The Racing Horse
Memory after memory unfolds, she sees forgotten scenes.
With a hop, and a skip, the memory horse races at a canter.
She is once again a pony- tailed, impish girl in riotous teens.
Effervescent and sun-
drenched amidst the verdant greens.
Throwing back her head, laughing, indulging in inane banter.
Memory after memory unfolds, she sees forgotten scenes.
.
Lovingly, she holds a tiny kitten in her arms, full of beans.
Then merrily she waltzes towards a freshly painted planter.
Looking so vibrant in her florid top and tight- fitting jeans.
She talks to the kitten, who
understands what she means.
Now, I watch her from a distance- an amused bystander.
Memory after memory unfolds, she sees forgotten scenes.
.
Talking incessantly about birds, flowers and also machines.
She is mischief personified; but calls herself an enchanter!
Collecting books, comics, driftwood and also weird figurines.
The horse runs at a tired trot, wistfully eyeing the evergreens.
The images become a little crooked, a tad blurred and slanter.
Memory after memory unfolds,
she sees forgotten scenes.
She is once again a pony- tailed, impish girl in riotous teens.
The Almost Drowning Ship
Ghost like specters moved around. Lackadaisical.
A floating pyre. A raft of flames. Squeaking pulleys.
A frill of ragged steel, dead engines.
Propellors, totally still.
Petrified folks choking on billowing smoke.
A fire alarm ringing. Eerie. Shrill.
I was baffled. Was I a boatswain’s mate?
The sea was a maddened beast.
I gasped as I saw a wall of water rushing towards me.
Whoosh. Swoosh. Were some demons having a feast?
Moments of suspended silence. Tense.
A flame licked my back. Crack- crack – crack!
Lightning cracked. Clouds rumbled.
Black smoke billowed.
My stomach grumbled.
I gaped aghast, at the mangled and tangled railing,
and was thrown smack into the sea, wailing, clucking.
Smack- smack- smack!
I flailed my arms, trying to calm my nerves,
wobbling up and down over the dangerous curves.
Were the waves trying to sweep me away?
No way. I could hear operators making distress calls.
I would be saved. Land ahoy!
Could I see rescue boats in the distance?
“Leave the ship. Leave it, you dunderhead!”
Chaos. Cacophony. Confusion. Clamour.
Broad- hipped pirates had surrounded the ship,
bellowing in accents clipped, dripping wet.
Lo and behold! The sun was out in all its fiery glory.
There under the shade of a palm tree,
stood my dream, sheathed in sunbeams bright,
fresh as a strawberry,
beckoning to me with a merry smile.
Ah, the lissome dream had saved me
from the blood- curdling nightmare.
No one could now dare to scare me.
I clung to my dream with a white- knuckled intensity,
beaming – glowing -a perfect picture of cheerful vitality.
WHEN I AM NO MORE AROUND
you will find pieces of paper by my side.
Crumpled and ink- stained, also a pen without a cap,
lying in wait to catch those words which flew away
like winged birds. Hurrying and scurrying.
Like Alice's White Rabbit mumbling,
"Oh dear, oh dear, I shall be late."
And, alas, hastily tumbling away through the gate.
Just wait, when I am gone,
by my side you will find books of every kind.
Some new, some old and book- marked.
A notebook with hurried scribblings,
like feisty siblings fighting on paper.
Alas, my runaway thoughts, entangled and caught
between lines, gaping. No more able to gallop.
Words, furtively written at the dead of night
when the light no longer burnt bright.
A sleepy reprimand went unheeded
"Go to sleep, it's late."
When I am gone,
you will find splintered guffaws,
still throbbing in the air, one to the left, one to the right,
searching for words to inject meaning in those shards
of truncated mirth, once flowing untrammeled on earth.
Hey, that reminds me, when I am gone
could someone be gracious enough
to finish that incomplete quatrain of my villanelle;
no it was not tough. I merely hit a rough patch.
Kept groping for the right word, till I could grope no more.
The five tercets were good stuff, but the heart played the villain.
It stopped beating, before I could hone the quatrain.
When I go on that eternal date, you will find all these,
also, vestiges of a guiltily eaten ice-cream,
and pieces of chocolate paper
clumsily flung in the waste- paper basket.
Pitifully, missing the target.
Their glory, lying strewn around in golden smithereens.
Also a hurriedly eaten midnight feast, the least
I could do to pamper that so- called gluttonous creative beast
inside me, on an audacious nocturnal caper.
Hang on, you will also find the joker's mask under the bed.
The full bodied smiles absolutely intact
on that inert body and those lips, still red.
Superbly penned. Beautiful and touching poems.
ReplyDeleteThanks a bunch.
ReplyDelete