The Reckless Sonneteer

Free Speech

2012-01-29T23:51:00.000-08:00

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

2011-09-17T10:56:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-15T02:29:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-12T08:00:00.001-08:00

'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

2011-03-04T04:43:00.001-08:00

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

2011-03-03T01:20:00.001-08:00

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)

Let's play

2010-12-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

With Srebrenica and Prizren,
old Banja Luka shot to fame:
the grounds for a jolly new game,
played over and over again.
The rule was to chop a man when
he had a good Bosniak surname;
If he had a Serb-sounding name,
the rule was to rape his women.

Let's find a foe, make his blood spill,
and gloat over his dying scream;
we will emerge victors won't we?
To build muscles, to bolster will,
to strengthen the bonds of the team,
let's play genocide, you and me.

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

A Wanderer's Funeral

2010-06-21T00:26:00.000-07:00

I come at last to a wanderer's grave,
My sexton is the vulture's jaw;
In open field or cloistered cave,
He'll bury me by the wanderer's law.

The buzzing flies will make up my shroud,
As the wind howls my death lament.
They chant my rites clear and loud
While I convulse through my last torment.

The wanderer at last shall come to stay,
In the maggot's fattening zest.
As my tissues ferment away,
May I think I've found eternal rest?

But for peace I shall pray in vain,
For my bones roll on upon the plain.

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

Canto Caligulae

2010-04-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

What wondrous miracle a human neck is!
Divine, slender, lissome; a bridge to connect
The heart's beating passion with analysis,
From the cold, calculating brain; a perfect
Feature of Paris, Anubis, or Isis;
That vulnerable, captivating effect
Of David's ponderous marble poise - his
veins as they stand out for a knife to transect;

Does it not tempt the hand to reach out and clasp
Between the palms, and feel the throat convulsing,
Pulsating wildly, in its desperate gasp
To break free; Or would it be deemed revulsing
To gloat as slit veins leak blood and hear the rasp
Of the dying, as one's own nerves are pulsing?

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

To Mary Anning

2010-04-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

"She sells seashells on the seashore"
Is all we remember of her.
Not that she found the pterosaur
Nor that she was a Dissenter.

She had a talent for finding
Whole skeletons of dinosaurs.
She made her living by selling
Ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.

Wrong class, wrong sex, wrong religion
- Doomed her to be a peasant woman.
All the fame and recognition
Went to idle wealthy gentlemen.

But now we're finally giving
The credit due to Mary Anning.

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

(She deserves a far better poet; she gets me)

Escape

2010-03-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

A gunshot in the temple, tempered by cocaine;
Barbiturates, so honeyed dreams shall never fade;
Or seppuku and its seizing, searing pain
As tenderly nurtured flesh meets the whetted blade;

Plunge a dagger into one's own neck, and wailing
Screeching, screaming qualis artifex pereo;
Or must it be by self-immolation, flailing,
Buckling, gyrating in an obscene rodeo;

Fall upon one's sword, or trust one's loyal maiden
To smuggle in an asp and to it surrender;
Perhaps a ripened apple, cyanide-laden
To exit without pain, and go out in splendour;

Which is it truly, the most beautiful way
To pass into freedom, and escape from today?

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

Ode to a Trolley Dolly

2010-03-23T23:11:00.001-07:00

By all means you should be pushing a trolley
Twenty-one thousand feet in the air, your face
Plastered with creams of all kinds - Chinese holly,
Acai berry, ginseng - ground into pomace,
That overlaid with rouge and baby powder
Till your beauty cannot scream any louder
And yet gilded with lipstick and mascara,
Guaranteed to make you look an apsara.

But you choose to inflict that upon mortals
In some attempt to inveigle them into
Parting with money; while you thought it was true
That your MBA learning opened portals.

And we children of a lesser god look on
The principles that the Higher Gods work on.

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

A rural schoolboy's revolt OR An antipastorale

2009-11-02T09:21:00.001-08:00

Who prefers to have flies in his bedchamber?
Or for that matter, all manner of insects?
How romantic to consider the prospects
Of a cricket's chirps that rob one of slumber?
Yes, the stars are bright and the grass is tender,
Arcadian dreams are gay in many respects;
Yet lying in Elysian fields one suspects
That adders do not make for sweet surrender.

It is much to the credit of Tennyson
And other fools of the English Lake District
To pen rhymes for - a cloud, a lark, a peasant
By the fireside in their stately mansions
But who asks the cottar before they depict
A fancied idyll that only sounds pleasant?

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

Dear Jane

2009-06-12T08:21:00.001-07:00

There exist such poems in your eyes dear,
Such as would endow the mundane with wonder.
You are the Muse to whom I must surrender,
For none of my own verses could come near.
Together we've seen joy, despair and fear,
You're my pupil, my guide, my child, my mother.
As eternal friend there could be no other,
But there is some news that you ought to hear.

Her eyes! Her eyes! They seem to hide something sad.
She writes worse than you, I concede that, but then,
Possessive longing, vain anxious desire
Was a feeling between us we never had.
We could remain soulmates till such time as when,
You choose to commit my poems to fire.

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

Sonnet for Karbala

2009-05-19T09:54:00.001-07:00

I call out from the grand mosque's slim minaret,
"Allahu Akbar, faithful come to prayer"
At Karbala, site of the Imam's slaughter,
Where Muslims come to repent their sins, regret.
But is our ancient, austere religion yet
Ours to practice, free from haunting fear?
For I'm afraid, on the streets walks a slayer,
He rules the land with machine gun and bullet.

