Homing Birds

Homing birds twitter at the end of day
Winding to the tree whence they came.
Fluttering, flapping, dipping as a gay
Group of friends on a dusty road
Trailing home the smell of evening sunlight.

How do they find their way?
Perhaps that one there is lost.
Dragged to a magnet that has held its sway
The last ten thousand years or more.
I see it, upside down, rudderless, absorbing
Each breath of wind under its shivering wings.

I see it alight on a tree, far from home
Amidst an alien green of foreign leaves
Desperate as the blood fades in the aerial dome
That has already changed past recognition.
I see it, a black steadfastness of arrogance,
Unmoving as the conviction of being right.

Perhaps it will spend the night there
Ignorant of the revolution of the world
While it waits a while here.
In the morning, the sky would have changed
For another bird; for this one here
It is lost forever.

All of a Sudden

"Oh yes, that's right, thank you; perfect timing too, right when I'm in the middle of moving out."

I've been having tons of ideas popping in my head like jellyfish. It's funny that they decide to make an appearance right when things are screeching to an end. In another two weeks, I will have left this place, never to return. Consequently, my days right now are a jumble of studying for the (foolishly named) final exam, packing bags, filling boxes and discarding meaningless "oh-I-must-keep-this-with-me-forever"s.

I'm brushing the broom against the floors that never seem to be any less dusty, looking at the particles of Delhi outdoors dancing in a streak of sunlight when "tick-tock-tick-tock..." they come pouring in from nowhere in particular. 

"Oh, but you can't do that." I say.

I take my phone and hastily type whatever I can so that I may remember later on. 

But one never quite does, right?

One day I shall write a memorial for all the ideas that I have lost. Oh, here's another.. 

Just a bit of words

I wander wondering
If wonder is a wonder
Of wondrous proportions.

Fairy Tales

The older we grow

The littler we become.

Hormones, beards, breasts.

Yearning for fairy tales.

Decay

Prickly like the hair

Growing under your skin,

Unseen

Building link after link,

Till one day 

You see it sprout.

A slow passage of what-nots

That erase you

Quietly.

In your firmament

Of burning ambition

You've missed it.

What's been hiding

In plain sight,

Conspiring

In dark and light,

In shade and gleam

To catch you unawares.

Fear

You've seen him differently in all your days
Sometimes on a hot noon
He’d stand at the edge of a rooftop
Hanging dangerously low
In a skyline melting
With childhood colours.

Sometimes he’d slink toward you
In a dark alley
Winding down a youth
You could have never dreamed of.

Once he stopped you on a busy road
Jam-packed with noise and smells
Cars swerving to avoid
The collision.
A collapse.

He looked you in the eye and said
“Do not fear me.”

Window

Tiny chink of muddy light

In a room

Of darkness

Within a room.

What use is this view

To one who 

Has closed eyes

And glimpses anew

A patch of cover?

Green gold mists

Of blue shrouds

Red glitzy

Gusty crowds

Awork in factories

Of thoughts

Asleep in minds

With knots

Of a million winters.

Someone came

Suddenly a'knocking

Down walls

And cracking

Glass shards 

Of light into

The window

Anew

With sound and fury.

Fortress breached is fortress lost.

What's lost is given.