BLUR

You had a secret code
To your blur
Of being
And of nothingness

I didn't know the code
I sensed the blur

Being and nothingness
Held in a gaze
Of blurry eyed
Togetherness

Your hands extend from
The blur of being
To the blur of nothing

And hold mine
All that while

A moment leaps
To no next nothing

FLUID JOURNEYS

Stray destinies bid time
In distracted waiting
Like boats tied to bay
The sea of their journeys
Lashes against the peeling paints
Of certainties, of wood, of land
Of boundaries, of control, of walls.

Nothing is written on water with finality
Except voyages unknown and beyond

Boats will write their voyages
And leave no trace

TRAMPOLINE

In a hug
They become light
They become wings
They begin jumping
Jumping like light
Light like wings
Wings like breeze
Light like feathers
Happy like springs
Jumping like mad
A bundled rise, laughter
A bundled fall, laughter

Jumping over floor, bed, couch, rug
Jumping over grass, bushes, forests, hillocks, trees
Jumping higher each time
Each time bringing back
A piece of sky
Throwing back into a higher sky

In this hug of a happening
A moment jumps into eternity
A moment sets itself free from the rest
Into a no next nothing

In the hug of this moment
Body and dance defy their forms
Jump like no dance, no body
Jump like random
Jump like light

Transcend the boundaries
Transcend the form
Transcend the bodies

Hug the moment
Rise and rise again


© nidheeshtyagi

RAIN MAKER

A sparrow climbs over
A satellite dish
Inspects the clouds
Commands them to rain

Sparrows emerge from grandma's tale and
Bathe in dust
Defy global warming and climate change

And now when it rains
The mighty general and the supreme
Commander of the clouds has vanished
From the scenes of victory procession

Like prayers of hope

(c) pic and text : nidheeshtyagi

REAL GLIMPSE OF AN IMAGINARY BASTAR

Each day the naxal and the cop wake up alive next to their guns in a rainy Bastar morning find the jungles shrinking the tribal of their extinct as the state clears forests through contractors of development and greed of profiteers..

Forests will thin so much that the naxal and the cop will kill each other with Kalashnikovs and landmines

Geography teachers will lie in their classes about Bastar.
Bastar would see development.
Bastar would be main stream.

After smell of gunfire, burnt flesh, clotted blood are wiped, there would be no evident scenes of crime for witnesses.

No one will sing and dance for the naxal and the jawaan on the live Doordarshan telecast of Republic Day Celebrations, showing a real glimpse of imaginary Bastar at India Gate

JUST WHEN YOU SAID YOU HAVE TO LEAVE

Just when you said you have to leave, i looked at half empty cold coffee mug of yours and the dense gloomy emptiness waiting to occupy your space on the chair, the crumpled tissues on the table, it wasn't going to rain for sometime now, a journey had nowhere to go, go back to, from the swing doors of a transit lounge, so many strange faces with familiar twitch

So many women right now around the world looking into their pocket mirror, doing their lipstick, and getting up to leave

Getting late for estranged
Destinies.


(c) nidheeshtyagi

UNTITLED

Fantasy creates its palaces
Memory its forts
Usually palaces are in forts
Security reasons

Breathing a breeze may not
Make us Ozymandias or
Mumtaaz Mahal in mirror or
Nefertiti in waiting

It is just an act beyond
Decisions and/or manipulations
It is an act of living itself
Against the rights, wrong and
the Just

It is that small, ordinary, normal, nothing

This lone tiny moment of filling your lungs
Independent of anything else
Stands against all wars of
Proving and possessing
Conquests and campaigns
Cacophony and promises

Against the cancerous growth of
Nuclear stockpiles and no-first-use treaties

Exhale into this
Very next moment

BE THAT WORD

Love finds a form
A body
A movement
A universe of expression
An ecology of manifest
Love finds its spiral of evolution
The sky scape of here
And now
Intent eternal

Love finds you.
Be that word.

WORD SHALL FIND YOU

Word shall find you
Form you
Word shall
Invent its meaning to
Discover you

Word shall break the sound barrier
Mind shall rush at the speed of light
Word shall make love to you

Touch you at places
Hitherto unknown

Word shall entwine
You in a prayer
Play flute of oxygenated soul

Without awaiting answers
Words shall leave you
In a very dense silence

Of living.

THE ATTEMPTED HUMANIST POEM

A very old man writes a letter
To a lost address
Someone reads a pathological report of someone
Close and cries
Children ready for school
Await their bus

A woman learns to live alone
Befriends the idea of
Dying

Eyes find eyes to enact
Trapeze artists’ leap of
Faith and light up

A long distance call
To say nothing particular
And share so much

A shrink remembers her face in the mirror

A naxalite and a cop wake up
Next to their guns
A Kashmiri sits with other Kashmiri
On a bench of street side bakery
Sips tea and talks of the UN resolution

A topless can-can dancer
Removes her make up
And can’t smile

A z category security soldier in his
Bedroom can’t make love

A dictator’s hand for once shakes
Not much blood though
On his shaving razor

A postman delivers a Money order
To ancient people
A nibbled World Bank biscuit reaches
The poster boys of African poverty

Treadmills have their own life
Their own journey
Their own tales of fat women’s struggle and tales of quests