Matr | मातृ

Maybe they wipe your slate from your early days clean

Only because it broke your heart in two to leave where your home has been.

The home that was a person, not a place.

Her memory of that cord though is as fresh as day.

Easy as she loves you, easily she lets go to let you crawl - 

Roots she gives, roots that know the rose must grow away if it must grow at all.

Happily she makes way for friends, lovers, and life,

Only letting go more each day, but loving more fiercely with a tearful smile.

Once she told me, she’s always here but she’s teaching me to live without her the best I could. 

Does such selfless love need any reassurance, when we both see a tether no one else could?

Three Sixty Six Days of Magic

Life in the everyday appears a most ordinary hue, Too close to the eye piece, it’s easy to miss wonders in front of you. Letters weave into words, words stitch into lines, Frames into film. Magic, approves Eisenstein. If our book of pictures ran in years, We’d see two first, and then three in the next here. A new life, a new face, a new world right where we’re at - Your mother like a magician most majestic pulled a rabbit out of her hat. If our book of pictures ran in months or at a time two We’d see the great rope trick before us. Now, though, the magician would be you. Lying still at first. Next, sitting upright. Panache? A whole lot. Turn the page to see you take your first steps, standing taut. No matter which leaf we open in our book of pictures and memories What’s most plain, what’s clear as crystal to see - The most beautiful bit of magic yet is this clone, at once giant and small The best version of your mother, the best version of me, the best version of us all.

Second (to an Embrace) Words

Some day when you hold a brush, a pen, or a stylus

Or whichever grand nephew of the quill is in business I can picture you writing words to the next opera grand Draw a path to the universe inside your mind with a few strokes of your hand. Will you write of the Arab’s apprehensions towards Meursault’s intentions? Or detective cases led astray before a new-age Sherlock’s interventions? Will you write ruba'is or sonnets or plain and simple prose? On science, the earth’s many seasons, and why before the world froze? Will you chase after the mysteries of the mind Or weave a melody with a guitar you wind? Perhaps, you’ll learn a tongue exotic and quaint Or forsake all words written, say a thousand and paint. Whatever you do, I’ll be sure to strain my eyes, my ears, my heart to comprehend Even if I fail time and again, I won’t stop - my will shall contend. No matter who’s listening and who’s eyes are not open yet - My girl, each of your words is as special as the first ‘Papa’ you ever said.

(First) Lines for a Dot

She crawls in beauty, like the morn.
Or a flower pure and pretty, that knows not a thorn.
She’s the best of the bright, the dark couldn’t come close.
Her smile lights up the world, makes me wish the moment froze.
She came to us from a faraway land,
Speaks a language that we can barely understand.
Her tongue is too many eons ahead for us to try to dabble,
She’ll have to slow down for us, and start making sense of our babble.
I heard she was a giant, but she had to get around. 
So she deflated her bodysuit to no more than five pounds.
She carries magic each place she chooses to go,
A snap of her fingers, and there are wings on our boat.
All my friends ask me to teach my little girl all I’ve read.
But they don’t know, she’s raising her mother and me instead.

Memories of the Future

What's in the mirror, what's in the past

We think we remember so clearly, so steadfast.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear - 

Never a bigger lie I assure you, you will hear.

Time is like a stream freezing more every second. Lost

Are ripples and waves of yesterday to today's frost.

Our minds, they play a trick, remember a movie we never saw,

Why not imagine ourselves the protagonist. Never let our river of follies thaw.

The thought I can predict my past with this does soon depart

I have my version, you yours. Once met, our lines must now move apart.

It's what I build with my hands I must learn to trust much more,

It's called the future, I remember it better than any past I ever did before.

Twenty-seven

A man is an island, distant and remote
But most of us find our bridges, most of us learn to build our boats
Come to terms with society and its many rules
Do what we’re told - reset and reboot
Except, that’s not everyone’s fate
For not everyone swallows that pill, not everyone takes the bait 
Geniuses and madmen tend often to ask why
How did we get here - answer first, don’t ask us to just get by
It matters not, their enquiry, they’re often told
Jettison your doubts and your questions, ease into the fold
Knowledge and wisdom accumulated over the years
Lights that people have lit, culture is, long before you got here
Might you and I still seek answers? When the question’s been flipped
No, likely not, we don’t dare to swim - we drift
Only, consensus and pressure, an open mind unabashedly ignores
Peak in, seek nirvana, experience, push through those doors
Quixotic and curious, these men and women travel through time
Reversible is their music, hear their thoughts, rewind
Silent, though now, are the flowers on their graves
Too young, they left, their fate took no slaves
Unearthed each time a record plays, are their questions, their lines
Vicariously they live, vicariously they shine
When you ask me then, why they left soon after twenty-six
‘Xited the stage, why'd they escape the mix
You see I’ve run of letters to stitch an answer, I’ve run out of lines
Zeitgeist, they are now - they’ve become the spirits of our times

Recaptcha

As I sit quietly surrounded by machines

I wonder if my silence is being encrypted on some crystal screen

Does my imagination too leave a cookie trail?

Will my next thought be induced by programmatic blackmail?

Will men from the future be men at all?

Is self determination to Malthusian paradise a matter much too small?

What then remains of this ship, Theseus begs, pray tell

“It’s the taste of comfort, over freedom’s smell”

And just about then two fingers snapped

While waiting eagerly, an answer demanded an asp.

“We’re down a million simulations, it ends the same. Let’s forget the apple now”

Eve suggested, “Instead, let’s find new hobbies to pass our time somehow.”