Poetry

Elements


Water

Female wiles, feminine charms
Nascent, warm pure;
nurturing, cleansing rain.
Bewitching, beguiling, sly;
softly chortling stream
Strong passionate power;
rushing, gushing cascade.\
Vast, fathomless, eternal;
mystical, mysterious sea.


Wind

A man of many moods
Cool fragrant gentle breeze,
stirring romance on starry nights.
Grim, purposeful determined
strong rain carrying winds.
Deep, intense, passionate
powerful gales, hinting storm.
provoked ire ,avenging
typhoon wrecking calm.
Trapped
in a lady’s dainty fan.


FIRE

Red, orange, yellow and blue
gaily dressed dancers
gyrating to a silent tune.
Rising and falling
like mocking laughter,
licking and leaping
hungry for slaughter.
Catching and spreading
like rumour on ears.
Cackling like a witch,
devouring like a demon.
Dying slowly
in muted whispers


EARTH

Testing, tantalizing
dancer of the veils.
Now luscious green,
fecund and ripe;
then damp mud,
fragrant with life.
Here scorching dry,
hiding all life;
there snowy aloof,
arrogance rife.
Holds a molten heat
that leaves a flaming trail
in it’s wake.



SKY


Endless, minute, ancient, new
A master’s art, nature’s view.
Pink streaked orange at dawn
Clear blue as the sun goes on
Purple tones ’fore night’s born
Velvet black when day’s gone.
Locking secrets of many hues
Silent sentinels leaves no clues



Kavya Bharathi , No 15, 2003.   

A Winter's Tale ( as appeared in    Sonnet Central )


Winter is the season for contentment.


Hearth ablaze, boots hung up, toddy in hand.

Soundless flakes fall, white swirls of shifting sand

on new life and forms that now lie dormant,

on fragrant firs and bells in merriment.

A monk's cloak of peace softly shrouds the land.

No other life here, no creed, class or band,


neither past nor future, just this moment.


Missed beginnings, buried lives, woeful end

Surely, winter is the time for lament?

Doors left locked, knocks unheard, boxes opened.

Some shed like leaves, others like paper rent :


matinee reruns of lost dreams torment.

The truth- its time not to reap but repent.

Appeared on Sonnet Central 

http://www.sonnets.org/yoursonnets/yoursonnets-s.htm#670

In My Mind ( as appeared in the Ghazal Page)

by Maya.  

Snake like, a thought lies coiled in my mind

Is it real, or a fantasy in my mind?


All other desires now lie squeezed out



I live with this phantom ruling in my mind.



My body twitches and jerks, zombie-like,

Wide eyes see only the object in my mind.


I move towards my dream in wish fulfillment

stumbling on the path drawn out in my mind.



In the brief minutes of wakefulness I falter

Will I win or just triumph in my mind? 



Editor's Comments

Fri Aug 5 11:35:01 2005

In My Mind


Don't let Maya's first sher fool you--the snake coils in her mind "like" a thought, where you might expect a "thought coiled like a snake." This ghazal erases the boundary between thought and object, between thing and awareness. The ghazal, with its dense repetitions, lends itself to this kind of psychological exploration.  

Reflections

Voice ebb and flow,

Waves in the sea.

An earnest frowns,

In the mesmeric hold.

Of the ubiquitous

Black and white grid

Two girls in the corner

Whisper giggle and point

The men at a table

Argue shout gesticulate

In the mirror across,

A voyeur sips
With her coffee

A drop of life

Maya

Akshara, Vol 2, April 2008, No 2

A Study

Two chairs at a table.

Heads together, over a book.

Pages never turned,

hands held under in stealth.

Messages passed in pulses,

impulses and Braille.

The clock collects sand at the bottom.

The two chairs now angled apart,

only the table betwixt connects them.

Two books, faces hidden,

no sound of pages turned.

Steam from the cups rises,

carrying private dreams,

young love and vanishes

into the stone walls.

Poetry Today



Summer

The sun
glares on
the earth
raising
temper
(ature)s.
The air
is ripe
with fruit.
Beware
if you
planted
nettles
in spring.

Spring

Spring visited me in Kashmir.
The sky taught me a new word-cerulean.
A crisp breeze gentler and blew,
earth blossomed into a font of colours.
The boatman on the sluggish lake,
sat on his picture -postcard shikara
movie like, a song on his lips,
as handsome as his land.
Eden on earth.

Now, the season does not matter.
Acrid smoke-clouds frame the sky.
The whining of the bullets,
the staccato of the rifles,
rush in the slicing wind.
The ground is a permanent red.
Wails raise on bloodless lips.
Terror fills man and land.
If there is a paradise on earth,
it needs to brought here .


Poetry Chain, Oct- Dec, 2002.


Quest

On a crowded steamer
With eager tourists and holidaying families
Leaving a trail of white
On a dirty sea
I set out
To see
A piece of past
History of man.

Romance on stone
Poetry frozen in timelessness
I found
Lofty inscriptions on wall
Broken idols in dingy caves
Vendors with baubles
Cheap and tawdry.
I returned
On another crowded steamer
With
Disappointment, outrage, shame

And a shell earring.


Poetry India
Voices in Time
Short listed All India poetry Competition 1994