Dil Akhir tu kyon rota hai?

जब जब दर्द का बादल छाया

जब गम का साया लहराया

जब आँसू पलकों तक आया

जब ये तनहा दिल घबराया

हम ने दिल को ये समझाया

दिल आखिर तू क्यों रोता है?

दुनिया में यूहीं होता है

ये जो गहरे सन्नाटे हैं

वक्त ने सबको ही बांटे हैं

थोड़ा गम है सबका किस्सा

थोड़ी धूप है सबका हिस्सा 

आँख तेरी बेकार ही नम है

हर पल एक नया मौसम है

क्यों तू ऐसे पल खोता है?

दिल आखिर तू क्यों रोता है?

A letter from Santa

Courtesy Bill Watterson

My hands were all shaky,
My face had gone pale.
A letter from Santa
Just arrived in the mail!

It was hand-written
In old-fashioned ink pen.
It was handsomely printed
And dated twelve ten.

“Dear Calvin,” it said,
“I’m writing because
This year I’ve repealed
My ‘Naughty/Nice’ laws.”

“So now, I urge you:
Be vulgar and crude!
I LIKE it when children
Are boorish and rude!”

“Burp at the table!
Gargle your peas!
Never say ‘thank you’,
‘you’re welcome’ or ‘please’.”

“Talk back to your mother!
Don’t do as you’re told!
Stick your tongue out
At your dad if he scolds!”

“Drive everyone crazy,
I really don’t care!
Act like a jerk,
Anytime, anywhere!”

“I’m changing the rules!
The BAD girls and boys
Will be, from now on,
The ones who get toys!”

“Good little kids make
Me sick, it’s no joke.
Sincerely, signed Santa.”.
..And then I awoke.

I hate being good
(or trying to fake it).
Six days until Christmas!

I don’t think I’ll make it.

One of us cannot be wrong

I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.
But the room just filled up with mosquitoes,
they heard that my body was free.
Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night
and I put it in your little shoe.
And then I confess that I tortured the dress
that you wore for the world to look through.
I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit.
Then he wrote himself a prescription,
and your name was mentioned in it!
Then he locked himself in a library shelf
with the details of our honeymoon,
and I hear from the nurse that he's gotten much worse
and his practice is all in a ruin.

I heard of a saint who had loved you,
so I studied all night in his school.
He taught that the duty of lovers
is to tarnish the golden rule.
And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
he drowned himself in the pool.
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
his spirit continues to drool.

An Eskimo showed me a movie
he'd recently taken of you:
the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
and I guess he just never got warm.
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
oh please let me come into the storm.

To This Day

When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
Were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
And because my grandmother thought it was cute
And because they were my favourite
She let me keep doing it

Not really a big deal

One day
Before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
And bruised the right side of my body

I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
Because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
For playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been

A few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
And I got sent to the principal’s office
From there I was sent to another small room
With a really nice lady
Who asked me all kinds of questions
About my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
As far as I was concerned
Life was pretty good
I told her, “Whenever I’m sad
My grandmother gives me karate chops”

This led to a full scale investigation
And I was removed from the house for three days
Until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
And I earned my first nickname

Pork Chop

To this day
I hate pork chops

I’m not the only kid
Who grew up this way
Surrounded by people who used to say
That rhyme about sticks and stones
As if broken bones
Hurt more than the names we got called
And we got called them all
So we grew up believing no one
Would ever fall in love with us
That we’d be lonely forever
That we’d never meet someone
To make us feel like the sun
Was something they built for us
In their tool shed
So broken heart strings bled the blues
As we tried to empty ourselves
So we would feel nothing
Don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
That an ingrown life
Is something surgeons can cut away
That there’s no way for it to metastasize

It does

She was eight years old
Our first day of grade three
When she got called ugly
We both got moved to the back of the class
So we would stop get bombarded by spit balls
But the school halls were a battleground
Where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
We used to stay inside for recess
Because outside was worse
Outside we’d have to rehearse running away
Or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
In grade five they taped a sign to her desk
That read beware of dog

To this day
Despite a loving husband
She doesn’t think she’s beautiful
Because of a birthmark
That takes up a little less than half of her face
Kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
That someone tried to erase
But couldn’t quite get the job done
And they’ll never understand
That she’s raising two kids
Whose definition of beauty
Begins with the word mom
Because they see her heart
Before they see her skin
That she’s only ever always been amazing

He
Was a broken branch
Grafted onto a different family tree
Adopted
But not because his parents opted for a different destiny
He was three when he became a mixed drink
Of one part left alone
And two parts tragedy
Started therapy in 8th grade
Had a personality made up of tests and pills
Lived like the uphills were mountains
And the downhills were cliffs
Four fifths suicidal
A tidal wave of anti depressants
And an adolescence of being called popper
One part because of the pills
And ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
He tried to kill himself in grade ten
When a kid who still had his mom and dad
Had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
Is something that can be remedied
By any of the contents found in a first aid kit

To this day
He is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
Could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
In the moments before it’s about to fall
And despite an army of friends
Who all call him an inspiration
He remains a conversation piece between people
Who can’t understand
Sometimes becoming drug free
Has less to do with addiction
And more to do with sanity

We weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
To this day
Kids are still being called names
The classics were
Hey stupid
Hey spaz
Seems like each school has an arsenal of names
Getting updated every year
And if a kid breaks in a school
And no one around chooses to hear
Do they make a sound?
Are they just the background noise
Of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
When people say things like
Kids can be cruel?
Every school was a big top circus tent
And the pecking order went
From acrobats to lion tamers
From clowns to carnies
All of these were miles ahead of who we were
We were freaks
Lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
Oddities
Juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
Trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
But at night
While the others slept
We kept walking the tightrope
It was practice
And yeah
Some of us fell

But I want to tell them
That all of this shit
Is just debris
Leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
We used to be
And if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
Get a better mirror
Look a little closer
Stare a little longer
Because there’s something inside you
That made you keep trying
Despite everyone who told you to quit
You built a cast around your broken heart
And signed it yourself
You signed it
“They were wrong”
Because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a clique
Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
To show and tell but never told
Because how can you hold your ground
If everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
You have to believe that they were wrong

They have to be wrong

Why else would we still be here?
We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
Because we see ourselves in them
We stem from a root planted in the belief
That we are not what we were called
We are not abandoned cars stalled out and
Sitting empty on a highway
And if in some way we are
Don’t worry
We only got out to walk and get gas
We are graduating members from the class of
Fuck off we made it
Not the faded echoes of voices crying out
Names will never hurt me

Of course
They did

But our lives will only ever always
Continue to be
A balancing act
That has less to do with pain
And more to do with beauty.

- Shane Koyczan

Eclipse

I set myself ablaze and shine
Illuminate the darkest part
of you; that guilty, smothered sign
of longing by a desperate heart.

You lock your doors and draw the blinds
And paper up the skylight too
and shut your eyes and drown in lies
But still my light keeps shining through.

It comes to pass, your doubts and fears
They overrun and blur your sight
The sudden wrath, the unshed tears
Make you lash out with all your might.

You douse me with your pent up bile
and then deride with jeers and quips
So now i burn in darkness vile
You've proven to be my eclipse

A physicist's apology

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

The Christmas from hell..

This is what comes out of having to work Christmas eve..


'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The box files were stacked by the cartons with care,

In hopes that the client wont find them there;

The errors were nestled all safe out of sight,

While visions of reviews kept me up through the night;

The manager was in a frenzy, the files in my lap,

My eyes they were bloodshot, in need of a nap,

When in the finance bay there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my seat to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But the psychotic CFO, who was drawing near.

With an odd kind of gait, slithery and quick,
I knew in a moment it must that dick.

More rapid than eagles the VP's they came,
And he cussed, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Bakshi! now, Misra! now, Datta and Verma!
Oye, Prakash! Abe, Kumar! Arre, D'souza and Sharma!"

"Hide under your desk! Dive behind the wall!"
From all around me rose such frantic calls.

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So in to the store room the Finance team flew,
With eyes ablaze, the CFO followed too.

And then, quite an uproar, I heard from within
The screaming and pleading and confessing of sins.

As I lowered my head, and was turning around,
Out the store room that blighter came with a bound.

A folder of pink slips he flung on the rack,
And recited the names of the ones getting sacked.

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He was fuming and frowning, a right scary sight,
And I shivered when I saw him, overcome by fright;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had plenty to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fired all the slackers; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his signature aside of the sheet,
And giving a nod, he rose to his feet;

He sprang out the door, his team breathed relief,
And away they all flew some overcome with grief.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he walked out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

(Untitled)

I’ll write us a happy ending

Because it was meant to be that way.

Because great love is always enough

And parting is only the beginning of a new chapter.

I’ll write us a happy ending

Because they deserve it.

That confused green eyed girl

And scared

Floppy haired

Little boy.

I’ll write us a happy ending

With no room for fear

And no need for lies.

With madness and melody

And motorcycle rides.

I’ll write us a happy ending

Alone as I am

and shall be

You showed me a world

of fairies and goblins

And stories that needn’t come true

For one to believe.

I’ll write us a happy ending

An ever after

If only on paper and in my head

Because we deserve it.

That confused green eyed girl

And scared

Floppy haired

Little boy.

State of mind..

The key to forgetting,
Someone said,
Was to start small
Like your keys, your library books

To stop making associations
Like the way you smell
That song you loved
Your favorite term of endearment

Lie (to myself)
I will see you again, Its not really over
We would have been great together
(And to you) I hate you

Throw away the random things
That we made together
That business card, the red dragon tissues
The newspaper we read on Sunday

Then to get to the point of forgetting
To stop seeing you everywhere
To spend a few idle moments, 
Without caressing you with my thoughts

My cardboard boxes are packed
I await the empty space
That comes with forgetting
The way you loved me


For the original and more please visit : http://thedragonreborn.blogspot.com

Incidence

Who looks straight through but cannot see,
Who looks at me and looks like me.
Who never blinks till I permit,
Who does exist but can never be.

written in one of my more existential moments right after a hot shower that fogged up the mirror.. 