From the time when Baghdad was founded by flames,
The chants of prayer have merged with those of death,
It was not enough that one Hussein had bled.
Greeks, Mongols, Americans shall press their claims,
Fools shed blood in this land until their last breath,
Iraq shall come to peace, when all men are dead.

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

The Capital Sonnet

2009-05-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

It's said when stubborn it is strong,
Thus swollen it will pick a fight.
Buried in sand it knows no wrong,
That's when it is not screwed on right.

When it's in love, it's over heels,
No sense can be drilled in at all.
It will claim none knows what it feels,
Till the rest bang theirs on a wall.

At times of pride it is held high,
Yet it must roll when fault is found.
It's the seat of reason but why
Do pretty faces turn it round?

The sanctum of our existence,
Yet bodyless, it makes no sense.

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

Variant of Kosovo Polje

2009-05-09T06:35:00.001-07:00

Who stood at Kosovo Polje?
Who heard the guns at Waterloo?
Who remembers those days today,
To bear the rancour this day too?

Who won, who lost at Panipat:
What's true and what is forgery?
None alive really would care but
For some cheap rag of history.

The writer's pen captures in ink,
The time we were meant to forget.
We read much but we do not think,
And contrived hatred we beget.

The last who remember are dead
We rush to take their place instead.

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

Kosovo Polje

2009-05-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Who stood at Kosovo Polje?
Who heard the guns at Waterloo?
Who remembers those days today,
To bear the rancour this day too?

The writer's pen captures in ink,
The time we were meant to forget.
We read much but we do not think,
And contrived hatred we beget.

None lives who saw the mad work done.
But mention an imagined past,
None hesitate to pick a gun
And swear to defend to the last.

The last who remember are dead
We rush to take their place instead.

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

The sleep that comes to all

2009-04-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

I am the candle's dimming glow,
I am the quake that fells the tower.
I am the rust that blunts the plough,
I am the graceless fall from power.

I am the vine-enwreathed bower.
I am the silent stringless lyre.
I am the heat that wilts the flower,
I am the damp that stills the fire.

I am the end of all desire,
I am the ceaseless rest all crave.
I am the flagrance of the pyre,
I am the repose of the grave.

I am the ash to which ye fall,
I am the sleep that comes to all.

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

The metre is a little odd, 8 beats in the b & c lines, 7 in the rest.

The Mantis Sonnet

2008-01-23T04:44:00.000-08:00

Was never a myth so firmly in place,
As the praying mantis' deadly embrace,
She loves her man like we love food,
Hunger is her only mood.
The inhibition in his head,
Is shed the moment he is dead,
He sows his seed for all his worth,
So that his future can take birth.

Evolution has a thousand means,
Death cannot stop our selfish genes,
But many a mate does get away,
To live and love another day,
Another day, another wife,
Yet human myth, it keeps its life!

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

A Writer's Sonnet

2006-07-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

Why am I a writer?
Why must pen scratch paper?

What is it that makes me
Want to tell a story?
Why think of truth, beauty,
Hope, error and duty?

Why not live, love and die?
Why tell the reason? Why?

Because in a story
Thou art freed from worry
For an hour thou art free
And then truth shall claim thee.

So ink must blot paper,
That's why I'm a writer.

I've violated all rhyme schemes here, following a (perhaps labored) scheme of aa bbbb cc bbbb aa. Does it work?
(BTW, Aliscia and Sunisha commented before I revised this post.)

Monsoon Sonnet

2006-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! The rains are here!
The dream that every tree has seen
To dress in everlasting green;
The hope of every sown seed,
Of every herb and grass and weed,
Of parched street and thirsting town,
Of starving ryot and taxing crown:
Is sated now, there is no fear.

The drops of life fall sweet and clear!
His time has come, he's waited long:
The frog croaks forth his eager song!
With joy does every little child,
Frolic in mud, get wet, run wild!
Hurrah! The rains are here!

The Economic Sonnet

2005-11-26T17:11:00.000-08:00

When onion prices reach the sky,
When inflation crosses limits
And domestic budgets stretch
Governments fall as people cry.
Ministers must then use their wits
Trying to please every kvetch.

But what if champagne hits a high?
The cost of condoms you can't bear?
Viagra costs a thousand pound,
The flow of vodka becomes dry
Fishing rods are also dear
And a guitar's price is not sound.

The dismal government economist
With humour now has made a tryst!

Condoms used to measure inflation

Obituary: Lakshman Kadirgamar

2005-08-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

They shot you in your car,
They shot you in your shoes,
They made you pay your dues:
They got you Kadirgamar!

Their name you made it mud,
Their pride was burst by you,
Their ambitions you slew;
Their aim was now your blood!

Your cause you served it well,
You soldiered till the end,
Non-violence to defend,
Your glory will now swell!

Your death brings no sorrow
yours was the way to go!

An Indian Graduate's farewell song before he boards the plane

2005-08-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

Two-ninety on the TOEFL test
Fourteen-fifty on GRE
So I am now ready
To attend the very best.
Don't want your TIFR
No school in Doon Valley
Don't show me a home degree
Just lemme travel far.

Those Americans will give me
Good worth for work done hard.
The fathers-in-law'll chase me
My money, success, green card.
What can your country get me?
Turn away, lemme step for'ard.

Music Rediscovered

2005-07-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

I can hear the owls again.
Can you hear their soft tu-whoo,
The courser’s sharp kwik-kwoo,
The call of the sole moorhen?
The night is quiet again,
So the nightjar can sing too.
And a sporadic moo,
I can hear it now and then!

The little crickets court;
With love-ballads seldom heard
Their talents do employ.
What is it that they purport?
Its music rediscovered,
Now the darkness rings with joy!

This was written in response to the Supreme Court verdict banning noise at night.