Worthless tears

Like restless clouds
impatient to pour
or unruly streams that flow down
wayward slopes
unhindered
like young children
or angry teenagers
that sometimes do not know
when where and why
they are going
just surging mindlessly
they run so fast
tiring themselves
in this aimless exertion

my tears are such
untamed inundated
in their complaining
they do not listen to me
and have a mind of their own
Maybe my eyes laugh at them
behind their back
like wise old men
scoffing at the worthless attempts
of the young blood 
acting on impulse and flowing in the moment
or the skies that mock
the rains that wet a barren dead earth
that will never bear the fruit of this labor

but if everything in this world
went to the deserving
many of us would be so poor
I am grateful sometimes
for these expressions of pain
that make me vulnerable
clouding my vision
to shield the summer sun 
enriching me with a passionate pain
all this time wasting themselves....

These worthless tears...

The little things..

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.  ~George F. Will, The Leveling Wind




This is about a blue(jay) birdie who comes every day
to get a bite to eat
and how she hops, in discrete, digital kind of jumps,
her head moving from side to side
almost suddenly
her fear of anything
matches so well with my fear of everything
my heart melts to see her so cautious
not enjoying the food but rather snatching it away
from no one but a hurried moment of fear
she has herself woven
occasionally she will look up at me
with two swift movements of her head
I don't know if she understands what I am trying to tell her
She is like this image of mine
And I keep on telling  her , "its all fine"
but we are so comfortable, so conditioned in our spheres of fear
and its so hard to ask her to look beyond and not hold the railing so tight
that her fingers hurt
I want to tell her that she will not fall from the swing in the park
with the rusty chains I can still smell
May be she worries about the little ones
waiting for her to come back
and she carries away little bits of food for them
in her hurry also inventing new fears for their safety
She comes down and hops back
then comes back again
she knows this is not her territory
I just hope she can claim ownership somewhere
That she isn't stuck with this fear all the time everywhere
I know she does not like cranberries as she always leaves them
maybe for the little brown birds that also hop in sometimes
though I don't know them well,
but the blue birdie is my friend
i know this because she trusts me
she, the one who amplifies fear (just like I do)
so it means a lot , this gesture of hers
she will perch on the railing and chirp
call out to me 
sometimes its early in the morning
and when I go out she will just hop a right angle
and two steps and tilt her head in deep observation
I will try not to make her self-conscious
because I know she is (just like I am)
so I pretend not to look
then I go back and close the screen
and she is not as afraid as I would think she will be
she has already hopped down
and is busy looking around for
any danger any moment
I sometimes think what she thinks of me
if we were friends, how reinforcing our actions would be
she gives me a bird's eye view of myself through her
all my scurried movements in fear
only our centers are different
we both sometimes fail to value what we have
right in front
I sometimes think what if we could play a little game
of being right here , in the precise equality of the present
not a plus or a minus
and focus on it with a magnifying glass
so that the nifs(negative if's) appear blurred and far away 
for once...why don't we trick our fears to fly into the sun with wax wings
let them worry all they want, and we enjoy the little things :-)

The little things...

For the love of gray..

Black and White are short-lived
like short dashes in the sketch
but the subtle gray has a strange way
of being my companion along the whole stretch


It manages the extremes
and eases the burden of definition
of the absolute (right or wrong)
in a world that specializes in the art of  division

I like it for its tolerance
for the middle path it takes
I like it for the gentle shades
how in anger no judgements it makes

Why are we so busy
classifying everyone into bins
Why is there so much shame
for the one who never wins

Maybe if we could live and let live
and judge a little less
mix all the bright colors
and learn to love and caress

Gray has empathy and grace
but it does not preach, it will always embrace
both black and white
both night and light , with the same naive face

It does not make a bold statement
it may not be noticed in a room
but it will let other colors speak
make even the pink in the foreground bloom

I not only love grey for its integrity
for its shyness and depth
but for its quiet support to the conflicting
its equanimity, its readiness to accept

I am thankful for all the gray in the world
clouds, carpets and crowds that do not judge
I know there is some grey in all of us(not only in our hair :)),
that gives the "red love" in us the accepting nudge

I always strive to be like gray
grounded and not eager to sway
Whenever the black and whites trouble me,
I pray for it to be a cloudy, thoughtful day..
for the love of gray ..

That nascent effortless smile that I could never learn to fake,
The joyous contours of sheer joy my practical gaze can never make,
So enchanted by the tides of wonder, you let them swim in glee,
If.. I could redo my tainted canvas, If ..the world through you , I could see..

Living in the Book -I

I fear the reckless caution
What scares me is the tamed emotion
No worry for tomorrow is a happy thing
But I fear no joy for the hope that the sunrise brings
I like looking close and deep
But in great detail unhappy memories I did rather not keep
It is an art to measure the depth of life ,
not live in vanity, in vain 
I like adding dimension to it
but a complicated projection is a bane
Sometimes its better to learn
to graze the surface ever so slightly
to amuse yourself with the mundane
rather than endure a discontentment quietly
For depths seem to come in pairs
mirth and despair often in equal shares
Too much thought, too much time
Past a childhood , eager words that still submit to rhyme
An idealism overfed with its own ideas
its exaggerated sense of special and nice
A mind whose fixated notions about everything
not an everyday routine can entice
and so it trudges along, eternally ungrateful and rude at times
Though still fond of cucumbers and melons, rain washed roads and wind chimes :)
Its a love-hate relationship with what this fabric of life around it is
A coming and going of joy and sadness, in its unclaimed premises
It is a frustration at not knowing how to measure
levels of happiness in the now and the needed dollops of leisure
It is an uncompromising painful stare
Against what should have been if the world would care 
Its like missing out a scene while being right there
All of a sudden being wishful of somewhere
which does not happen to be here and now
and beyond the stretches which even imagination would allow
Its like a secret love affair with an idea or a situation
which in reality is married to a scene of now with a bland disposition
It is an intense longing to go overboard
generously sprinkled with  a contradicting fear so proudly stored
Its like a meeting of yes and no
someplace between stop and go
Maybe its beautiful the way it is
in its bitter-sweet agony and little smiles
But sometimes I am scared of its darker shades
and I wonder if it can travel the miles
If it could only create a little of what it envisions
of being bigger than the self, dedicate a passion to its presence 
So, I ask you to simplify it a little
give it some common sense
Some common joys to taste and chew
and an appetite for the uncommon less intense
Maybe close the story book and fold the page
for sometime get down the stage
soothe those nerves and come out of the nook
Re-embrace the life you have, stop living in the book :)  

Notes : This one is to daydreams and the random desire to be someplace else , a stupid sense of dissatisfaction and sadness about the obvious unimportant reasons through which I justify why I am, and the conflicting desire to paint the scene differently, to add more meaning to it(and myself)..

I saw the movie "Midnight in Paris" and thought it talked about that very same , slightly crazy feeling of re-aligning space and time to meet your silly moods or just being angry with them for not changing on your whims...

I think there is lot left in the invisible footnotes that never found their taps on the keyboard and I didn't quite create the whole thought, so maybe I will come back some time to write another part to it..to justify the confusion :)