Yama and his alter-ego

(written on July 25, 2011)

“Starlit skies
Stretching up beyond sight…”
“Myopic vision,
Thanks to city pollution.”
“Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are?!”
“My stars are city lights you know
Twinkling and flashing in fog and snow.”
“Peace and deep breaths
I can lie here forever, cover me with wreaths.”
“Restlessness keeps scanning my skies.
Shall I espy a real star ever and rest these eyes?”

Too much, too early

You have heard of "too little, too late."
How about "too much, too early?"
Overwhelmed senses can only take so much.
Too much? Too early?
Good is great, as long as it lasts,
Bad is good too, in the lessons it imparts.
But too much of either or or?
The beginning of the end is here, when it starts.
Or that's how it feels,
When life is on fast-forward button,
Hurtling down roller-coaster like tracks;
Only, it isn't anyone you know controlling the button.
If Yama or one of His avatars were a Friend,
Maybe there could be some leeway.
But Gods and mortals have a different kind of relation,
It's not so easy always, to find a way.

Desperation

Someone, anyone, anything at all.
To help me.
He raised his head.
You mean Me?
Yes, Even You.
Yes, yes, You, if not anyone else.

A prayer

Restlessness grips me everywhere I turn these days. It is not as if I want to go back. It is more as if I want to go on, beyond the present time and space, away from the realities of the unreal world, towards the one true certainty there is. Time goes on. I wonder how much time have I left. What all am I supposed to achieve in the time there is? Who do I listen to?

I do not and cannot say, that I am not, in a sense, enjoying the fleetingness of now. I laugh, I cry, I contemplate, and I grow up. But the more intensely I experience the now, the more attached I become to it. And the more the attachment, the exponentially more the pain, and the suffering. What is the lesson? I am sure there is something profound here, that I need to know - before the time is up.

Today on Poila Boishakh, let me know what you already know Yama.

Peace out

The best I can give You
Is to take myself away,
However hard it is for You and me,
However illogical a decision it may seem.

The decision, although obvious to me,
Is so difficult to keep.
To suffer, to go away from You,
To stop wanting to coming back too.

You don't really help, You know
With eyes as beseeching as those.
Your words, always pragmatic, always right
Always showing me the better light.

You urge me to follow greatness
You appreciate my thinking beyond my years
All those words You spoke to dispel my fears
Now ring false to my ears.

Giving in is so easy then
To sit quietly in a group and observe You be,
To return whenever it is just too much,
To find excuses, reasons and as such.

But the best I can do for You or for me
Is to take myself away with a hope
That I will be strong enough to resist and bury
Whatever it is between You and me.

Tug of War

When Yama calls,
Everything human has to fail.
I stole some time from my time.
I have to get out now on borrowed bail.
When you do one thing
But your heart and soul lies elsewhere,
It's proper to be both proper or not,
And choose one over the other.
But what if it's a tug of war?
Heart and soul on opposite sides of the coin.
Times hold you back,
But time itself must go on.

Where are you.

In that time,
When it's not morning
And not even night,
When I am not asleep
And not quite awake,
I need to Know.
What if there are no signs,
No marks to show sign of life.
How does it matter.
To whom does it matter.
A question or a disaster.
There's no one to answer.
So I wander
Trying to find someone, something
That can solve the one question without a mark.
Why.

Sleep

The dark of the night
Mocks the emptiness of light.
I'd rather be in the dark
Than in the eyes of sight.
Pick me up, O Sleep,
Engulf me in dark.
Do I hear a sob?
Do I see a mark?
Turn off, turn off the light,
Lighting up a desolation so white.
It hurts my eyes to see
What could have been or could be.

A REVELATION

Sweeping aside His dark cloudy side,

He revealed eyes clear as azure.

Momentary transition it was for the lucky,

Who saw it, did, who didn't were left unsure.

Unsure of His colors, His persona,

His intent, His nature, His motive,

His beliefs, His truths, His lies,

His meditation, His pleasure, His grief.

But He let me witness His revelation

And I stood awestruck as He swept aside the mask.

And lo! Shone a sun brighter than molten liquid gold

And for few seconds, in the truth, He let me bask.