The Night is a Carnival

The road,
The cars,
The dim lit stars,
People in the bus stop,
The drunkard on the bench,
The loveless stench,
Horns sound, engines roar,
Conversations full of joy,
The hungry beggar boy,
Street lamps and trees,
Friends walking in threes,
The rich and the poor,
The saint in the dark,
And the whore waits in the park.
The night watch man stares,
Everyone is a suspect tonight,
Passing ladies,
Moving wind,
The dust grains,
And the blood stains,
Locked up mad woman,
Sad eyed owls,
Dark distant memories that sound,
Lust between her thighs,
And the crematorium that waves the departing souls goodbyes.
Everyone is a suspect.
The forgotten,
The remembered,
The ships that forgot to sail,
The sinner who surrendered,
The mountain that moved,
The sea that stood still,
The fishes that never swam,
Everyone is a suspect.
The night is a disarmed hero,
Standing vulnerable,
Anyone can break down any moment.
Trumpets blow,
Sweet songs burst into a chorus of delirium,
The night is yellow tinted dreams,
Yellow tinted faces,
The night is a furious promise,
The night is a decadent story,
The night is an eternal stillness,
The night is a carnival.

A thought for Bygone Summers

It was the summer when we danced under perfect moonlight,
when we breathed our last.
The roar of the breeze had stopped,
a sudden stillness it was in the air,
heart aches never felt so much painful before,
it was heart ache for the night sky,
that loomed over with its enormous silence,
it was heart ache for all bygones,
for friends and lovers whom we had made to wait,
heart aches for the afternoon streak of sunlight that rested on our palms,
and we tried with all our guts to clench our fist and trap the sun,
just for a second,
just for the sake of memory may be.
It was the summer when we ripped our clothes and sat by the streets,
desperate hooligans of the night,
bitter taste in our mouths waited to find its way to another,
lips that are soft and luscious,
and for once we could throw out all the cursing and moaning and shame.
It was also the summer of love,
with limbs spread apart we laid on the floor waiting,
waiting for a familiar smile to light up our doorstep,
waiting for an unexplained desire to crop up from the genitals and climb to the heart,
waiting is a summer job,
all the world waits for God knows what.
But summer is a old man's tale now,
it is rested in his memory,
memory that will be renewed with a new summer,
and until then we will always say,
I hate the summers,
how i loathe the summers,
summer heat deceives my senses.

A Certain Winter Evening

The angels are traversing the rainbow of his mind,
all in pure colours of love,
the old man sits quiet on the park bench,
staring with weak eyes at the clouds above.
Quietly the dusk is breaking into his eyes,
the tears can hardly be seen
the passing wind that has no faith diverts at the neckline of this quiet being.

Breathing air in one corner stands the nomad of our age,
smoking endless cigarettes he dreams of being a sage.
Now he could wait and watch his fate,
moving slowly in an uneventful rate,
but the crowded group of sane men who laugh at him with a cheering roar are unaware of his scheme and his invisible bait.

The girl, she walks slowly,
she is unsure of her love so she pulls out her trembling hand to brush her hair from the glowing silken glove.
She has that glitter in her eyes
just like the dream girls of midnights,
and she has been leaning on a wall with her heels stamping on all the psycho babbles that once threw some light.

And somewhere close by a group of young men call out a strike,
the leader who is screaming with passion has a cloth that is covering his face,
but soon enough the police will get there and shoot some dogmatic bullets at the protesting human race.
The leader he is pale with grief,
the bankers have taken the money,
and do you ask the reason for this crackdown on this formidable group of men?
Remember that group in history!
They are called Communists my honey.

Then the evening invites some cold wind freezing the marrow of our bone,
and while the fire is being lit over there,
my sense of life is suddenly gone!
The nomad he picks a bottle of rum and the girl she watches as I pick a glass,
the old man sits beside the blazing fire,
the leader he is bleeding on the grass.
Then I get drunk with my arms wrapped around the night,
someone reads letters of yesteryear while a few pick a fight.
And while the nomad speaks crazy and the old man listens with care,
the girl finds it romantic to tend the bleeding leader and make his sorrows share,
then I sit on my weak haunches trembling in the wind and watch the fairies descend on humans like God's marvellous rain.

