A TRIBUTE : SHEL SILVERSTEIN

Not sharing a poetry of my own (for a change)..

This poem of Shel Silverstein reminded me of Charlie Chaplin for some apparent reason.. Maybe because of what he said very famously, "I love to cry when it rains for my tears would'nt be seen then.."

Or maybe it reminded me about all of us and our farce called life..

Here's to us.. CLOONY THE CLOWN

I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown
Who worked in a circus that came through town.
His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,
But he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.
He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes,
He had a green dog and a thousand balloons.
He was floppy and sloppy and skinny and tall,
But he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.
And every time he did a trick,
Everyone felt a little sick.
And every time he told a joke,
Folks sighed as if their hearts were broke.
And every time he lost a shoe,
Everyone looked awfully blue.
And every time he stood on his head,
Everyone screamed, "Go back to bed!"
And every time he made a leap,
Everybody fell asleep.
And every time he ate his tie,
Everyone began to cry.
And Cloony could not make any money
Simply because he was not funny.
One day he said, "I'll tell this town
How it feels to be an unfunny clown."
And he told them all why he looked so sad,
And he told them all why he felt so bad.
He told of Pain and Rain and Cold,
He told of Darkness in his soul,
And after he finished his tale of woe,
Did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no,
They laughed until they shook the trees
With "Hah-Hah-Hahs" and "Hee-Hee-Hees."
They laughed with howls and yowls and shrieks,
They laughed all day, they laughed all week,
They laughed until they had a fit,
They laughed until their jackets split.
The laughter spread for miles around
To every city, every town,
Over mountains, 'cross the sea,
From Saint Tropez to Mun San Nee.
And soon the whole world rang with laughter,
Lasting till forever after,
While Cloony stood in the circus tent,
With his head drooped low and his shoulders bent.
And he said,"THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT -
I'M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT."
And while the world laughed outside.
Cloony the Clown sat down and cried.

PARADIGM OF A WOMAN

Let this woman
Be like a wisp of
Cotton...

Burning in the fire of passion
Unto oblivion,

Soaking in the water of tears
to ripen
Unto vigour,

Dragged in the winds of change
and sands of friction
to remain white
with a puff of breath
and a form so intact,

Carrying the scent of the earth
Through the roots
she stemmed from,

Flower of a wormy soil
Wrapped on a beautiful body..

PARAPHERNALIA

Now we all love Lady Gaga , dont we??
And if not for her music, let us all broaden the horizons of our mindset and simply love her for the determination that she takes to not be ignored EVER!

Ok I started off with Gaga because I am listening to Alejandro, vaguely waiting for the writing bugs to bite me.. And then I am reminded of Neruda's 'Fleas interest me so much'!

Speaking of Neruda, if you simply want to relive the magic of love, do feast your eyes on some Nerud-esque love poems.. whether you are single or not! Even set a line for my friends on Facebook as my status, simply because (apart from that being quasi-trendy) I loved the dearth of pain and reality and the magnitude of simplicity in it..

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long"

Don't some of us so arrogantly speak of our resilience from a break up,as if none of this could ever affect the equilibrium of our world at all, yet in the same breath we gear up for bitterness and another adventure to avenge the previous failure and to supposedly relinquish the loneliness and void in our lives. Of course to not forget, the sideline activity of throwing the flak at the phenomenon for putrefying the very essence of humanity - happiness..

And that one line from Pablo Neruda was all that took to make me feel so small.

I once remember telling my friend, that I simply dont want to fall in love because I hate the stupidity that it instills in me.

Am I right? Time will tell.

But the suspended question that is pulling my head down is: " How long are you going to stay intelligent?"
Not forever of course, not this way..

If thinking is the logic behind evolution, feeling is the logic behind life..
And to feel one must possess the heart and the guts to open.. to try.. to love ..{A fact I always knew, but never applied}

I am at least glad that I do not know of any Anna Kareninas or Madame Bovarys personally myself, and I would like to believe that nobody is going to squander and die all for the sake of love ,making it , oh such a vice! And if there are souls like that still lingering around and are on the verge of getting themselves vaporised, I want to tell them : "Pal, its just fiction. Wake up!"

