RESURGENCE

Rebels of

Bygone ages  

Assemble in

A heart-cave,

Slogans and

War cries

Rooted in

The memories of

Lost battles  

Throng the abandoned

Structures of conversation

 © Deepak Darshak 

NOVELTY

The root 

Has lost 

Its relevance, 

A versatile,

Photosynthetic stem 

Capable of bearing
Complete plants
Has been unearthed
To ensure
Greener life
In my alley
© DARSHAK

WAIT

Clouds showed up

And 

Vanished away

Crops stood

Waiting for

Another day

To quench

Their tired thirst

 © Deepak Darshak 

ODYSSEY

Out of

A million doors,

I have spotted

The one

That leads to

Heaven

Out of

A million keys,

I am now trying 

To spot

The right one

To unlock it  

© Deepak Darshak    

HOPE

A ray of hope

Pushed them on 

The battle took away

The land they lived on,

The battle took away

The mind they thought with,

The battle took away

The eyes they saw with,

The battle took away

The tongue they spoke with,

The battle took away all

They thought they had

Within their reach

But a little ray of hope

Kindling inside,

Unconquered by the winds of time,

Unperturbed by Its cacophonous chime,

Indifferent to The inclement clime,

Grew in strength day by day,

And pushed them on

To get to the life’s prime

In a sundry rhyme

(©DEEPAK DARSHAK)

SUCCESS STORY

Success marks

The climax of a

Centripetal tragicomedy,

A house built to

Accommodate a long cast

And crew: prompters,

Makeup men,

Stunt artists,

Curtain raisers,

Directors,

Sopranos,

Managers,

Audience,

Critics

Each role is

Determined in

The process

Involving improvisations,

For better results,

Lasting longer

Spells of satisfaction

For the protagonist’s

Coterie

This piece of

Learning dawned on

Me when I was

Rehearsing a  

Success story

For an audience

Demanding new,

Motivating script

© Deepak Darshak

IF ANYTHING LIKE WAR HAPPENS

If anything like war happens,

We are prepared for it

This time,

We have planted our angry silences everywhere,

In deserted farms

Smacking of unfortunate suicides,

In the deep caves of eyes

Hollowed by waiting for the moon,

In the barren tracts bearing the scars of a poor harvest,

In the relics of broken promises

And discontented dreams

Scaling the depths of innumerable life streams

We have planted our silences everywhere

In plains, valleys, rocks,

In bridges, barrages, and bullocks,

In empty barns and dreary backyards,

In our pleasures and woes,

Everything stretching from our nerves to our toes

And riding on them,

We have spread far and wide

Through every corner of the world,

Through the air and water,

Through ideas and feelings,

Through sleep and awakening,

We have spread and we are spreading

Interminably

So much that you can’t

Besiege us in any sudden ambush

And beat us to death

Listen, if anything like war happens,

We won’t surrender but fight

And may even chase you out of your power den

Into historic anonymity

This time

You can’t kill us for our ignorance

As you have been doing so far

This time,

We have sharpened our silences

And turned them into dynamite

With explosive trail,

If anything like war happens

We are prepared for it

 © Deepak Darshak

 

CURFEW IN THE JUNGLE

Jungle won’t sleep tonight,
Bellowing, groaning, yelling, writhing
In the throes of searchlight operations
Reaching into its spooky nooks
In a bid to bust a gang of the lawless,
A handful of inimical minds
Loaded with a furious passion
To make life restless for the actors of light

Jungle’s heart is beating fast
As a vociferous unease
Runs through its green abundance
Cutting deep like a sharp razor
Into depths of its faceless existence

Jungle is searing, burning
Beleaguered by agitated footfalls
Woven into a stringent agility
Engaged in creating many more jungles
Out of emblazoned uncertainties

Listen, all of you,
Hominids, arthropods, amphibians, reptiles,
Citizens of this troubled land,
Stay awake tonight
Inside your habitats,
Stay awake and vigilant
Lest you should fall on the line of fire

Jungle won’t sleep tonight
And so will you all,
Suffer in silence,
Garrisoned in the tiny pockets of dark isolation,
Suffer o people,
As your home has turned into a war zone,
And your presence makes no difference
To the proceedings of this wild celebration of power.

      © Deepak Darshak

SLEEP, LITTLE LAD

Sleep, little lad, sleep,
Papa will get back
In the dead of the night
And you will get no cookies and candies today…

Sleep, little lad,
Without caring caresses,
Without lovely lullabies,
Without stories of the ugly wizard and the fairy princess,
Warrior of the seven seas,
Harishchandra, Hanuman,
Siddhartha’s great departure,
Daring Shivaji and adventurous Sindbad…

Grandma has gone on a long journey
To the God’s abode
And mama is feeling sleepy herself
After a long day’s work
To bridge the budgetary gaps at home
And work out a viable mathematics of living
For the stormy days ahead

Sleep,
For you have to wake up early
To the first blow of the cabby’s horn,
And sink deep down
The life’s noisy stream
To fetch some fresh smiles
For all you belong to…

Sleep, little lad,
Uncle Moon has lost his way
To your home today
And stars too, have hid themselves behind the clouds…


