Sing O’ Muses…

So began the epic, that is considered the standard for evaluating every other epic written. And today, I call upon them as I begin my blog, with the hope that perhaps one day my works would be considered not one whit inferior to that of Homer. 

Poems, stories, essays, articles. Essentially, anything and everything presentable that my mind creates will find a place here. From the most inane to fundamental questions of philosophy, I hope everyone would enjoy reading them as much as I would enjoy writing them. 

Icarus

And the Aegean Skies stood witness,
With Jove’s Eagles and the Gulls,
That Icarus flew, with waxen wings.
Borne forth by the Cretan air.

And the Bronze of his feathers
Shone to rival Apollo at noon
As he swerved and whooped in joy.
Tearing through the cloudless, Grecian sky.
He was the vanguard of War,
Leading the Promethean revenge.

And when they melted, they fell.
Each feather, a glorious martyr,
Burning up, like streaks of fire,
Straining to fulfill desires of Man.

What bore up Icarus was not Hubris
But a desire to conquer the vast, boundless sky.
And as he fell, a silent splash
resounded
Across the sparkling Mediterranean Sea.

Amor Vincit Omnia

“Amor vincit omnia” is a Latin phrase, attributed to Virgil, the Roman Poet, and it simply means “Love conquers all”. And indeed it does, leaving scores of men at its feet, either Alive or Dead.

Amor Vincit Omnia

What would love entail?
A roaring flame of passion?
A pacific deluge of feelings?
Love is everything, yet not any.
It’s the unseeming chaos which resides
In the darkness of our hearts.

A world, unto itself.

And to frame it,
Set it to music, paint it,
Declare its scent, taste, or colour;
Is to let it die;
Ask Psyche, who looked at Love;
And lost it thereby.

A seeming eternity, spent in love,
Can brook no alteration,
Can bear no change.
Bears no mind, for grinding time,
Keeps embalmed, heart’s desire,
Sets alight, its very own pyre.

A traceless murder,
The Perfect Crime.
So Eros bleeds,
So Eros dies.
Of all the tangles that ail the heart,
It cuts the deepest,
Never heals, till end of life.

Song of Civilization

Here we are again,
In whispered sobs
Bright smiles hiding sad eyes,
Here I am again.

I cannot speak.
My silence hounds me,
It is a struggle to be quiet.
We cannot speak.

The loneliness frightens us,
Alone in the lengthening shadows.
We stand separate in a huddle,
The loneliness frightens me.

I feel suffocated,
My corseted garb,
Chokes me to death.
We feel suffocated.

We don’t understand,
Why must we converse
In the polite language of pride.
I don’t understand.

I am in pain,
From the hidden barbs,
Creating hidden wounds.
We are in pain.

We feel trapped,
In these traps of our make,
The World, Society, and what is ‘Right’.
I feel trapped.

And I want to be free,
To run naked on the plains,
Reaching out to you .
Do you feel the same?

Prometheus’ Revenge

The shrieking of the eagles has faded,
The circling vultures, all dead.
The symphony of crickets has been muted,
There is peace, in this silent spring.

The greens and reds and violets,
All have turned grey.
Slate grey, concrete grey;
A thousand shades of lifelessness.

Life is tenacious, Life adapts.
Today, we live on land.
Tomorrow, continents of garbage will rise,
To replace the submerged earth.

We have done well in recreating hell,
For all the devils are here.
With poisonous gases, poisonous lakes.
It often rains brimstone.

A thousand gone extinct,
A million more dying,
Trillions waiting still,
For seven billion to self-destruct.

For we are humans, Children of Forethought,
Our unceasing tread even the gods fear.
Prometheus gifted us the flames of civilization.
We will burn down the world with it.

Homesteads

You will find it
In obscure lanes,
Mundane, cookie-cutter houses,
In the plain suburbs,
In the everyday walks of life,
Trodden by billions.
It lives, but not in ostentatious
Palaces, mirrored halls reflecting made up faces,
But alongside restful hearths,
In humble homes.
And love flourishes in the most mundane tales,
For the epics, tell of love nipped in the bud.
A bright meteor shines briefly,
The starfire burns eternally gold.
For every meteor, there are a million stars,
And for every Romeo, there burn
A thousand cheery hearths.
Love blossoms for years,
Day after day.;
The hundred-day love,
Is but a fanciful tale.

Walk with me, for my life,
Tell me you love me,
With a gentle smile.

Captive in my Heart

Dry, scorching winds scrape across my skin.
Desert sand accompanies thorns
And your words.
And just like flashfloods
Scrape away the half formed soil,
Your sweet nothings
Wash away the resolutions
Nurtured by my mind.
And perhaps it’s fate,
In her inescapable scheme,
That allows me the glimpse of freedom
And drags me down to deeper depths of captivity
To be under the whims
Of your smiles and frowns,
A slave to your thoughts,
Tortured willingly, with a smile,
Imprisoned, in my own heart.

An Afternoon in the Rains

The faint aroma of coffee,
The smell of old books,
The petrichor that wafts
After the earliest showers.
You are like all of these.
Life is not impossible,
Oh, it’s perfectly normal,
Without your addicting touch.
But you bring the perfection,
The sublime touch of happiness.
The underlying joy of my being.
You bring life to my existence.

And as I toss and turn,
Flip through book upon book,
Flick through hundreds of screens,
I can barely stop my thoughts
From turning to you.
Your smile, rarely bestowed on me,
The frowns you smoothen when I am near,
And I ask, I ask and shy away from it
The answer excites me, and frightens me.
Do you hold me as dear as I hold you?
Do you love me as much as I love you?
What do I mean to you?

I conclude, in heavy sighs,
Brows furrowed and eyes,
Oh my eyes, unwilling to leak,
And a heart, beating,
Steady and dispassionate.
My being, bent in the weight
Of my fruitless expectations.
Fortunate are those,
Who receive love
In return of love.

Love’s Labour

Fancy, ephemeral dreams,
Harmony,
akin to evanescent clouds
Of the summer squalls.
And fleeting desert floods,
A flash of a meteor storm,
The love, begotten of eyes,
Born tonight, dies at dawn.

The euphonious melody,
Singing of love’s eternity,
Of the orphic tales proclaiming
Eros’ numinous grace;
Are born in the fires of sun,
Forged, under the hammer
Of Typhon’s breath.
Honed at the edge of
A hundred hidden thorns.
And they are etched, in halls
Built to outshine the stars,
And outlast the earth,
A sempiternal beacon,
Of all that is beautiful
In this world.

Melancholy

Waves break on the shore,

Pounding to dust, dull daydreams;

Heart’s melancholy.

Big Bad Books

It’s aflutter, with a thousand sails of paper,
A million oars of ink, drawing the mind yonder,
Visions of hell and glimpses of heaven,
‘Forevermore’, quoth the raven,
Tales of dark days, and illuminated nights,
Murderous banquets and swordless fights,
Of gentle beasts and monstrous men,
Whispered secrets beyond our ken.
A life held in every page,
Be it a rogue, warrior or mage.
In a thousand pages, a thousand lives,
In a thousand pages, ten thousand miles.
A new life, a new mind, a new land,
In each of them unfurled a new world.
Cloaks and daggers, swords and shields,
Men of letters and men of fields,
Of great generals and mighty kings,
They tell of men and alien beings.
Tens, hundreds, thousands of choices,
Booming in my head, so many voices,
A thousand written, millions heard,
All unread, all unheard,
In the eye of my mind, sending enticing looks,
Someone save me from big, bad, books.