Tag: life

Grief like Sunset

Words- Vibina Narayan. Picture- Rajkumar.J.S

I just have these three words to aid me- Grief like Sunset. Let me see where it leads me.

Like this path I stumbled up on and chose to explore throwing caution to the wind.

Like every other story of mine.

Avoiding the synchronicity that comes with the monotone of life.

Holding my head up high to salute the sun in his eye

When really, I am as short as the stump of a bush people piss on,

Cut down a while back.

I jump across the puddles and with slight vexation avoid the ‘Danger-Flood!’ signs

Because it is oceans I have to swim in my life and valleys I have to leap over

And my tiny misshapen legs ought to have the might that they show.

If I have to live to have another bleak chance at a most beautiful day

That may elude and escape through all the misery and mockery present otherwise,

In this little harangue called my life.

Where rejections and declines may rule the pages of my book

But the pen to end my griefs as beautiful as the sunset

Is still being wielded by my proud little hands.

The End.

Infinite

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Image ©️ Vibina Narayan

There is a reason why everything happens.

A reason why you are born.

A reason for why you were born on the day you were born.

A reason for the home or street that brings you up.

A reason for your existence.

One for the way you are.

And the unavoidable one for how your life turns out to be.

Every emotion, every thought, every act, every word- spoken or not, is accounted for with a reason not always known to the limited consciousness of our human minds.

Like all these rivulets, we are pooled into nothing but the sea of humanity.

And then all these reasons, at an uncalled vertex of moment, will flood into your awareness of making any sense at all with vague words for explanation.

Why they were always there in the beginning.

And why they will always be there till the end.

Nothing is a coincidence, and yet everything is.

Luna

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Poetry by Vibina Narayan @soulofscheherazade. Image by Shweta Kallianpurkar @a_tad_askew

I prayed.

A little block of

the burdened sky

dropped down.

And the sun blushed,

In the West End of

my bizarre idea of

Paradise.

Letting be, and

a trickle of

Letting go.

All for me, and

All for mine.

I chased

another bubble of hope,

and threw

another reckless of a wish,

to the brooding

handover of twilight.

Fancying always the

Canny, crescent smile

of an obscured shadow

of the two faced

lunar,

(A full blue moon only to usurp my heart)

Upon the transitioning palette of dreams

of tonight.

And it brought me

to you (once again),

And a song humming in me

all week long.

While the winter’s fire

and the abandoned echo

of a child’s laugh

down the long road home,

crooned away the passing

of this evening,

Walking all the miles in

thoughts between

the hearts of

You and I.

December

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Just re-visiting an old favourite poem of mine simply titled, ‘December’. Hope you like 🙂

Image and poem copyright Vibina Narayan

Little bird.

Are you lost amongst

the thorny brambles

knitting up the clear freezing sky.

Are you hungry?

For the grains, the kind, placid strangers of summer

Once threw your way.

Are you searching for the voice

that you once used for

singing the forlorn ballads of

autumn love that

died along with their leaves.

You know, I am here

Waiting with a basin full

of love and salt, shed

this bygone year.

Soaking in them the

seeds of tomorrow for

a much brighter morning,

a much silent noon,

to plant in the soil

of my little strength.

Don’t leave me a trinket.

It is nothing but another memory of you.

Another memory of you

Owing me something.

You may have heard of this,

But my love knows no debts,

or simple words of gratitude.

Just pay me a visit,

A flutter of your beautiful wings,

And those colourful plumes

to frenzy my ill heart.

For to see your beating bosom,

Throbbing with a million unsung songs to be proud of,

And your eyes meeting a million friends

amongst yours or otherwise,

Bring a thousand rhythms of joy,

to my winter soul and

December thoughts.

November

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Image and poem copyright of Vibina Narayan

In the passing of the thin day,

In the midst of this whirlwind

where I stand,

An axis held by tutored lungfuls

of cold, hard, breath,

Presides over the leftover will

in my tortuous veins.

(Like an autumn leaf that refuses to fall)

My eyes,

Marbles of fading memories,

are guided to the tremulous stance of a robin,

her chest, an orange crescent

in this bluegray, beaming pride

of a relentless November.

(Like an autumn leaf that refuses to fall).

The moon rises early

Her soft cream of translucency

Diluting the pitch dark of winter-

The silhouettes of the night

A still reminder of

Seasons and friends

that come and go,

and the ones that remain to fill my home.

(Like an autumn leaf that refuses to fall).