Sleep
Or else the demon will jump out of the darkness,
And eat up all your dreams
At the drop of a hat…
© Deepak Darshak

PRISONERS' SONG

It was a temporary contract with time
For an alliance of disparities,
And then, a long streak of forgetting
That kept us tied to one another
In this dungeon of articulate silences
.
It was the contract and forgetting
That followed,
Which knitted our restless souls into a healing proximity,
Which made us share countless years at stretch,
Sans chaos, collisions, clashes,
Which gave us hope to harness our trauma
Into the collective strength of all

And now, it’s all over now,
Suddenly as we know
We’ll soon walk out,
   One by one,
Leaving everything that has happened
To its own fate

One by one,
We’ll sink, all of us,
And we know we’ll,
Down the sands of time,
Rediscovering the rough edges of our past
Treasuring some wounded memories,
Some broken dreams,
Some unfulfilled promises
And monumental failures to rise above the world

One by one,
We’ll go, all of us,
Searching for our roots,
Stretching out to create
Relationships out of differences,
Adjustments out of conflicts,
Patch-ups out of fisticuffs,
Closeness out of distances,
And avoid reaching the point of no return
As long as we can

One by one
We’ll depart,
And we know we’ll,
With an arsenal of new war tactics,
New strategies of survival,
New mathematics of happiness,
New alphabet of experiences,
Etched in black and white
On the wall of our consciousness

We forgot what we had come for,
We forgot we could not stay for ever,
We forgot there could be nothing everlasting
And so was the life we led
In smooth togetherness,
But as we see, it was forgetting
And not remembering
That has counted,
Making it all too difficult to accept
But impossible to neglect things,
As we know
We’ll go now, all of us,
One by one…


There was a rhythm in the way
We lived and spent our days,
There was a harmony in the way
We withstood the heat and the cold
In unison,
There was a reason for us to see life
As a beautiful verse that would never last,
But we have to move ahead of everything now,
We have to leave everything behind,
And go, as we know we’ll,
All of us,
One by one before the sunset


We’ll say goodbye to one another
And disappear with a heavy heart,
Some will cry and some might go dry,
But all will go,
Leaving this space empty as it was
Before we met and created a world

A TRYST WITH ANONYMITY

“Who are you?”,

A stentorian snobbery emerging

From the thick of a debate

Blasts me off with this question,

And I feel clueless.

“Who are you?”,

A demonic complacence

Grabs me by my wrist in a concourse

And throws my thoughts into a nervous disarray

With this question,

And I feel faceless. 

“Who are you?”,

A raging hunger looks into my eyes

And kicks me out of my comfort

With this question

While standing in a queue to get a pie off the governmental grace,

And I feel spineless.

Who am I?

I am a bit confused

And start groping for a convincing answer.

Who am I? 

Who am I?

I ask myself.

Who am I?

I ask myself

And the question comes back to me.

I quickly hide my perplexity

Behind a wall

And decide not to come out

Till I learn how to change my face

Like dress

As others can do.

 © Deepak Darshak 

INVISIBLE MAN

When he left his home,
Nobody felt concerned
Even slightly,
Nobody was bothered to accompany him to the doorsteps…

Unnoticed,
He strode along the street
And merged himself with a crowd of faces,
But there was none who noticed his presence

He reached the bus stop,
Boarded the bus with others,
Smiled and greeted the co-passengers,
But nobody smiled back

As he entered the office premises
And approached his seat,
He saw his colleagues and associates
But nobody paid least attention to him

After many long, silent hours in the office,
He got back home,
Looked into the mirror
And was dismayed to see
A stranger’s aging countenance
Staring at him frighteningly,
A drooping shoulder challenging his strength,
An unfamiliar pair of eyes
Immersed in the barren viscosity of hopelessness

He sat down and cried
As he knew
He had become invisible

To the world around him

© Deepak Darshak 

STREETS OF THE CITY

Streets of this city
Are all alike,
Sliced into two halves---
One flying on above
And the other transfixed
Into Immobile negation underneath,
Streets
Extending interminably into sub-streets
Ramifying into pavements,
Accommodating into their belly
Countless silhouettes of anthropomorphic anonymity
That chase after the roots of happiness
With the routinised patience of

A long-distance runner,
Streets
That witness life’s umpteen moving shadows 
Get back to themselves
And connect to the streets of their life
Through perforated emotional conduits
In the dead of the night

© Deepak Darshak 

NIRVANA

Before the sunset

We will end our journey

Leaving many things unseen,

Many paths untrodden,

Many texts unread,

Many stories unheard

Before the sunset

We will end our journey

Without complaints,

Without grouses,

Without burdens of debt,

Without traces of exhaustion,

Without a drop of desire inside

To stay trapped

In the jungle of voices behind

Before the sunset

We will end our journey

On the banks of fast fading memories,

Feeling free from fears and doubts,

Free from the shackles of pleasure and pain,

Indifferent to the footfalls of temptation chasing us,

Ignorant of cries trying to pull us

Back into the labyrinths of life

© Deepak Darshak