Calcutta

Calcutta, I have left my heart hanging on the black wires of your tram lines at Park Circus,
the ancient wires that hang loosely against the hue of great blue sky has managed to keep my thumping heart with it, and now I am heartless.
Calcutta, I have left my mind and the bit of vague intellect on the stairway of Coffee House,
now and then when occassional poets stand by the steps to share a cigarette, they can hear my lyric cry out in pain. I am mindless now.
Calcutta, I refuse to get loved unless it is designed by your anachronistic idea of romance, I still want to walk on Red Road and watch children play on Maidan.
Calcutta, do you remember when I yearned for you and made love to you in lonely afternoons with my music? And later I walked past your flowing river smoking and looking at your naked self.
Calcutta I have tried to write a lot about you, but I couldnt, so am giving a last try, tell me if you dont like it but dont throw me out of your heart, I will not be able to bear that.
Calcutta, I still find your midnight silence very holy and the way you scream out in silence, I dont like these corporates here, they are making you look sick.
Calcutta, I have thrown out my political sentiments, I will never want to understand politics unless its yours,
they are pressing on the poor and killing the idea of revolution,
Calcutta, when will your womb give birth to a new red flag? The one that is true?
Calcutta, it is funny how my senses do not get aroused with anything other than that of your streets, the sound of your chaos and the smell, yes the smell of your alleys.
Calcutta, I have taken numerous trips to your China town and have watched the crazy madness, or the lights during Christmas and how they always excite pavement dwellers at Park Street.
Calcutta, I have seen your rallies and how young men scream out for justice, but that is lost and they say it should be peaceful. Funny, it is only them demanding peace not you.
Calcutta, Sankar's Chowringhee has almost entirely become Esplanade, wonder what he has to say about that.
Calcutta, I am thinking what is the meaning of modernisation? Is it demolishing you and killing your style? Does it really have to be that way?
Calcutta, I dont see Tagore's dream of golden Bengal anymore, oh yes! Of course, you are a part of that same dying, decaying Bengal.
Oh no! You are lucky, you are the cover that they like to decorate so dearly.
Calcutta, it is half past two at night and I still dont know what to do, do you have a plan?
No, we are both immersing in a facade of hopelessness but Calcutta I will be by your side.
I will stand on bus stops smoking, I will hide in your dingy lanes doping, I will sit by your river drinking whiskey and I will sing with you.
When the world changes and the roads are being built,
When the peolple go forth and your style is being killed, your buildings demolished and your name changed forever,
when they bring down my heart from your tram lines and kick out my lyrics still lurking at the steps of Coffee House,
I will lye down with you under immense sky with God as our judge and stars in the depth of our eyes,
We will make love in the gutters of human disgust.
And you will still be beautiful,
Calcutta. Dear Calcutta.

nothing

Baseless life, worthless,
godless, humans are all lifeless,
loveless woman, meaningless,
and fatherless,
weekend dusk and yet friendless,
sitting in drunkenness,
song less and bond less,
waiting for some fondness.
Cigarettes are all smokeless,
words are just heartless,
guitars are lying chord-less,
we are getting too reckless,
all the thoughts are mindless,
the eastern wind is just priceless.
Shimmering and bold children are dancing fearless,
guard less and jobless,
nomads are running on broad highways.
Chanting prayer they are sinless,
they call me hapless,
hiding behind boulders I am helpless,
manner less and shameless,
I am lying on my back drunk and stoned in madness.
Music less,
we are becoming characterless,
gutless lives shivering in a clear call for holiness.
Ticket less standing in the queue of forgiveness,
she lied when she said love is timeless.
Don't believe in democracy we are all freedom less,
nation less, blind and sightless,
leaderless, falling into potholes of dogmatic ruthlessness.
Falling and crawling veins are slitting and yet I am bloodless,
walking out and crossing over to nations, homeless,
light less, dissolving in the silent hum of profound darkness.
Shapeless, sexless in a river of deafness,
human less mind entering shores of humanness,
sea less, nature less, away from the wilderness,
What is left in this fallout of numbness?
Damnable world, motherless,
barren womb, blessed and childless.
Goodness lost,
tossed in the dump yard of greediness,
fate less children, faceless,
hovering over this island of hatefulness.
Nothing, nothing, nothing is the way we thought it would be,
like the dreams we dreamt of in the sweetness of cognac nights.
Nothing in nothingness.

dawn...

