India Poems

Experimenting with different poem forms...

Clerihew
Dear ole Dr. Manmohan Singh
Has a real tough job pretending
that he's not a puppet whose strings are held
By fat cats, who will never, ever be belled

Limerick
There is a young lady from Hyderabad
Who's made tennis quite the latest fad
She plays with a fire
That takes her higher
The remarkable young Sania from Hyderabad

Haiku
Sense of deja vu
The flags, speeches, songs, marches-
yet pride rekindles

Sonnet
This love is very strange indeed
It fills the heart and overflows
I only know that I must cede
And embrace it, I suppose

Country is an amorphous form
An idea that is hyperlinked
Of lives and warmth, a cold transform
When on paper it is inked

And yet my love is so precise
for a vastness so diffuse
and so i must, myself, devise
a meaning - i must pick and choose

Blind lover trying to understand
What makes me love my motherland


Villanelle

A patchwork quilt sewn together
Held together by a common thread
Not birds of a single feather

Not just friends in fair weather
Holding hands to make and spread
A patchwork quilt sewn together

A patchwork quilt sewn together
Of variety, there's no dread
Not birds of a single feather

Sometimes, at the end of their tether
Seeking each other to shred
A patchwork quilt sewn together

Sprung from the same earth mother
Very different paths we tread
Not birds of a single feather

Forming an image like no other
Celebrating differences, instead
A patchwork quilt sewn together
Not birds of a single feather

Clean

Time has a way of doing the laundry
Takes my pretty printed skirt
Underneath the rainbow soap bubbles
It's bleeding away all the hurt

Time has a way of doing the laundry
Washes out all the perfume
Of our warm, jasmine nights together
It's wringing out all the bloom

See my life, hung out to dry
No imprints, no marks, no stains
Cleaned up by the tears I cry
Nothing remains, nothing remains

My new blue jeans are faded now
Comforting, like an old friend
Colors run, and colors fade
Why should I even pretend?

Time has a way of doing the laundry
Each wash strips me threadbare
Dissolving into nothingness
Escaping like a prayer

See my life, hung out to dry
No imprints, no marks, no stains
Cleaned up by the tears I cry
Nothing remains, nothing remains

Slick

Decaying remnants
of memories,
liquefying
under the stress
of your words.

Heavy oil of sorrow,
gushing dangerously
under your expert drill.

I flounder
in the slick,
sinking.

To A Marked Tree

Alone, aloof, you stand erect,
Waiting for your destiny.
You know you face a bleak prospect.
Alone, aloof, you stand erect.
They strike with such disrespect,
The axes of disharmony.
Alone, aloof, you stand erect
Waiting for your destiny.

Trying out the Triolet Verse Form

My Favourite Things!

To be sung to the tune of 'Favourite Things' song from Sound of Music!

Warmth of my daughter, when she is sleeping
Shy little rosebuds, when they're peeping
A friendly breeze greeting me when I step out
All these things gladden me, without a doubt

Laughter of children, when they are playing
Books filled with dragons that heroes are slaying
Movies that move me, and make me sigh
Splashing in puddles, and then getting dry

Mommy's good cooking, and her smiling greeting
Listening to my beloved's heart beating
As I lie quiet and warm in his arms,
These are the sweetest of life's many charms.

When a harsh word,
is spoken or heard
When I'm filled with remorse
I think of the small things
that bring happiness
And life straightens out its course.

Bangalore

An innocent child
fresh as morning dew,
waking up
languorous and rosy-cheeked,
erupts into an
angry, angst-ridden adolescence,
growing
in spurts
overnight,
acne ridden visage
ignored
for a
profligate, pleasurable pubescence

Storm in a Tea-cup

My face
has developed a leak.

Hateful damp patches,
dried streaks of wetness,
hinting at
rising, flood-threatening
water levels.

A heated anger,
flashing and lashing,
condenses into
an abrupt cloud-burst.

Total Recall

(Based on Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World)



Tossed
from an argosy of nightmares,
I wake up to
a familiar alienation,
to a beguiling breeze
that taunts
and whispers old secrets.

I gaze upon
a mirage so close
it can be tasted.
A haunting melody
that beckons,
that seeks to pierce
the paralysis of my past.

Take me back, if you will,
or take me away.

Footnote

I ask not to be part
of the glories that you write,
the fantasies that you weave.

The warp of imagination,
the weft of words
The tapestry you compose
of heroic scenes and gallant times.

The throbbing of love
Consummated with pain.
The coffin of grief
layered with the dust of smiles.

I ask not to be part
of the dreams you conceive.

I am content
to be a footnote
to explain your lives.