Why, Where & How of poems

Why, Where & How...

I would like to say what I feel right now, very pompous… writing about myself, my own poems, my experiences seem like walking on a tightrope on top of narcissistic valley. Maybe I can defy.

I had to struggle to overcome the inhibitions of exhibiting naked details of my experiences. Somewhere I gathered that I don’t have to evaluate or judge self or poems positively or negatively and that helped me to expose.

I look my poems as milestones or photographs of some mental state I have gone through, and the challenge lies in expressing predominant emotions of such a state/s in a language. For me it usually comes out in a flow and I tend to keep them that way.

Thus it’s always been very difficult for me to evaluate my own poems in any sense, because I am not trying to be a professional and try to ignore analyzing them from literary perspective.

So I always like to know how others find them to be, and more as an interviewer who is dispassionate about criticism or praise and am more interested in analytical and interpretive views, and I become like a child who is sharing his new toys with others. I try to maintain an unapologetically casual attitude which keeps me moored as well as lets me fly.

While penning down a poem, the need and process of looking at self & emotions from a 3rd person’s view is something I seem to enjoy indulging in, but have not been able to find out the need to write poems.

Never been good at understanding others poems (even my own after I have finished them), as its always been an intuitive activity for me rather than conscious process. I have tried to emulate some of my friends who genuinely seem to get that ‘kick’ from reading poems, but…

I have heard that exposing the processes behind by a poem/poet is something not to be done (some literary norm?) but I like to fight restrictive thinking, conventions, things repeated blindly by even the ripened heads. But let me take that on... let me defy (again).

As it happens intuitively for me, I have written all this as another attempt to understand. If your impression of a theme/interpretation differs from my point of view then look at it as a fresh creation, as a perspective shift and be cool. I always enjoyed discussing these differences of views.

If you don’t want to experiment in such a way, then don’t read the comments that follow the previous 59 poems i have posted.

59) Whisper

59) Whisper
There is this gal I like,
But not been able to talk
From afar her face
Shows a dawn of a smile,
It’s been the same story all my life.

Dawn can be dusk,
A shade away from black
Eyes also can be a trap
Even innocence filled ones.

She knows...
And her tilting of head teases,
Our eyes meet...
And like clouds,
Breaking patterns, tear apart...

An identified, loved design,
Breaks apart, torn by a concealed hand,
Sometimes merges with others,
Confounding me like self.

When her eyes slant towards me,
Wordless poems flow
From mountain tops,
And know where to go..
But don't know the way......

Streams afloat above,
Seek to merge with river
Etch path.. towards
Everlasting stay..

Don't know how to reach out,
Connect...

58) Will she?

58) Will she?

Unable to cry out,
Exact my feelings and shout,
Silently suffering,
Yet strangely enjoying;

Causes it a lovely lass, unaware
That I am willing to surrender…
Myself, for her presence;
Escape, sense of solitude.

Don’t want to make mistake,
With whole happiness at stake,
To speak the language of heart
Unsure, will she accept?

In everyone of my dream,
She smiles and her eyes gleam,
Every time I wakeup, scared,
In reality, will she understand?

57) Wave

57) Wave
An endless embrace, my flower;
You said it with a smile, a wave,
And I said, goodbye to the
Distance within me,
Love’s language is strange
To everyone its own,
But everywhere incomplete;

Evening breeze in vain
Tries to feel its tenderness,
Sugar drowns in itself in its sweetness,
Even nature succeeds to show
Only miserably, its symbols,
My heart, what can I say.

Winter, summer, rain becomes spring,
Spread mellowed light;
Without any answers stops the search,
And impossible is within reach,
Infinity just a step away,
Lingers on love cloud, Lingers on…

56) War

56) War
His half naked body shivering,
From chin, tear drops falling,
His broken left arm on a sling,
He stood there sobbing,
In front of a thousand snow white crosses,
Planted on top of
Bright green grass,
And buried underneath,
Countless bodies.

A pretty picture,
It makes from far away,
Where you can’t hear him cry.

His cowardice thoughts,
Slowly turn to oath,
To revenge the sleeping martyrs,
And, lends him a purpose to live again.

‘O’ Great War,
I thank thee,
Thou have saved a life.

55) Village temple

55) Village temple
Rain when it came,
Like the priest at the
Village temple,
Bathed the stone deity and
Stone paved pathways,
Constantly with drops of water
With the help of roof tiles,
Who shrank into themselves,
Left gaps in their relations.

The stone walls,
Smeared with grease and black dust
Of burning lamps on ghee*,
Poured by devotees to cleanse
Their sins; Rise from the
Nearby pond, in semi wet clothes
Lips busily chanting,
Symbolizing piousness externally,
Stare at the deity
With folded hands,
Sometimes along with children,
Who look up frequently,
To time exactly, the period of devotion.