Free Speech

I am not liking this thing called free speech.
It is giving spouse reason to phone all
friends and make discuss politics and call
all netas bad names like blood-sucking leech.
Why he not thinking when the news will reach
police they come to house - all six feet tall,
pehelwan type - and mercilessly haul
him from hiding in cupboard and will teach
lesson with dandas he will not forget?
Who is spending money in hospital
And making chakkar of court-kacheri?
Then after all that will our daughter get
Groom from good family and capital?
All this free speech talk making me wary.

(a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a-c-d-e-c-d-e)

To His Eyes

Those eyes, those eyes. Seductive bloody eyes of yours,
I need a shower every time they look at me,
Just to sizzle out the mental pornography
And stop myself from begging, drooling on all fours
Dammit, they make me follow you, sneak behind doors -
An Adonis-possessed, voyeuristic zombie
Trapped in their twinkling I lose the will to be free -
Those eyes, those eyes. Seductive bloody eyes of yours

Let me have my night's sleep you enticing bastard,
And I want darkness when I close my eyes, not those
Eyelashes summoning me to rank surrender.
So now that you've got me absolutely mastered
You can switch off that magnetism, I suppose
And come and hold me closer, tighter you fucker.

(a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-e-c-d-e)

City of Dreadful Night

Bodies sweat in the heaving crowd:
Hunger, anger, anxiety, thirst
Mixing with smoke, diesel and dust,
Stranded commuters curse aloud.
The night surrounds them like a shroud
Their day like all the others cursed
Their ambitions eaten by rust
Stuck in a jam, their heads are bowed.

*
Microwaved food, conditioned air,
Cold water and LCD screens:
Building a personal paradise
In a suburban nameless lair
I make for myself pleasant scenes
and dream on till the sun shall rise.

(a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-e-c-d-e)

Fat, bald and sonneteering

I'm fat, bald and sonneteering,
Confused, half-bewildered fool,
With love's games you're engineering
My naivete as your tool.

My dandruff does not bother you.
You loudly claim indifference
To my moustache and tummy too.
For looks you claim no reverence.

But you do stare at shampoo ads,
At supermodels' six-pack abs;
You follow all new hairstyle fads
And miss no chance for elbow jabs.

So do I trust your words or eyes,
For what is truth and which are lies?

(a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g)

Mothers

'Who poisoned my boy? Who poisoned my boy?'
She goes around asking everyone.
In her arms the rigid corpse of her son,
Paralysed arms still clutching his last toy.
Hollow glassy eyes stripped naked of joy
Relentlessly repeating their question.
Answers to which she bore on her person -
Her own guilt that madness will not destroy.

Pieces of bread soaked in insecticide
She fed the puppies with great tenderness.
'They'll infect my child' she smilingly said
To the tail-wagging bitch who stood beside.
'Lest he get some incurable illness,
'Tis best I kill off your children instead.'

(a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-e-c-d-e)

Borodino

Purple satin cushions blemished with blood;
Likewise the golden cup crusted with gore;
Velvet carpeting disfigured with mud;
Crystal chandeliers that tinkle no more.
Amidst all he lay – his body putrid –
Chevrons proclaiming: base common soldier.
Crawling with maggots, in his neck buried:
A golden dagger, prize for his valour.

The sabre that cut him was now at last
Ornamented — with noble blood drying;
Wailing and gasping for glories now past,
Thrashing in gloom the marshal lay dying.
One among hundreds with no pomp or show,
His medallioned breast still outshone the snow.

(a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d e-f-e-f-g-g)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Borodino#Casualties)

To S

A neuron fires: his thick glasses come into view;
A synapse transmits: his silly laughter rings out;
Axon meets dendrite: that's me learning something new,
For now there's lots of him I yearn to know about.

Currents so tiny they cannot even be felt
Overwhelm me - his awkward grace, his gleeful smile;
He's not there
yet he's seen, he's held, he's touched, he's smelt.
The circuit loops on - it's him, him, him all the while.

The sight of him trigger's my brain's reward pathway
In ways that chocolate or alcohol will not
Anymore; my survival instincts shooed away
As he seems to take over every nerve I've got.

The heartbeat rises as enlightenment kicks in:
It's love's electrostatic torrent that I'm in.

(a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g)