Did I Fail Your Dreams

She always believed that I could overcome any of her challenges.
The responsibility of rearing up four children.
She always had a fear of what if she couldn’t manage.
What if her children could not become as she thought of.
But she had faith that as long as I am there, the kids would be okay.
They would be fine.
They would follow my lead and learn to rise from each fall.
It has been barely a month.
And it seems I have failed.
Failed to manage the kids.
Failed to take care of them.
Failed to lead them to the right path.
Failed to inspire them to be strong.
Failed to kindle the fire.
The fire to chase her dreams.
Dreams that she saw in her lifetime.

It feels horrible. Very horrible.

©® jey-blah-blah

Hope’s Symphony

If I should see a gesture of new hope
In my waiting of the darkness of the night
To mellow down into the light
Light of new beginnings
Light of new knowledge
Light of new findings
Light of all that inspires and tranforms
Light of empathy that discards
The primordial practice of othering

For to find the sun of the new day of the new year
I groped, stumbled, continued groping
Yonder, my efforts elicited a road.
A road that leads to love, to champion love
Love for all the good that God created
A love that is inclusive
A love that is unconditional
A love that unites and strengthens
A love to dream
A love to chase one’s dreams

The predecessor to this new year yet again reminded
That all we see , touch, smell, hear, or whatever
They decay and die when their scythe of time comes
And did you not notice the resilience of the people?
Their courage of not surrendering
On the face of all wreaked havoc
A courage to rise and hope for a better tomorrow.
And shall we not see that better tomorrow is this day.
It’s today. It’s now.

©® jey-blah-blah

Orphaned Teddybear

Sitting amid the debris of lives and hopes
Mourning a man for the young owners
Of the orphaned teddy bears very much bruised
For the last rites, the unbloomed buds not detected yet

Something broke in my heart
Actually collapsed.
With a mix of thud and cracking clatter
©®jey-blah-blah

Sabhi Ka Shukriya

Yun tau sabse sikhi hai zindagii thodi
Kisi ne likhna sikhaya hai
Kisi ne kehna sikhaya hai
Kisi se sunna sikha hai
Kisi se sochna sikha
Kisi se sikha hai
Alfaazon ka mala v bana bhi
Kisi ne Sikh di hai
Shabd se manzarkashi karna
Kisi ne bol se rote ko chup karna sikhaya hai
Kisi ne Sikh di k
Ummid ek shai lafaani hai
Kisi ne Sikh di hai dard ko taqat mein badalna v
Kisi ne jagti ankhon ko
Dikhlaya hai sapna bhi
Kisi ne sapne ko pure krne ki
Zidd sikhayai hai
Kisi ne sikhaya hai bebason ki awaaz banna v
Kisi se Sikh di zulm k khilaf ladna bhi
Kisi ne Sikh di hai k
Kisi ko taqlif na de Dena
Kisi ne shab-o-roz bhukhe ko
Khilana v hai sikhlaya
Kisi se Sikh di hai muflisi mein sabar se jina
Kisi ne Sikh di hai
Ilm ki khoj mein rehna
Sabhi ka kuch h na kuch kirdaar hai
Meri sakshiyat ki marammat mein
Sabhi ko shukriyaa
Dil se
Sabhi ko salam Mera ho


manzarkashi – imagery
Lafaani. – eternal
Shab-o-roz – day and night
Kirdaar – role
Salam -prayer for peace and security
Shakshiyat – personality
Marammat – reconstruction
Kirdaar – role
.
©jey-blah-blah

A Confused Hendiadys

All those motions made over the years
All the chaos you dipped yourself into
All the pains that you did bear
All those cautions and care
And yet you are in the bottomless depth
Of commotion and cacophony
I know noise is life
I know hustle gives vibes
Yet peace cannot be compromised.