And for this,

I shall stay,

Rooted to the changing firmament of time,

My young, forming, learning, oak

The visceral bearer of

Life and her slow disclosures.

The rings and lines upon this trunk of mine,

An adage of all the stories

seen and untold.

(Like an autumn leaf that refuses to fall).

Wild Woman

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Picture and Poem copyright of Vibina Narayan

The weathered marks of yesterday’s

sorrow summers have

left an indelible pattern to

long for something

Forever.

Little droplets of jewels

kiss the leaf tips a little longer

yearned and adorned in

another life.

Telling fairytales of the

untouched trials of

a damp, damp heart.

Frost numbs, and sunshine blinds (which do you prefer?)

Stood in the wet grass

dazed, squared, and still,

skin of a strong, dry bone memory upon,

a jaded rose quartz,

bare and labile flesh amongst the weeds,

in an overgrown backyard,

reminding, remaining, and

remembering

a young girl in the

wild woman’s art.

Six feet

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Image copyright Vibina Narayan

Soft light whispers into the forgotten corners

Overlooking shadows and secrets laying bare in the middle.

The moon cradles the night in her wistful arms

As you cradle mine, in your made to believe strong.

And all that remains,

is this momentum and space

between our condensed breath heavy with the magnitude of now,

Skin denuded of pride and satin we never bought.

Pulse stroked in the labile hands of time

Held like a pearl, dived deep, hard to catch.

The oyster of your world presents the song of your heart.

This bed I wish to sleep on, the sea of your life, (for the rest of mine)-

On a raft, a plank or may you call it my home.

I inhale in selfish lungfuls of all the dispersed wishes- stray and not

And forage to trap all the stars beneath the veined veils of thick eyelids-

Those carrying dreams and not.

Praying to slip into the burrow of you, skeleton and soul through.

Six feet, deep and under and more.

Six feet, beyond and wide and whole.

Indefatigable

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Image Copyright Vibina Narayan

Elusive sunshine, playmate of the cassock clouds

Let me soak you in, until you allow.

The birds cackle- happy silhouettes of freedom

In a happier blue sky,

A song of chores and forage, amongst the thicket of

Coloured woods of a depleting August summer.

The gentle breeze, that was yesterday a storm to reckon,

Makes the trees sway and dance to soothe our listless souls

That lay basking in the afternoon drizzle, believing

they will escape what they cannot.

Home is much cherished with pride until

Love is replaced with the truth of what it is not.

And I breathe to myself, a silent whisper-

Heaven and winds churned by the same skies know,

These trees can bend to break and destroy, but do not.

As much as they know me, indefatigable

Beneath the placid armour of livelihood I don,

To make everything simple and worthwhile.

Paperboat of Dreams

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Copyright image Vibina Narayan

The pen is being wielded by

her misshapen fingers.

A child’s hand- like a supposed 

joke, that is pumped by the veins of 

A century old heart.

Wisdom grays, that heard a million

Stories, but never knew her own.

In the turbulence of whispers though,

She now sought her belonging.

A feeble, but a strong call,

Like the distant seething of a hurricane,

Opens the gateway, to what

Will always be.

They have had to fell fortresses,

Built of the cement of inherited love.

Over nights and over years,

Over the seven seas of unslept nights.

Her dismantled breath and an autonomous neck, still reaching out,

beyond mediocrity and not being understood-

The radio humming through the ticking pulse of the night.

Allowing the plastic biro and the ink of tomorrow to stain

The callus on a well rounded, cuticle bitten

Finger- to swear and for pleasure.

Setting sail on some once-upon-a-times and

Paperboat of dreams.

For what is poetry to a poet, but

A vacant essay, with 

No beginnings and no ends, but

A scattered middle, shaped wholesome with,

Words strewn like confetti and 

Cherished like a memory.

Hues of departure

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Yellow fields of brightening joy

Singing out to the lackadaisical day

Painted by wishful thinking.

Penetrated by languorous breathing. 

In pure poetry you assimilate

Into you the violet needs of

Glorious fireweeds .

 

Tired eyes bearing dreams

As much as you repress the 

Sunshine somewhere within 

The thick vapours of strange lands.

Allow me to cast, that which cannot 

 

Be seen or shown.

Rejoice in this day as 

The needles of light from heaven

Percolates into the collective conscience of

All that perished and shall,

But lived the running colours of every 

Landscape they imagined-

Length, breadth and

wiser upon departure.