A few verses I penned today, dedicated to the emotion that has filled the bowls of curiosity and imagination of man since time immemorial. Might not make sense, but to each his {in this case her} poetry:

To watch her away
As once she belonged.

To be separated from her
As once she was the self.

To know another was thought of
As once she laughed with the self.

Between a few forced words
Hung sheets of silence
Rippling with doubts
Screaming of pride.

Untouched tenderness
Longing to never exist
In such winds unseen.

If this was a worser place
There wouldn't have been fullstops.

To share what is sacred
To feast on whats left behind.

The arrogance for one thing
You were sure about.

To shrink one's life
Its intents and contents
To this and maybe a little
More grams..

Love is the only pure impurity
Suspended on the dead man's ankles,
To suck him into the
Abyss of requiems.

I told a child..

ANOTHER RIPPED LEAF

Somewhere in you
There is a wish
Untold....
She is crying here, within your soul.
She is cold..

You have'nt given her yourself.
You have'nt let her know that,
You have been dreaming of her
All this while!

Like a man so old
Waiting for an unreturned love,
Counting those leaves
That the autumn tore away,
Of that old oak tree
Over there, in the horizon.

To know she was there right at home
Waiting for you with her big blue eyes
And her warm, deep bosom
Not anymore..

In the cold, your hard fingers clutch onto
The stick of notes and green piled dirt.
You called the game then, you played the game there,
A popular shot,
To loud applause.
Fists rammed on tables then
Spit wantoned from mouth to mouth,
As you marked the rules
As always followed
And rejoiced an often played win.

But do you know of the ecstasy,
Oh frail, wrinkled man!
When the rules,
All of them go wrong
And you set them right
Slash and scratch them
With that rusted nib
If it held the
Ink of blood
Red of Guts!

To bend them and unleash
The whip of truth!

And to burn that scripture
That imprisoned your love
Under the shadows of a long white cloak
Glass eyes that cast longer shadows,

In the pyre,
Where all your broken dreams
Were tried and they cried
As they withered and died..

To see those embers fume,
Like a soaring ghost
Into smoke of voices
Hailing for a revolt
To claim, fight, conquer and live,
A life with broken reins.

Oh no, you would'nt,
no!
For here you are,
Wrapped in black
Shedding tears over
A stone where the
Milk has already dried..
And the leaves trail a sorrow behind!

THE LEPER'S LUNCH

{ Inspired from a personal experience }

Yonder was a Wednesday noon
The October sky, up high
Pastels of blue, pinks
And golden hues
She beamed up high,

A siren of the 50s.

Her jewel brewed brine from
A frail body of mine,
A body played by
Life and her wits
To bits of veil,
Bought for a better marriage.

The heat balmed my flesh
Melancholy marred by monotony
I saw the grey craters of a rising moon
She, a faded pearl of the night,
Masking her golden nemesis of the sky
In beauty, worth, poetry and more.

I've walked down this murky path alone
Several times before, several times after now.
A shack that was once a home,
No more yellow canaries
To tweet me a bye.

My mind rumbled along with
The stones on which I tumbled.
To balance my youthful body
I immure my soul of its own.

Oh! Longing for a downpour of rains
To wet my body, to whet my appetite.
To slip down the road
And dance away the pains,
To live on this earth
Over the moon!

As my brains knotted along the road
To twisted revelations,
Of this, friends, strangers and ghosts;
Trying to keep my left
Yet, to be reminded
by honks and bonks and the dust in my conks.
To enact a life
We chose to know
And chose to see,
I chanced upon this small brown man,
Frowned with age, bound with bondage
To a friend that loves
To slowly feast on his flesh!

I think he is a midget,
Seized at the corners by shun.
Pulled down by the grimaces
Of a thousand faces
Known, unknown,loved and disliked,
That saw not beyond
A receding man in a yellow rag.

