a forgetful poet

come back
ink my thoughts
don't disappoint my pen
and the few readers i have,
again.

my words await your texture
my lines forlorn your rhyme
tune my banal words
into a song,
sublime.

come back
if not for me
then for my musings
for no one likes a bland prose
and worse still,
a forgetful poet
who moved on

Prelude to a poem

The sky was grey and low. A dullness prevailed over the surroundings. Nothing moved except for the cold wind that scurried across trees to sweep away their dead leaves. Obstinate clouds had successfuly blocked the sun since morning and the sun after his initial attempts to peep out had retired and dimmed.The setting was perfect.It was a beautiful winter afternoon to write grim poems.

He opened a blank leaf of his notebook quickly and sat on his desk. Now it was just a matter of time, a patient wait for that moment of nausea to strike. A convulsion of emotions would stir inside him and in an uncontrolable fit he would vomit lines and spread them out on paper.

But not today, today his gloom desetred him. He could not conjure a single thought of melancholy on this perfect day. Restless, he had tried reading several passages of Master of Petersburg to catalyse his thoughts with grief. No reaction.The fact that his faculty of sadness had failed to utilize this opportune afternoon angered him bitterly. He could no longer be sad at his will.What had robbed him of this ability? What would he write now? It had taken so many great authors to convince him that only a great tragedy could infuse in his words a charm that would have a universal appeal. How could Rilke be wrong? Only after enforcing solitude and pondering over a tragedy would creativity find its roots in soul. Now all those hours of seclusion when he endured boredom seemed to have gone waste.He gave pondering one last try.

He read his previous poems.Since when had his thoughts slipped towards the dark and the gloomy.What had turned him so despondent, when did he convince himself that nothing signified anything.

He was very idealistic in his youth, he remembered. He was determined to display that his mind had a certain precociousness that education could not provide its pupil.With a dismissive air, he hid his hard work. He enjoyed practicing the obscure language of mathematics over white sheets in secret, it looked so systematic, so neat. He remembered his old desk, books piled up, notes tucked one leaf beneath the other.A youth fueled with idealism and discipline

He had also pasted one of his father's poem on the wall. What were the lines...he tried to reconstruct...

You cross your fingers if you want
i am going to sail my boat in the storm

empty lighthouse, fog or mist
i am not afriad of nature's fist
.... or dead albatross
nothing can stop me from faring across

...broken oars or broken mast
like polestar I'll stand steadfast
to catch the wind in my sail
and whistle my way....

You cross your fingers if you want
i am going to sail my boat in the storm

A shame he could not recollect the entire poem, all he remembered now were a few words glittering in green ink and his father's signature beneath.

This word,existence

what was it inside him? a rebel meekly struggling, an angst too weak to burst into vehemence.He hid it from this world by his routine, he yawned along with the others, day after day.He carried it inside him surreptitiously like an illegitimate zygote planted in his head.His morose moods had fed it for over an year. Today, it filled his body from the inside, covered all his organs with black tar. He felt it like an attack of nausea that would not subside. He could bear it no longer, he could not walk as if nothing had happened.It had to be rinsed out of his brain,ejaculated from his veins. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not let it go. It was a parasite he had fallen in love with. It was his creation, afterall.He had nurtured it in the darkest hours of his being, carefully putting thoughts behind his words, shaping it with ideas he coveted, reading it passages from books he loved.It had grown in his stupor,vegetated in his lethargy.It was this word,existence.

The winter morning mist

The blue smoke filled the room like the winter morning mist. What an unoriginal line he had just written. It hangs in the sky motionless. Another one. He could go on describing it, use his limited vocabulary, make a few paragraphs, draw a margin and fair it down in his notebook. Another second rate creation. However he chose to arrange his lines, they would not convey significance. They were more a outcome of boredom than a genuine interest, a meaningless chore to fill the two hours after dinner and to tire his mind enough for sleep. Never had he been consumed with an insurmountable urge, a moment of heightened passion when the pen etches on paper, an extension of the thought that erupts in the brain. Such sudden urges were confined to writers who sat on his table, mocking at his incompetence. Which angel blessed them? How could they write such beautiful lines, lines that carry a world in their words, lines that expose innermost secrets, lines that gave birth to the next one? Lines that resembled none in his notebook. He scratched his head and saw the blue smoke with a fresh perspective. It turned into ink and blotted everything he had written so far.

ode to the moons on your nails

if i could rewrite my poems
i would rewrite them all
not one has the words
that absolve my melancholy
not one has its root
in the crevices of my soul

if i could rewrite my poems
i would write more about nature
and only seldom about you
and not one would be titled
ode to the moons on your nails

if i could rewrite my poems
i would befriend solitude
more than my pen
and wait for each emotion
to age inside me
and find its graceful end

A Prose

For hours he had been sitting on his chair, with his hands on his head and eyes closed. His notebook and pen lay in front of him. He had been thinking about writing a poem.A brimming ashtray ,half written and stricken sentences bore testimony to the sincerity of his effort. What could he think that could turn into a poem? He mulled over his childhood, his youth, his daily routine for some inspiration. Nothing poetic came out of it.He observed his surroundings. A dim lit room, faint smell of tobacco,books that he had read many times, a ticking clock, an old fan with a worn out bearing, nothing peculiar, nothing fascinating enough to make him pick up his pen. Perhaps his flair was in writing prose.

Anonymous

Some feelings have no name for them

what do you feel?

when the cool mountain air
sweeps through your body and your spirit
declares- it is free and botherless.

when you lie outside in the winter sun
and bask in the warmth of ennui
without a care in the world.

when you read a line in a book
that enunciates a thought you had since long
and you stop to read it again.

when a childhood memory emerges
from the depths of your being
and you understand a part of yourself,
a little better.

when you remember a conversation
with an old friend
and a forgotten smile reaches your face

What do you call them?

when a thought lingers on your mind for days
and you ache for that moment of solitude
to find the right words
and turn it into a beautiful poem,like-
"She smelled the flowers
and knew she was in love."