The ancient shackles

The Shackles are scented flowers,
And fragrance of traditions.
Lullabies, slumber, dreams
Bring you up,
And enter your vein and blood.
They are your holy land.


So painful it's to tear them away;
The lonely soldiers know,
And they fly to the sky of light.

You

You walked with me and you left,
You talked and sang with me and you left.
You are my river friend,
You are the sky, the fields of my village,
You are the smell of the land I knew,
You are the wind that took away the springs,
You are the lost songs we sang.
And you left like the years passed.

And whenever I am alone,
You always come back with a breeze,
You speak of the innocence lost in time,
You bring flowers from the graves we dug.
And your gift, a lump in my throat.

Please don't come when I stop by the trees,
Don't tell me tales of the friends I lost,
Don't be reflections when I stare in the mirror.

In the evening

Floated in the infinite space,
You are a weightless bird.
The lines and boundaries,
Melted away.
The sky is all red, blue, black.
Time lost all its meaning,
You cease to be the hero, or the villain.

The tears and the laughter,
The children and the village roads,
The lives of the rivers and green fields,
Vivid once again are shadows on fleeting moments.

House of stones and heap of bones,
The treasure of victories,
Blood stained swords of valour,
Specks in disappearing sands.

You drift away,
You are the weightless child,
Once again, the sense, the veils,
Melted away in the pristine sky.
And tranquillity is the evening.

The Door

The door was open,

Dividing the light and the darkness,

The comfort of the familiar zones,

and the mystery of unknowns.

Yes, I got the chance to fly.

But I loved the smelly sweat of the crowded room,

and the tales of valour and deception.

I loved to sleep in my grandmother’s grave.

Her stories were so sweet, so ancient.

And I saw, those taking wings,

flying to an unknown sky.

And sometimes they returned,

with stars in their beaks,

to light up the dark room.

In the dark room,

among the bundles of wasted life,

we just sleep and sleep.

Changes

When I passed my first school of learning,
I buried a person of young dreams.
So I passed many stages,
The days said goodbye and the faces disappeared.
Sure I learnt one thing,
To chase the horizon for the evening star.

When I passed my college,
I buried another person.
The days passed like lightning.

Now I am slowly dying everyday,
I am afraid to look in the mirror.
In the mirror I see a cruel face,
With smears of blood and sweat,
Eyes burning with remorseless lust,
Pointed teeth ever ready to tear away lives.
I see a face of a half dead beast,
A face whose every wrinkle speaks of business,
Business of dead bones in the graves.

And yet when I am alone,
From the deepest ocean of oblivion,
The innocence of the past and the lost faces appear.
And then I hear the songs of the green fields,
And I remember the lonely river of winter.

Days passed, things changed.
Only my mother still sees in me,
The same fragile child she brought to this world.
But that child died long back in me.