Remember

Remember me when I am gone, away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by my hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand.

Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Fear

I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap of between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.

I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.
I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.
I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.
I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be.

I fear the bad decisions of the referee.
I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.
I fear the implications of a lawyer's fee.

I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.
I fear to read the small print of the guarantee.

And what else do I fear? Let me begin again...

Because I could not stop for death

Because I could not stop for Death--- he kindly stopped for me---
The carriage held but just ourselves-- And immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, .
For his civility, we passed the school, where children strove at Recess-- in the ring
We passed the fields of grazing grain, we passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us --- the dews quivering and chill....
We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground - the roof was scarcely visible---
The cornice---in the ground...
Since that pause, it has been centuries, and yet it feels shorter than a day...

Like the Horses' Head of eternity...

Learning

I 'm learning to say thank you,
And I'm learning to say please.
And I'm learning to use tissue
And not my sweater, when I sneeze.
And I'm not learning not to dribblle.
And I'm learning not to slurp.
And I'm learning (though it sometimes really hurts me)
Not to burp.
And I'm learning to chew softer
When I eat on the cob.
And I'm learning that it's much
Much easier to be a slob.

Parents

What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about the darkness.

They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them

The effrontery, barely imaginable.
of havingcaused us. And of how.

This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,
talking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,

taking the list link
of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren

Alone

Lying, thinking last night how to find my soul a home
where water is not thirsty, and bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I am wrong
That nobody, but nobody can make it here alone.
Alone, all alone nobody, but nobody can make it here alone.

There are some millionaires with money they can't use
their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues,
they have got expensive doctors, to cure their hearts of stone
But nobody No, nobody can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering, the wind is gonna blow
The race of man suffering, And I can hear the moan.
'Cause nobody, But nobody can make it out here alone

Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone.

Adolescence

Adolescence:

Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waitiing...
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby breasts are alert
Venetian blinds slice up the moon, the tiles quiver in pale strips.

Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round as dinner plates
and eyelashes like sharpened twines
They bring the scent of licorice.

One sits in the washbowl, one on the bathtub edge, one leans against the door. " Can you feel it yet?" they whisper.
I don't know what to say, again. They chuckle, pattin their sleek bodies with their hands.
Well, maybe next time.

And they rise, littering like pools of ink under moonlight, And vanish.

I clutch at the ragged holes they leave behind,
here at the edge of darkness, light rests like a ball of fur on my tongue....

The Dead

In poems I read, " The Dead" always appear as collective noun
gray mass without feature, to be feared or made fun of, and so to be erased,
as if we had'nt once loved or fought with them, as if we won't end the same.

What was left of you sprawled --- shapeless mass of ash,such a dark gray--
in the plastic bag we came to bury.
Pete cutting a neat square in the turf old graveyard grass becomes--moss, ferns, even violets blamketing the mounds--
next to your father's headston, closer to him in death than you'd wanted all your live to be.

Mother, brother, brothers-in-law, sisters, nephews, nieces,
and I who had known you best in faltering and urgencies,
the slow steady heat of your engine heart,
the rank innocence of your workman's sweat:
we came with mason jars and each took a last remnant of you,
even in this never "the dead,"
not the gray feathers of wood-ash,
more like sand we might collectfrom a rare beach we visited once,
Always yourself: this dense powder, you have come to.

I was the one to see FDFS of Rang De Basanti, few areas really touch you and I would lie if I say there was not a droplet that tasted salty on my cheek....Everyone would write about how good technically the movie was, how amazing Siddharth, Madhavan(in the brief appearance) were, the plot, the cinematography (I being from media line can appreciate that... but then hw many of us would really take a stock and the next morning really get up and look forward to change something, atleast something about the country. And I am n youth, 25 at that moment would have thought so many things, got inspired, but this morning as usual getting into spinning money.... Can we stop this? Who has the answer????
Actually none of us, we dont care I guess, why am I complaining, coz I just wanted to get that self created frustration to get away and start spinning money again....

Gawd.... we all have lost it... and i think its good in a way...