Now in this sudden dawn I witness the wake of life,
city buildings slowly light up and human lives roll out of peaceful serenade,
charging in, descendants of the holy lord sweep the bodies out in terrible pain.
Lovers gaze in quiet starry eyes seeking bliss face to face,
children wonder why this thunder of the almighty in glorious rays,
and the homeless moan cursing the start of a new day,
you and me we both just think of all the promises that we once had made.
Shouting, screaming through the stairways of shapeless calamity in urgent ways,
almost feeling, and at times breathing
we are here yet again to die in vain.
Holy you, holy me, holy the love song that played in the warm comfort of bedtime love,
holy the whore who is finally asleep, holy the priest who has finally found God,
holy the dreams that we are ready to fulfill,
holy is the cries and lies and every woman who has ever waved me goodbyes.
Holy in the smoke and the tired thoughts of killing this life,
holy body, holy soul, holy light in the teardrops traversing his eyes,
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy lives that are still living this day in obscene times.
Mighty people now come out in various shapes,
drenching in yellow, the color of our past and the color of the forthcoming tomorrow,
I have finally found a shade behind the lustful cry for home,
behind the need to rise up in this morning
and the greed to slumber into the realms of goodnight lure.
Clustered in my mind are songs of past,
the ones we sang in high mornings on parapets
and beside the windows of the empty skull while watching blue clouds flow by.
And I will bid you farewell when autumn mornings pour in,
and I will sing the hymns of life that I had learnt in hopeful days,
and I look at myself unrecognizable, like someone else standing in the doorway of my eyes,
and I will love her for time is too short to leave her behind,
and I will chant prayers with soulful madness chasing ghosts of people gone by,
and I will stand up on my feet and then fall on the earth with a willful cry for more,
and I am fine,
all alone in the deserted madness of a thousand faces lurking around, hobnobbing in the foothills of the morning sun.
Maybe someday, you will find me,
maybe then you can rescue me,
take me with you into the fall of the wakeful dawn.

yet agin

And yet again I am homeless,
a truant, a walking being lost,
wandering with tired eyes,
shivering in the coldness of my mind,
looking for a fix beside music bars and lonely cars,
through hollow deserted cries.
And yet again I am looking for something,
something vile to match my style,
and where is the catcher,
I have waited too long in the fields of rye,
where is the hope and the mind seeking dope that I had in my pocket,
and where is the smell of rainy days and the sudden appearance of God's rays.
And yet again I go crazy,
like a little boy seeking the thrill of being all alone,
hiding behind nomad dreams,
with alcohol and rage and screams of being a sage,
crazy in the sidewalk of weekend jazz,
with the urge to live and the hope to die,
just watching people go back in their cage.
And yet again I feel angry,
I had taken Frost's road that is less traveled,
and now am lost,
lost because I can hardly see my aim,
just walking alone, tired, disillusioned,
looking for something I guess.
For mother, for lover, for friends and foes and sidewalk whores,
for God and all the empty souls.
And yet again I am frightened,
scorned and abused,
mocked and rocked with every hateful word.
And yet again I am sad,
sad because that is innate in beings,
since the time Adam was lost without the presence of Eve,
since father cried when I got drugged and mugged by a hundred unknown eyes,
sad because my home is here and yet I am homeless,
nothing belongs to me anymore
except this body and some cigarettes that I can call my own,
and some songs that mother sang in days of gold,
and the kiss that she laid in a resplendent mode.
And yet again I am God,
roaming around sickening beings,
dancing around with whiskey breathe,
with nothing to do and nothing to lose,
blessing everyone with open palms,
entering my devotees' arms,
making love to passing charms,
yes I can sing their prayers in rhyme.
But then as night falls and time crawls in,
I sit beside all the lives and feel homeless yet again.