He looked like a creature
Out of the huge yellow box
Fishing out a pack
Of unopened fried rice..

Rich man's waste, a leper's joy tonight.

And with the smile of a child
Whose eyes held delight
A novice to the fair,
He squat on the ground
Crazed by his joy,
Nimbly guarding his feast
With little nibbled fingers
Which once held, stroked and played
Every face of love!

No more in his world was
You anymore than I
Glutton gnawing in the glory.
The eyes that watched him
He uncalled for.

For he who woke up to a sunrise and
Roamed the streets under a sky,
Unclad feet, uncared for
In the heat and cold alike.
Senseless.
Baseless.
Comfortably numb.
No random thoughts, to hang on.
Nobody to own
And to be belonged.
A stone for a bed
And the shadows of night his cover.

I, a slave of my rants
A queen of supposed laughters
A loud woman who pitied none but me
Heavily kohled eyes
Woke up to a blinding light.

The sun finally rose in the daze of
An unsettling mind
to love, capture, give and shine!
As it sank into the sky
Dropping a kiss sublime..

FOR YOU..

Folks, friends, and the rest of my dear ones!

Before hitting the sack and spending another sleepless night, tossing, turning and pondering about colorful tomorrows (ah! the woes of 20's) I would like you all to know that today I was: A)supposed to finish off with a book,
B)supposed to find & learn new words (what's that study called, anyways??),
C)supposed to do a write up,
D)supposed to think straight and deep
E)supposed to breathe straight and deep
F)supposed to perceive the depth and beauty of every moment of life and lastly and less leastly,(dont I love improvising!)
G)supposed to etch them all in my memories.

I am ,in short, supposedly setting draining deadlines on a petite 25 year old, rather pale looking girl with eyes as tired as that of a doctor's (now that is what I call a coincidence!)

I began conversations with my friends, asking them whether they were prepared for the upcoming APOCALYPSE. So for today my appetite on Doomsday is whet.
Just signed in to ,however, share a few verses I randomly wrote on the paper back of Madame Bovary (Err.. Emma has got nothing to do with this). So here I go, yet once again ;)


" And the stranger loved
Her beauty and its shadow alike.

For reckon he did,
If not her eyes
Pools of unknown,
Dark oils of the Arabian lamps
Black as magic
Beautiful as her mind,

There is nothing in the world
To unlock
The chambers of his heart
To the light of his soul.. "

Name my verses whatever you want it to be known as..

Till then
...Lets sleep over love!

THE CAGE OF TIME

Who am I, but a soulful mist
Trapped in the cage of time,
Clutching the rusting bars of the cage
With old, gnarled fingers
Looking at the world with poor eyes and parched lips
That only knows to smile a faint smile.

At mad men, colourful women
Pulps of power and lust
Driven by a colourful rainbow of lies.

At people who celebrate their lives
With confettis and balloons and smiles,
When miles and miles deep down them
They know, yet know not,
That too they are trapped
In brittle cages like mine.

For there is and has never been,
None ever, escaping out from
The cages of time.

STILL KITCHEN KURSED! BUT BETTER..

For most of us food is a delight. A passion for some of us. A necessity for all of us. A nemesis for the most weird of us. The last of which I believe is rare (hopefully!)

To me food, ranks in the first order of my interests. The next-s being movies and literature. I remember not quite, from when on my love for food and its smell and its sight and its thoughts seeded in. I believe, if genetics are anything to go by, I have my father a lot to thank for. Although, as mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I have not quite inherited culinary skills as much but of course the epicurean in me is and will always be optimistic that some fine, bright day the world will be a lovelier place to live in and I will be able to put up a banquet myself for a rather massive crowd. Okay let me reduce that, to a couple of guests at home (whoever said, DREAM BIG?!)

