Ambivalence

Through the emotional nuances,

Now Dickensian and now of paradise settings—

Those dark stone steps with the sheen of hands labor

Leading up to arched walk-bridge over stolid clear water

Skimmed by the tendrils of bloomed cherries around;

The steep gabled roofs of dark slates, Kyoto in the late 1920s,

The yonder metropolis amid Depression off the peripheral Yoroido

With its Tipsy House perched on a rocky cliff off the rocking sea waves below—,

As spontaneously poetic as how the innocence of a little girl of 12,

Chiyo-Chan’s figurative way of giving those speaking analogies,

The admiring heart finds a solace in the poetic narration,

Mingled with elegies as black and blue as folds of adversity;

As fiery as how her longing heart sees her dying mother

Hardly sinking into the feathery soft futon in the dark room;

As cold as the mute obtuse father’s selling his two daughters

While busying himself with his coarse hands tangled into a fishing net;

As treacherous as how the betrayal of first guise of grace.

And mingled with odes for every snippet of beauty presented

Adorned with her poetic analogies as melodious as twanging of her shamisen

Plucked by her ice-water numbed little fingers.

It’s just the beginning of meeting her second grace,

Her thousand handed God of Mercy, the Chairman,

Whose accidental tenderness to beget her immutable love

Like a limp life-tree touched by the providence of Mother Nature

As providential as how she is to spend the remaining feeding coins,

With the single force as strong as motherly love, for the same prayers.

It’s just the beginning.

But the admiring heart, now absorbed off from rawness,

Can’t wait to shed thus…

Lo, the old tree wrapped afresh with lushness,

The providence to be admired.

Hark, the din of traffic on the highway just over there,

The endless reasons to be there.

Then behold, an emaciated one lying

With limp skin as charred as rusted,

Yellow-shot eyes speaking the single hope…,

Another live drama of longing for but snatching away secondly—

The oddity as huge as a strong one’s dreamy eternity

As licentious as taken for granted till then.

Our eyes met.

I fidgeted, albeit I tried my best to hold back,

Like betraying my saintly words.

And the stony handshake,

The odd sense of touch,

I tried as my best gesture

As the others shirk like venom.

Freedom

Courtesy: web source

The busy feet in a jerky gait,

Raw nerves now propel and now stultify…

Whatever for livelihood or for tomorrow

The movement is put into such run,

A collateral function of the system.

As the day time drags on till 9.pm,

As the fleecy feathery petals of dandelions,

In their eddying magical shadowy levitation,

Glide before eyes, rest on eyebrow or shoulder

Or sneak inside to skim over crisp papers on the table
(Pale frost like yet fluffily air-riding moonscape ambience),
The shadowy figure in scarecrow silhouette,

Bloated yet heavy, fights against the gravity—

The complete freedom, as in its fancy,

Is to be free off the ground of flurries.

Off the ground of flurries,

Off the ground of flurries

That dwarf even oceanic mountainous tides.

Off the ground of flurries

That slit it like a thunderbolt tearing a fat trunked tree into two.

Off the ground of flurries

Learning, enlightening yet numbing now.

Life: Two Parts

Hope

Thy paleness is macabre,

Draining into spiraling snare.

Thy richness is crooning,

As melodious as spring.

You

As the two fat grey pigeons, fated couple, make love—

The swiftness, the fluttering wings, twice, thrice—

On the mossy twig surrounded by the seasonal start,

(Lush lawns studded with white and yellow dandelions;

Recovering trees adorned with whites and pinks;

The roadside poplar with those tiny reddish cone-buds)

As the male falters thereafter like fallen in brooding

With its tiny beak poking into the open air ahead like dreaming

And its bloodshot eyes still burning as to incinerate itself,

As the female, meek yet restive, tries to get closer

In side steps while the male sidles two steps away

And the former repeats the same till the latter hops off,

The sudden dream I have just had flashes back:

There, exhaustive as I have really encountered,

The curves, the things of yours like of a crank,

Or as per my own projections that you could be.

I was there, seeming familiar yet strange place,

The top floor, the single room decked out in your own way—

It was like a glimpse of your nature, the enigma of being.

Those things with the touch of tantric air,

Those hung early clothes of yours like relics

Stared at me. I could feel your strong presence only.

It was like in a hermitage, strange.

I waited and you came at last,

Not in strange robe but in tight faded blue jeans,

The starry eyes, fixed upon me, mute but demanding.

Tattoos, piercing—I have no idea about,

But, for me, like further enigmas.

‘Is it you?’ I asked like awoken after a moment trance,

The trick of a dream-numbness like tethered feet.

‘Yes,’ you said and moved away amid jeers from around.

You didn’t care about them. I felt proud.

But I found you much younger than in your selfies.

Within dream I struggled to prove myself,

I reasoned myself thy coming as per my confidence,

Or for such lucidity as I haven’t seen you ever,

Was conditioned by my pale hope and long thinking about you

Like a lost child hankering for home.

But, yes, it is dream. The reality is ‘impossibility’

As I am no longer visible, valid and there.

But thanks for coming,

It was, for me, coming to give me a push,

A breath to set me free for a second

Before plunging down again…

Yes, it was like coming to save me

At the nick of time like during clear light moment.

Now I am a vagrant soul

Hovering around you without a stir.

Telepathy is long gone,

The medium is defunct now, sadly.