TOLERANCE PRACTICED

Kahlil, you learnt tolerance

From the intolerant.

Save I, all went to Island House

For an expo and returned.

At the round table, we dined

That hard core Christian snickered,

“These people are fools; they worship ghosts!”

“Worshiping Ghosts?” I stammered, perplexed.

And he replied,

“It was a Hindu temple.”

I felt an axe hewing my heart

My blood boiled but

I dropped my head and resumed eating

No retorts from me; he smirked and did so his friend.

I practiced tolerance, felt

High for not having gone low to hit him.

CURSE

To be a poet to weave words -

To be a poet lover to weave

Sad words.

Melancholy hid in my sleeve

Each second hit a thousand swords.

Maiden of sorrow

More beautiful

Than the angel joy

Beauty backside of it curse

Poetry lives in the nostrils

Of death.

MY WAY

I’ll lay my own way

To walk my journey

I’m neither self-conscious when I toddle

Nor downbeat when I tumble

I don’t care a paisa when you jeer

Seeing the way I walk

My every step keeps me in progress

Bark at my tail I won’t give ears

When I lay my way as I walk,

How can you get ahead of me?

So you can only beat after I’ve beaten

Since I lay my own way,

I won’t erect any obstacle

I know I can walk alone

Unhurried, unhampered

In my way

I might lie dead,

But I won’t lie defeated!

I WAITED AND WAITED

I waited and waited

All my days

Expecting his bell

At my door

FLUTIST

In a suburb train

As I commute to my college

Daily, I see

BOTTLEFISH

He’s a fish

In the bottle

And a fish

Out of the bottle

He’s a fish

Among the bottles

A bottle

Can’t contain him

So can’t he

Contain self with one

Thirst-angel

Gulp gulp gulp

Throat craves

More more more

Want not of tongue

Life

Corked in the bottle

Death drowns him

In the bottle.

CRASH AND CRY

I heard a crash

Crash that pierced the air