.