This never ending quest of exploration
And you land at a city centre
The bustle, the glamour, the light, the rush
Wow! This is life. It feels so alive.
Time passes by. Saturation caves in.
Another rush
A new quest for peace
Much like the mad adventurous search for the Holy Grail.
I am confused if I can employ
The hendiadys – peace and life
Or I should just embrace the solace
In the maddening rush of change
©® Jey- blah- blah


An Unnamable State

I never looked at my possessions
Those fatally transient possessions
That evoke perennial trepidations
And tribulations of the heart and soul

A realisation dawns upon
That the life has reached
A desperate point of deadlock
Whereon everything stands saturated

Like lifelessness has got a better hold of me
All agility is a tale of time that is passé
And the aspirations on the sluggish end of exhaustion
An extremity of coercion to invoke the agent of end
©® jey-blah-blah


A Rhapsody of Silence

And when they make the coarse clamours
And establish that to be silent is unmasculine
I sing my rhapsodies of voicelessness
And flamboyantly show off my fluency of silence
For I believe voidness is eternity
Whose immensity modestly humbles
The most obdurate of arrogance
In this land and life, being loud is a crime
Words of criticism, advice and caution
They call it blasphemy.
They call it treason.
So now I feel the cotton stuffed in my vocal chords
And the agile articulators within the mouth
Are all chained up voluntarily
Even the most seismic of shocks do not alarm
All composed, everything just calm
I do make utterances with some plausiblity
Only when the deafening silence scares me
When it bores my bones to point of extreme fatigue
When it stings my skin
And I writhe with agony
Then just to bury the silence
I rap my tongue and become blasphemous.
©® jey-blah-blah

A Call from Abbu Ji

While offering the evening prayer
My phone rang a few times.
On completion of the prayer
I checked the device and an unknown number
Appeared on the screen
Curious to check who it was
I dialled the number
It was Abbu Ji.
I asked whose number that was
“This is my number. I have taken a new sim card.”
He said with a smile.
He dialled his son’s number by himself
Surely with some aid from other
A triumphant voice it was.
There was a sense of completion.
A sense of fulfilment
A sense of independence
” I will not have to depend on someone to call you.”
An immeasurable degree of elation
I felt in his voice with little tremors.
My imaginative wings can draw his image
On a vast canvas with frail figure
Wearing thick white beard and frail hands
With unfleshy fingers holding the little device
And checking his son’s number to dial.
A long standing cruelty of dependency
Now has come to an end.
He whispered within.
©® Jey-blah-blah

Elegy to the Human Glory

Scores of unfortunate souls coerced to flee
From what humans call home
The chosen guardians of men’s clock  let the show go on
The fuelled up hatred made the vulnerable more vulnerable
Until their flames of lives extinguished
Walls collapsed, roofs burnt and smoke billowed
Femininity made naked and paraded brazenly
On the busy streets full of sexual predators
The lusty hands groped the forbidden places
The feminine eyes dropped down in murderous shame
Humankind reduced to the inestimable scale of perversity
And who says science is thriving
And who says the society is thriving
Oh, this ruthless continuum of impatience
This obdurate arrogance of vengeance against each other
Who is not moved by this hysterical live theatrics
So well replete with shocking realities
Horror, horror , horror all over
Now even the demons are alarmed and shocked
At the deliberate nakedness of civilized mankind
Are these your moments of glory?
Is this what you are going to bequeath
To your progeny to take pride
In the broken, battered and annihilated human glory
©® jey-blah-blah

Dearth of Metaphors

Why am I finding it difficult to discover metaphors?
The metaphors that are beyond harm.
Those which are inexhaustible.
Those that can paint the human brains
In their true colours with stark reality.
There is a problem – a big one actually.
I can’t state things in general words.
Words that wear plain clothes and easily reveal.
Complexities complicate things completely.
As we rely the least on what is easy.
Life never made it feel so.
Dark clouds are a daily thing.
A rainbow is a rare show of nature.
The streaks of sunshine are mirage.
Living in a room within a room
Made not with brick and mortar
But metaphors where everything is oxymoron.
©® jey-blah-blah