Keeping Quiet

How do you stop the mynah from singing?

How do you stop the peacock from dancing?

How do you drain up the rain in the clouds?

How do you suck the life out of a soul?

Courtesy: Pixabay.com

Relationships are meant to add to your life,

Yet why does ours barely manage to keep me alive?

Little by little, taking away who I am,

And leaving behind an empty shell.

Changing me from a chatterbox to a recluse,

Weeding away friends, cutting bonds loose.

Smirking when I forge a friendship,

As if I am a low being.

Going for my self-esteem,

While with high morality you preen.

I accept when you withdraw into your shell,

Thinking, keeping to ourselves is just as well.

Although my heart craves for companionship and gaiety,

To have a laughter riot, that you call insanity.

For you don’t care for external support.

For you, you and me suffice.

You and me are great together,

But my love, you and me are not enough.

We are trees in a grove, not cactus in desert,

We need others around us to grow.

But until you realize this truth of our lives,

Parched for the elixir of company,

I continue keeping quiet,

A mute spectator,

As I forget who I once was,

And don’t remember,

Who I am anymore.

 This post has been written as part of the A-Z Challenge. Do keep visiting this blog on more gyan on life and my perception of it, all this month.

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Eternity

Seasons come, seasons go. People come, people go. What remains is what is eternal. My post for the letter E, is a poem I published a few years ago.

An ode to the permanence of our cores, which remain unchanged in the midst of the transients. Much like the water, which, though its form may change from time, still remains water, H2O. Or like the sands on a beach, which witness myriad encounters with transience, but persist the way they have been, forever.

The news reader exclaims with glee,

“The monsoons are here!”

The cuckoo on my courtyard’s Gulmohar,

Echoes her joy with ‘coo’s.

The clear patch of blue,

Where the brilliant orb shone yesterday,

Is a thing of the past.

Replaced today,

By a muddy patchwork,

Of Cumulonimbus’s,

Straight out of a cotton farm.

 

 While the sky sheds tears,

Bemoaning the cloudy infestation,

I muse.

The clouds are same,

The drops are same,

And so is the breeze.

Meeting up in the heavens every year,

Before they come visiting,

At my window sill.

Only to be greeted by,

A different story.

A new movie each time.

New characters, new plots, new settings,

All new, save me.

 

 I am like the sands of Marina.

Numerous footfalls,

On my static grains.

A light tread here,

A heavy one there,

Some fast and some slow,

All, all over me,

 While I remain unchanged.

 

No storm, no tide has ever

Caused me to budge.

The physical me totters,

The mental me sways,

But I, I remain unmoved.

Absorbing the experience

Of varying footfalls,

As they come and go,

While I remain.

 

I was, I am, I will be,

Here along with the clouds,

The rain and the breeze.

Living the ultimate truth,

Watching the transients pass.

The revelry of joy and pangs of despair,

Are only for body and mind.

As ice, liquid or vapour,

Water still remains water,

and so remain I.

 

This poetry was first published in Contemporary Literary Review India Nov 2012 Issue.

 

This post has been written as part of the A-Z Challenge. Do keep visiting this blog on more gyan on life and my perception of it, all this month.