My love for food extends to every single cookery show I can manage to catch up on the television, sans a barrier for language, every single article and recipe I read in the magazines to churn out a possibly delicious "delight", every picture of food in its various colours and textures and shapes and presentations taken from close shots, which instantly does take the viewer's taste buds and brains unto its control. But of course, when it comes to putting my love into practice, I am still the baby of the family, maybe owing to their health issues, maybe owing to their "palatable" memories, maybe owing to their idleness as far as culinary adventures are concerned and maybe owing to cost concerns.

So today I pray to God, as in every day, please make my day come some day, so that the third blog I write on food (sorry, couldnt help myself) wouldn't be restricted to dreams which just remain dreams, sweet, sour, spicy and salty at that!

FOR A BETTER TOMORROW : FROM TODAY

Hmm.. so we have a lot on our platter today seemingly, what with an early afternoon jolter tsunami in Japan, humbling the humanity yet once again, showing how everything can be unceasingly destroyed by Nature without it giving a second thought, where man's power, wit and will is futile. what began as a calm and sunny Friday morning in Japan and ended to be a draining,homeless and numb night sparked with fears for the people there, and yet many more nights to come like that. But interestingly enough, the footages did indicate out one thing: that an essential crowd of Japanese are very calm and controlled people who of course, maybe right from their childhood days were trained for such calamities. And as my Dad observed, things will fall into place in weeks over there, what with facilities for news broadcasting and Internet already being made available. But were it to happen in a country like India, where in this context I refrain from using any controversial adjective,the plight would have not known any fathom!I dont want to repeat the preceding causes and the 8th grade civics-economics "Vicious Cycle" theory here because I am sure my readers (if there are any) would be very well aware of it.

Apart from natural calamities,if we take a look at this year, the onset itself was eventful, for some reasons distressing for some other reasons victorious. In the calling for democracy, Libya has rivers of blood flowing through her but at the same time earlier this month, Egypt and Tunisia conceded into its peoples demands.
Then of course there were the devastating quakes in New Zealand and China but I really do not want the year to look pessimistic and pleading already. May all of their souls rest in peace. Amen!
Since I plan on giving you a quick conclusion to this post, as it is only March 12th of 2011, I would like to narrate out what I precisely felt when I saw an airplane, a mighty one in the sky, with red, green and golden lights and tail and wings, like a regal blue bird, the prince of the sky tonight (er,excuse the poet in me). This beautiful, path twisting, future defining invention of mankind meets the end of its glory if Nature proposes to intervene a less mightier bird, God's own creation for the skies, in its way.
Int that case, who wins here: Nature's small bird or Man's Giant one?
Let us all remember, that Nature is a silent watcher, a patient bearer and a ruthless killer. Love her, respect her. Live and let live!

Vibina - POETRY CHAIN (INDIA)

Vibina - POETRY CHAIN (INDIA)

A DAY FOR EVERYDAY

MARCH 8 ~ GLOBALLY CELEBRATED AS INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY




08/03/2011:
So I celebrated my version of Woman's (or is it Women's?) Day by doing, what many men out there, would consider a real woman's JOB as they put it, cooking( something which I have'nt done in months). I spend my day toiling in the kitchen to make a decent simple dish of dal, rice, fish and beans only to open the kitchen door and have my father, semi-enthusiastically, mention out to me, that it is International Woman's Day. Why he said this, the precise reason I am still unaware of. Perhaps he'd thought that I had forgotten about it just like how I had forgotten to tell him that drinking water was over the other day. You know, as a matter of fact.

To which I responded, "So?"

Really, who came up with this concept of having a Day for every day? Some ludicruously bored soul or a highly intelligent being who never had a grasp on dates, but on events and henceforth wanted to master them all, dates???

And while doing the dishes, I was thinking about that woman who has been rejected a euthanasia after 37 years of lying in a vegetative state with nobody to care for her save a friend who'd probably got a deeper psychological insight into a lesser suspended state of the mind of the victim. If Aruna Shambaug's rapist could walk away with seven rigorous years of imprisonment for committing a crime of this order of passion, then probably we should think twice the next time we, as women, wish each another "HAPPY WOMENS DAY TO ALL MY BEAUTIFUL GALS OUT THERE".