The Infantryman

In memory of the man who personified grit. Here's to the eternal soldier.
When it was victory, 
the cavalier claimed it outright, 
the gunner boasted of his calibre, 
the engineer and signalman publicised their worth, 
but the infantryman stood silent with victory at his feet.

Insomnia..

I dreamed of you last night.
of a lingering, hopeless wait.
with hours spinning across the clockface
and pages peeling off my calender

I dreamed of you last night
of all the things you are,
of everything that brings you closer,
everyday, and makes me smile.
Though not without that twinge.
Of newsprint and night,
and musical abandon.

I dreamed of you last night.

of a lingering, hopeless wait.

that is now a part of me.

He either fears his fate too much, 
Or his deserts are small, 

That puts it not unto the touch. 

To win or lose it all.
Days until redemption - 73.

Bob Dylan Blues..

What comes close, really?
Nothing bothers me now.
It seems now, your eyes have left me here,
Like life leaves a dying man.

You're everything I had.
You're everything I lost.

I remember that fateful night,
It was raining outside.
My heart, wet and cold, craved comfort.
Shelter was what I sought,
Shelter, what I found in you.
Your eyes gave me reason to live.

You're everything I lost.

But the cue card says "Ramble On"
One cant just sit and muse.

You're everything I had.
You're everything I lost.

But then again, like the man said.
"when you ain't got nothing,
you got nothing to lose"

Jingle bell blues..

I'm miles away from home and hearth
I have, of late, lost all my mirth
To my world I'm quite forgotten, I fear.
Yes, Christmas is the loneliest time of the year.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

W.B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above
Those I fight I do not hate
Those I guard I do not love
My country is Kiltartan's Cross
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before
No law, nor duty bade me fight
No public man, nor cheering crowds
A lonely impulse of delight
Led to this tumult in the clouds
I balanced all, borught all to mind
The years to come seemed waste of breath
A waste of breath, the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Void.

Empty vases
Empty cases
Empty cages
Smudged out pages

Vacant plots
Vacant lots
Vacant looks
Hidden nooks

Placid lakes
Placid flakes
Placid thoughts
Iron wroughts

Their void is felt
the feeling dealt
what once was is broken and long gone
Empty spaces linger on

The anthem..

This goes out to all the poor souls (including me) who've had to suffer at the hands of the vicious and sadistic pit of hell that is the ICAI.. I pray for salvation, this time around..

Fight Fight,
Never surrender..
After May,
There comes November..

Where there's a will,
There's always a way..
After November,
There's always May..

The Haunted Tram

By Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

Ghosts of The Towers, The Grange, The Court,
Ghosts of the Castle Keep.
Ghosts of the finicking,"high-life" sort
Are growing a trifle cheap.

But here is a spook of another stamp,
No thin, theatrical sham,
But a spectre who fears not dirt nor damp:
He rides on a London tram.

By the curious glance of a mortal eye
He is not seen. He's heard.
His steps go a-creeping, creeping by,
He speaks but a single word.

You may hear his feet:you may hear them plain,
For--it's odd in a ghost--they crunch.
You may hear the whirr of his rattling chain,
And the ting of his ringing punch.

The gathering shadows of night fall fast;
The lamps in the street are lit;
To the roof have the eerie footsteps passed,
Where the outside passengers sit.

To the passenger's side has the spectre paced;
For a moment he halts, they say,
Then a ring from the punch at the unseen waist,
And the footsteps pass away.

That is the tale of the haunted car;
And if on that car you ride
You won't, believe me, have journeyed far
Ere the spectre seeks your side.

Ay, all unseen by your seat he'll stand,
And (unless it's a wig) your hair
Will rise at the touch of his icy hand,
And the sound of his whispered "Fare!"

At the end of the trip, when you're getting down
(And you'll probably simply fly!)
Just give the conductor half-a-crown,
Ask who is the ghost and why.

And the man will explain with bated breath
(And point you a moral) thus:
"'E's a pore young bloke wot wos crushed to death
By people as fought
As they didn't ought
For seats on a crowded bus."

Verse Libre is the devil..

To write in verse,
you know it,
it often takes much time.
Its the curse
of every poet
to find a word that rhymes.

With 'moon' and 'June'
exhausted
and 'wine' paired up with 'sign'.
his ambition soon
is thwarted
to add another line

A desperate man
he'll try to
rhyme 'know' with 'how'.
His most ardent fan
would cry too,
"Alas, a dirty trick, I trow."

A poets bane
however,
is easy to divine
Its when he's vain,
not clever
and ends the last but one line,
With 'purple'..

Insomnia

I dreamed of you last night
of the resolves that seem futile
and the mirrors that just dont lie
of castles that came crumbling down
and balloons popped unceremoniously in my face

I dreamed of you last night
your words cutting into me,
like the shards I've known before.
It was different this time.
I did not bow down.
The weight was lifted.
The penance served.
of all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these,
'It might have been'
But you were too blind to see
This time, my love,
you did not hold on.
This time around,
it wasn't me.