Depression is an artist of meager talent

For it turns statues out of lively beings

Daytime Drinkers

Smoke curls caressing their face

They sit alone hiding away from the daylight

Spending their time in dingy bars

Nursing a drink or two or many

Like an ageing vampire brooding over

A look of regret painted thick

All over their face.

Explanations turn an artist into a performer. He justifies the creation and makes it easily edible for the admirer or the critic or the passer-by. He need not do it.

Absurdity is frankness. It sees no purpose in explanations and definitions. It is to present the unknown patterns of life as it is. A slice of life with no explanations. It is standing behind the scenes and observing without a clinical mind. It is art created with abandon.

That reminds me about life which is quite absurd if not for the learnt and the taught and the built answers strengthening the human animal’s non-existent purpose. Or else he wouldn’t want to be a part of the next moment or the next day and so on. Absurdity while shattering these conditioned meanings and so called realities force us to delve deeper. And cautions us to observe like an observer so that we don’t create yet another veil which might be easily mistaken for the reality or truth by the inferior lot.

Its very purpose is to create an urge within the human animal to take the journey further. To leave the comforts of his fake paradise built with ignorance and borrowed teachings and seek the ultimate unknown. That’s what absurdity does. It’s a tool to tear away the veil, the divine fire that shall set ablaze his fancy comfort castles and turn his heaven into a burning hell. Only then can he take the journey further. Only then can he become an eternal traveler for he has no home to go back to.

But knowing the nature of man we are quite sure that he shall build myriad paradises on the way. That’s when a tool like absurdity or something equally genuine born out from the need of the hour will wake him up and bestow upon him the strength and courage to stare into the dark abyss instead of falling asleep with his substandard dreams. It’s quite a brutal tool as we all know how it feels to wake up a sleeping child.

Christmas Feast

Golden threads streaming down the skylights,
Hazy herb drenched walls soak in the fish oiled redolence,
Senses meditate on nature games and a heady mix of
Feather heads flavoured with hemp and the humble banquet
Float around.

Morning woke up with a wrinkled, sleepless bedsheet in hand,
Sat through the late noon, head dipped in esoteric dissolvents,
Deep down in the mind domain, balls hit the wall,
Some break, some others break into the light.

City bathed in festive spirit, tangoes around draped in gold and giggles,
Her ample bosom jiggling in the rhythm of delight
The who's who and the who knows, drunk alike on bottom-less highs.

Crosslegged in contemplation,
Till the drowsy rainbow sets me to sleep
When awoke I witnessed,
Feather heads of the feast, sculptured and laid,
To be gorged and disgorged.

Late Nightlife

Nocturnal canine congress
Scared the shit out of the drunken nomad
Corrupt cosmopolitan well wishers
Sink in their blood tooth
The lively land lady lies nearly dead
Zombied and blood sucked
She goes to sleep
Mute and broken
Behind the dark cascade
Once starlit, now no more.

Angry bullets of intolerance set the nation’s tear glands rolling
Corporate sponsored mockery pretending to console the wail
Khadi clad monkeys brag on prime time television
House wives stare into flat screen gory soap dried eyes
And serial killed grief
Heads roll, chairs fall
Sons fall asleep in cold wooden caskets
Luxury abode lies caramelized
Fine Chinese draperies, exotic glass chandeliers
Lava down the silent corridors
Porcelain tea cups drained with the ashes of vengeance
Molten Persian rugs soak in the tender flesh of tomorrow
Burnt flesh thickens the gravy of tragedy
Rich and the powerful shall be haunted for years to come
Fearless ignorance invokes the orgy of terror and death
Mothers wailing on both sides of evil
Star-lit sky wears the veil of racial fury
Evil gorging on human salami sandwiches
Lazy mornings bathed in golden sunlight
Champagne nights filled with patrician cacophony
Carcass soup thickens in the melting pot worth a one week scoop
News peddlers hawking recent footages on television footpath
Fighting for the voyeurs’ nanosecond attention span
Blood stained nightmares blemishing the city’s silver screen mindscape