Pebbles
Time smoothes rainbow hardness
Of tree basalt, vermillion jasper,
Silvery granite and pale feldspar
With the help of humdrum
But patient jeweller of tides;
Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,
Heat-cracked, wind-carved,
Death shapes compact among the rocks;
It drifts light as a fractured bone
When the tide uncovers,
It blinks among the smashed shells,
Upset by gulls, bleached by salt and sun
The broken crockery of living things;
An eagle surveys from the upland,
Unsympathetic to the burdens
I have carried here;
The sea would not hug me, so I sit,
Hollow as driftwood, jumbled as pebbles
The Books
Books are in restless wintery mood,
Their voices seem urgent,
What the books whisper
We prefer not to mention in social circles;
Yet they know more,
Have been where we can't go
In the clothes we wear;
They are unsettled, we are motionless,
Their voices are foreign to our ears,
They disdain, they will shake us off,
Too many voices, too many lost conversations;
When I open a page, fall into its frosty profundities
To sink like a stone, I talk in clichés;
They hover in time like bad omens
They flap wings; frantic pages cloud the sky;
They are the darkness in our bones
That keeps on sparkling like dead flames;
What struggles, they endure day, night!
Some books unopened stay to sight;
Books of some pasts have been scorched
Or may long live not a page turned,
To die unread of ripe old age,
Or by next generation earned,
Yellowed, book-worms devoured in rage!
There’s a thing common— books or men,
But a few significant can
Every book has its shining creed,
Which we fail to read and believe
My Father
My clock's been swung to zero
There is no zero on other clocks,
I don't know where my dad lives,
Previous night my skin felt soft
As he kissed with his wet lips
My dad wishes to listen to me upbeat,
He replies his recent minor emergencies
About his wellbeing, about how he played
With my siblings and sisters,
In any case, he needs me to return to life
I wonder why only humans need to
Figure out how to move with reason?
Is that why we nag rationale?
It's been simple not to go there,
I know I should meet him but
I don’t have my dad's address
My past burdens stop me
To meet him in his promised land