The Halo-Bearer

For your holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama, my Guru

As I build on,

As I get more equipped,

The will quails,

The spark dies—

The necropolis of words,

Unapplied and lacquered,

Remains staring back at me.

As I see more and take in more,

It looms like a smirking aura.

Could it be of the time, now—

Not so much about the essence

As it is for the minutely glossed over images?

Or have I gone deaf and blind,

The play of fuss for image, identity and solipsism?

She says, “Just begin it.”

He says, “Just leave the trash.”

But, while chuckling, I wonder what they think of me,

This just cranky muser, the best word.

The serious one comes around and whispers,

“As media even online is erratic.”

Then what happened to one great pillar of the Enlightenment?

Yes, stampede of footsteps,

As I couldn’t look and size up and accost at—

The gall or gallantry only at the command of self-interest—,

Could be noted;

It reminds me where I stand—

Like an odd plastic scrap amid glossy sugar maple leaves

I have set myself adrift.

Then the time for small recognition,

(The suffrage in five years,

Said as the needy chaos,

To fish out our head and voices),

Sadly reminds me I have a makeshift home there,

The abode of the halo-bearer, my source of refuge.

It’s thou, your holiness, the Dalai Lama!

I am momentarily brand new one,

Reinvigorated with a vision,

Not just shallow ideals of modernity and secularism—

The forerunners' aphorisms have long tarnished.

It is just as simple as letting go of,

To break free from the rooster coop of individualism-madness.

Yes, it is simply about being like a beggar, a sniffer.

A spark glistens,

A will nudges,

I have to wake up myself not to be that intransigent.

It is as much about letting go of…

As it is about learning to give ears to,

Not only to the awaited clink.

The mental image of your broad smile gives birth to them here,

Where only azure void and solid ground can be counted on.