Monday, May 24, 2010

Right then, Nobility.

Some time has passed
Since the witching hour began.
And having watched a drama
Of men and empire,
Where Union Jack rode forth,
Pensively I sit
Thinking is his language,
And drinking his scotch.
High in my house, sixteen floors
Keep me from the ground,
I lean out of my window
And look.

To the right,
The dunes of Arabia abound,
The desert that passively saw
The inception of man.
Man who'd tread her sands
And spread to all the earth,
Taking from her fingers
All that she would give, and more.
A loan never recognised
Yet disdained with interest,
Her payment instead
Is spit in her face.

To the left,
Piles of mortar and steel stretch.
Those towers that house
The teeming masses,
That throb and thrive to get
Entry into exclusive comfort,
That now slumber to begin again
that pointless scrabbling,
Perhaps forgetting something
In their dash for success.
For the din of baying hounds
Drowns our ears, and sense
Fails to pierce patented helmets.
In our patented leather jackets
Wearing patented felt boots,
As we hunt that wily fox
Who looks back, all the while
With a wide grin.

But when I turn
Mine eyes below,
Life looks back at me.
Amidst a sea of cars
Parked neatly like bricks,
A lone figure works.
A wet cloth swabs
Testaments to edifice,
For that is what they are,
Removing the grime
From the desert's sands,
Off shiny chrome shells.
Tiring now, he finishes one,
Pushes his cart to the next,
This one's run-down
Old and battered,
But still that man
Took no pause.
With none to oversee,
He cleans that beat up car
That is somebody else's,
And moves to the next.

Should I have looked up,
Away, I would see the floors
Above me, and naught else.
For the night-time halo
Of our civilized world,
Shields our view
Of the sympathetic stars.


*----------------------------*

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Stilted Smile

The joyborn free giggles
Of those pig-tailed little girls,
Skips on heat that mingles
To rides humidity's threads.
A flipping coin to those adults,
The plodding resigned sods
Who waver between laughs
And tears.

House, park, carnival or life;
the background is an oblivious spectator
To sundry puppet shows of motley souls,
Celebrating humanity, that mimics convention.
Adrift , bereft of barbed anchors, I watch,
From the solitary island of mind.
My being stares out at the breakwaters,
Unsure of the sea-foam, it's salty sting.

I wish, I would that I had seven-foot legs.

From silence, dragged from the thought,
I hear click-clacking of wood on tile.
And through the pell-mell world world,
Wades a lone stilt-walker
Ploughing on with seven-foot legs,
Walking on a here that's somewhere else.
His blue coat-tails swish ducking heads,
Under red top hat, I wonder where his is.

Stilt-walker, on your wooden feet.
O' Stilt-walker, what do you see?

People ooh their dawning ahhs,
Laughing at the gangly figure
With the odd gait and toed knees.
They collect all their mewling herd
To clutch to cling to the ends,
While shutter-bugs flit and flame
Until the final frame is clicked.
Then without even passing thought
The moths fly, buzzing away,
To the nest shiny draw.

Stilt-walker, on your wooden feet,
Stilt-walker, with your painted face,
O' Stilt-walker, what crosses your mind?

The hesitant clouds are numbered,
Their choice is made for them
And they disperse before the onslaught
Of that resplendent Mr. Noon,
As his goring rays will the mulling crowd
To seek shelters of shade and fan.
I see him unthinkingly shrug
And shuffle to lean on kind wall,
He pulls himself to his throne
Slowly stretching his reaching shanks,
He pulls out a yard of black cloth
That wipes a sweat-logged face,
And undoes those cutting straps
That gaspingly free yearning feet,
And grimaces, straining to bend,
To wearily rub aching toes.
I see the flash of artifice
Turn into a silhouette,
Of a man.

Stilt-walker, on your wooden feet,
Stilt-walker, with your painted face,
Stilt-walker, wearing your stilted smile,
O' Stilt-walker, what do you feel?


*-----------------------------------*


Overture : A Tribute to Neil Gaiman

The pen's whirling dance,
It's twenty-six step tango on page
Revels truth, in what the mind could be,
And folly, in only what the heart see's.

That sensual movement of emotion's finger
Drawing designs on intellect's chest,
Where each lingering stroke is, and
Has purpose, beyond creation.

Lost in transalation, lost in spell
The couple moves cheek to cheek,
dancing on the beaches of infinity
Leaving us their footsteps to read.

For in their wake, if one could see,
One would realise the hands of Destiny.
Thumbing through the truths in his tome,
The card dealer of the ultimate game.

They exist too in Dream's dominion
He who whispers them to meld his power.
The ruler of ephemeral allthought
Where if, and could, then we would.

They bear the brand of Desire,
That scintillating, bemusing spoor.
It, that's pawing shell ever grows,
It that resides in every living heart.

Sifting through them one can find
That wafting musk of Despair,
She who lurks in every shadow
That enters her grey-scale halls.

Some have sprung from Delight,
She who skips in every laugh.
She, who has no rules to joy,
Playing hide-seek in glass forests.

They've wandered Deliriums desert's,
Trudging through her fractured domain,
Under half dripping suns, stopping by
The inquiry booth by the White Rabbit.

They resound of Destruction's rage,
Whose solemn dirge breaks worlds.
He who lusts for the end of each, all,
He, who divines the last fall.

At the end of their slow waltz,
The whistling wind settles down.
And as flying hair veils meeting lips,
There is the sound of Her great wings.

And there is Death.


*-----------------------------------------*