Round and round
Mentally unsound
On shaky ground
Insecurity abounds
The mind whirls
Emotion swirls
Dreams unwind
Destiny unkind
One hopes
To elope
But one is bound
To one’s ground
To escape this cage
Needs an adage
No need to cry
One is born to fly
Personality is like a rose
Everyone likes it
It attracts for a couple of days
And is then thrown away
Character is like chlorophyll
Not many know about it
It’s not visible
But it sustains life on earth.
I am
Therefore I breathe
I am
Therefore I live
To live or not
That is the question
To breathe or not
That is the dilemma
Moments of panic
That are tragic
I am lethargic
There’s need of some magic
Uncomfortable
Unstable
Unable
To be stable
I am hurt
But I won’t be curt
The situation does hurt
Who’ll clean up the dirt?
I will try
Not to cry
It’s about time
For me to fly
I can hear what you say
I sense we’re in a bind
I can touch what you say
So what if I’m blind?
I understand you
Better than most others
Engulfed in your hair
Smelling the flowers
The perfume of your hair
Lifts me out of despair
The darkness everywhere
Asks me, do I dare?
Am I fit to be your lover?
Blind, willing to bend lower
This is what tears me apart
Our love, will it have a start?
In pursuit of a dream
Hoping you will understand
About to spill over the brim
My shaky conscience; it can’t stand
If I were a tear in your eyes
I would lie on your cheeks and die on your lips
But if you were a tear in my eyes
I would never cry in fear of losing you
(Composed by a friend)
Sputnik soared
Atlas Shrugged
Mankind roared
Earth unplugged
Start of a space race
What a disgrace
Amidst all the pace
Who lost their face?
Fifty years
Communism shattered
Man yearns
His dreams shattered
Ayn Rand published
Russia extinguished
Galt spoke
The world awoke
Dagny Taggart
A railroad at heart
Torn apart
Yet, a work of art
Hank Rearden
Beneath a burden
Refused a pardon
Became a guardian
Francisco
Acted like in a disco
His character
Much like a fresco
John Galt
His life exalts
Like single malt
Pure gestalt
Yuri Gagarin
In space, rollickin’
Williams Sunita
Became a Senorita
Mir space station
An unsavory destination
Can man have affection?
Mere words, with trepidation
A pale blue dot
In an ordinary spot
Homo Sapiens
What have they got?
Freedom? Dictatorship? Democracy?
These may be human constructs
But the doomsday if Atlas really Shrugged
Is there for all to see
(In commemoration of the fifty year anniversary of Sputnik’s launch and the publication of Atlas Shrugged.)
There was once a Rambodoc
Who twisted word and mind
Along came An Unquiet Mind
And soon they were one of a kind
Not forgetting herself, Aikaterine joined
Oemar’s random musings entwined
Thiru was perched on a spot
No wonder as he was on blogspot
Priyank was flying in the cloud
While Arun thought out loud
Sree’s views, and Nita with her wide angle view
Brought many topics in everyone’s purview
Prerna loved life and explored
While we all many times deplored
The numerous human gaffes
Using philos(ophy) in Paul’s Cafe
Monday Morning Power had an attitude
Not unlike Harsha, the gentle dude
Ergo with reason as his leading motive
Held his blog readers captive
On top of all this assorted mix
Was Krish Ashok, a lover of Asterix
Dressing it all up with salsa
Using his inimitable Jalsa
This eclectic mix of characters
Reminds me of Lagaan
And that’s why on Independence Day
I say, Mera Blogosphere Mahaan!
(PS: For benefit of non-Indians, Mera Blogosphere Mahaan means My Blogosphere is Great!)
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Again, something I’d written long time back, in 1990, to be precise. All criticisms welcome!
What do I write about?
The mountains, lakes, skies;
Or birds, flowers, and the like?
Here I am, amongst my daily troubles,
Wanting some peace of mind
Thought I would write a poem
But what do I write about?
I wonder what poets possess
That makes them poets
I wonder how their creativity
Is created…
How mischievous language is!
It completely describes an entity
As complex and vague as the poetic mind
By simply calling it poetic!
Is poetry born out of
Joy, Grief, and other such
Intense emotions only?
Or can this be called a poem
If I consider it to be?
I now suspect
That it needs great concentration
For a poet
To write a poem
And further
That there is a superior logic
Behind the rhythmic passages
Of a poem
Poetry is a means for the poet
To let his imagination
And romanticism
Run wild
If we invent norms
Regarding what constitutes a poem
Would it be a restriction
Which may destroy what it’s trying to preserve?
For some, a poem is simply
A rhythmic, lucid passage
Why can’t prose
Not possessing lucidity of words
But of thought
Be called a poem?
I can better appreciate rhythm and lucidity
In ideas
Than in words
How I wish I could write a poem
Of my many enchanting thoughts
Without suffering from the curse
Of being compelled to use language
Whose words do not always rhyme…
I am now catching a glimpse
Of the poetry
That is in the world
For me
How wonderful is the fact
That I am conscious
Of myself!
Am I not the poetry of Nature?
But then I wonder
Who is the poet of Nature?
Which itself is sheer poetry?
Does poetry require a poet?
Which leads me to think
Does a poet ever create poetry?
Or does he simply catch
The already existing poetry
In words?
Finally, what is poetry?
Which, I think
Everybody should decide for oneself
If they can
For me
The lucidity of ideas in a poetic work
Transcends the superficial rhythm
Of its words
I think the best example
Of what I intend to say
Is best exemplified
In this work itself
Which has been a poetry for me
Hasn’t
The lucidity of thoughts
And the logic of the thinking mind
Combined with the flavor of romanticism
Surpassed the absence of rhyme
To create this poem?
PS: This just goes to prove that I’m not a poet by nature, irrespective of my amatuerish attempts!
There are some truths you figure out yourself without needing to study them elsewhere.
I learnt a bit of yoga when I was a child, and while doing pranayama, learnt that the left nostril leads to the right part of the brain and vice versa.
Some years later, I bought the book Whole Brain Thinking, and discovered the individual strengths (or shall we say personality traits?) of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. (For an excellent summary of what whole brain thinking is all about, see this article by John Adams)
Well, connecting the dots, I deduced the following principle:
When one is breathing through the left nostril, the right brain is active, and vice versa.
I decided to put this to the test and here’s what I found:
1. Yoga’s ancient adage about the nostrils connecting to the other side of the brain has been proven by science.
2. My hypotheses is held up both by yoga and what’s now called ‘alternative’ medicine or therapies.
I’ve tested this hypotheses of mine practically several times, and it turns out to be true without fail. What I have not been able to achieve is what the yogis preach: change the dominant nostril at the first sign of any physical or mental disturbance. Whenever I try that, not only do I not succeed, I get more frustrated and upset!
A few asides:
- Spiritual comes from the word Spiritus, which means breath in Latin
- In the movie Out of Africa, Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford) bemoans how the foot has never been appreciated by the poets. I think the same is true about the nostrils. Consider this: Each day, the nose cleans about 10,000 litres of air, which has to be filtered and air-conditioned, to the, um, taste of the lungs - 80% humidity and 35 degrees Centigrade. It is no mean feat!
By the way, this is finally my 100th post. A very grateful thanks to all my readers - here’s some celebration to go along with it!
Dewdrop says to raindrop,
It’s all nice for you
You’re fully grown when you drop
I go through so much pain to grow!
Raindrop says yes, but
The leaves and flowers reject me as I’m foreign
You stay with them much longer
Since you’ve spent time growing with them!