We preach about the greatness of being a woman standing on a platform of thorns which include human trafficking, sexual exploitation, inequality in terms of unemployment and ruling-the-roost, inability to make a firm decision in the household, deprivation of nutrition and education equally. Pages can be written quoting instances as to how a womb in certain circumstances can be considered a bane. A fifteen year old being maimed for life to escape an attempt of being gang raped by a group of men "brimming with youth" portrays how far we have allayed ourselves of discrimination against the fairer sex. Or recently, closer to roots,last year when the "50% seat reservation for women rule" was implemented in the Panchayat elections it was indeed interesting to hear how some coy women candidates were eager to hand over the steering wheels to their husbands and content enough in posing themselves as poster girls essentially because 'Its worldly affairs- its a man's job' agenda was the slogan of the campaign, a public secret at that.If religious scriptures can categorise women among the ranks of lower beings, my question to God is : "Did you really tell that?"

The main reason as to why every feat a women achieves is lauded is owing to the fact that its clearly still a man's world out there. We work, we take care, we nurture. Some of them do it with humility while some of them add 'Mother'also to their professional designations. Obscenity knows no height then. This is where we degrade ourselves as women.

To quote a thoughtful one " Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." To know that equality has only come to this far in 21st century is disheartening. We dream and have ambitions, not because we are a man or a woman but because we have a spirit. And having such Days to earmark the nobility of a woman just makes the men think " Ah there they go again!" Do we need that? Not me..

Because it is, no matter how much ever You and I try dissuading it away from our thoughts, a man's world out there, at least as long as a man ceases asking his woman counterpart " Hey do you know how to cook?" .

For the time being I am quite happy listening to Enrique's "To love a woman" every now and then to know how truly beautiful it is, also, to be a woman.

A MYSTERIOUS LOVER

She lay on her shrivelled bed
Her thoughts hung inside,
Oh! the warmth of darkness
Isn't that a joy of life!
Yet uncovered, yet unrelished, yet mysterious
As the cape he dons.

Like an aimless shooting star
She flew, trying to
Look for meanings
In old and new.

Hands up high were
Guiding the lights of wit
In a creation where, her
Womb held lives yet
To come, grace and conquer.

And be hailed as the Kings and Queens
Of this dark, dark moonlight!

BIZARRE

I am not a natural beginner. No, not even while socialising do I take the initiative to give a, if seemingly false, warm HI. Thus reflected in my writings.

So as I stare through the template before me, rubbing an already dissipated moisturiser into my sweaty hands [!] I sit wondering about a grafitti of things. How weird it is, is upto you to decide..
Slavery, hypocrisy, Colin Firth as H.G.Wells in a sci-fi drama, dishonesty, the stigma of pretension, the volume of my father's snores from the other room, sweaty hands. Ok, the list is endless.

There is nothing faster than the human mind. And nothing more absurd. And the very fact that it could be revealed from the way I began this post to how I am continuing it now without a direction and to where I might be taking this to [ something which I myself am unaware about ] is quite disturbing, yet engaging if you are in the mood to introspect on its meanders and decide to write on it, of course!

So I sat and wondered. And wondered. And wondered.

And my brain proved to be yet another unfaithful partner. When I needed her, she goes in for white-blank meditation. Or am I really meditating. Then why do I hear my neighbours talk. Or why do I think about the sudden cease of my father's snores. Or why have I been unlucky enough to think that I have been unlucky in life.. ?? A long night drive? A cold milk shake?

I am too young to give people matter of justification as to why our brains behave like wild-child(s). Perhaps it is pure curiosity, perhaps pure idleness, sometimes purer dejection of the way life has turned out to be for us individually, thereby resorting to fantasies and the rest of it all except our lives, of course. But I do know that as long as the theory humans have evolved from monkeys stand on, all of us shall have our neuronal networks on fire unceasing!

{ If you think this article was supposed to make any sense, then you, my friend, are intelligent! }