Puddle-River

It was mid-day. The heat was scorching. The moon was shimmering in the dark ripples of the lake. Mirages formed on the road to the lake. The heat waves blurred the road, as the winds rising from the frozen lake formed icicles on the nose. Sweat dribbled down the icicles, forming a puddle in the ground. The immense puddle of clear liquid, acquired a life of its own as it flowed into the lake. Mudskippers formed a colony on the dry sandy banks of the puddle-river. As the river flowed upstream, forests emerged from behind the clearing in the grass. The grass, thick, high and elephantine, grew on the tracks the elephants had formed. The mice moved among the grass, scampering and trampling. They flattened enormous patches of grass as they moved towards the bush in the forest, behind the clearing.

The clearing in itself was not very clear to the naked eye. It was very green, with numerous small trees jutting out of the bare ground covered in weeds. It was clear to the birds though (Their eyes, covered with a nictitating membrane, were not naked.).

The forest started where the weeds extended into the forest floor. The puddle-river meandered through the forests, depositing silt on the banks and creating high mountains. The mountains were a chain of fertile plains. Mountain goats prowled the plains, ever growling and hardly cussing. They cussed more and growled hardly, if the truth was to be told. Truth, although, did hardly ever heed anyone; he was not a person who like being told. So, the goats growled and cussed.

Three men had come down to fish in the river. It was a well-known fact where they had come down from, but sadly no one lived by the river to know the fact well.
Fishing in the puddle-river was not easy. The water was perspiratoryly saline. Most fishes did not care for such water. Those fishes that did, behaved like fish out of water, in the river.

When the puddle-river entered the lake, the view was orgasmic. Many a breath taken tourist had driven home asthmatic from the scene.

The meeting of the river and the lake, said an Old Timer, signified intense passion. Such passion can’t be described.
An old timer’s call should be respected.

THE END

The Cubicle

It is a cubicle. They have placed me in the centre, exposed to scrutiny. Not that there is much to scrutinize, other than my unimpressive computer screen. The screen shall be peered upon, checked for irregularities. Not that it is to be regulated, not that there is a regulator. The jobless overworked specimens, burning with jealous agony, gawk at my bland underworked screen.
The cubicle, if ‘carefully glanced’ at, shall open itself to you. Don’t misunderstand me, it holds no profound secrets. The fact is, with just two walls, my cubicle is hardly a cube. It is as open as a cube can be. It offers no protection as I sit facing it, my back open to the unknown!

This is no anxious, terror driven, piece, heh heh, Nah! No monster out of my dream is this cubicle! I would place a temporary niggle, a disturbing draft and the cubicle in the same set. Like any niggle or a draft, you would want the cubicle to go away, or moreover ‘become a cube’!
It had to be molded into a cube! There are not many ways two walls can form a cube! (In addition I was not sure whether the authorities would have been very pleased with my idea of uprooting walls from other cubicles and adding it into mine. So, I sat down to think.)

I think better with some music on at times, so I put on my headphones.
Some guy humming into your ears is not the most soothing incident, even under the most abnormal circumstances, but headphones, man! Magical things these are! Never would I have let any guy anywhere near my ears!
As I tuned in, I discovered, FIRE and invented a WHEEL (tubular air filled rubber structure)! Well? I Keed! I discovered new ways to make cubes. It involves a headphone and a piece of good musical work.

If you have Tailored your mind to like Swifts and the kind, read no further, go fornicate thyself in a corner Young Sir!

So yeah, I figured that cubicular problems of mine had solution in music. Music formed an intangible cover, an amoeboid layer, (like the protection layers around hot aunts, overtly hairy men and retarded kids taking a bath in Lifebuoy advertisements, with a dog or two sometimes thrown in,) but just a little more thicker and cubish.
Now I sit safe! Music is my savior! Hail Music! Hail Storms! Peace Out!

Shreds of Thoughts

The huge orb slowly rotates out of the shadows into the light. The first rays of the day refracted from the clouds strike the concrete structures, rendering them with colours. The world around shrugs out of the darkness as brightness engulfs the day. All await the round orange glare, the one that the great Monkey king had once swallowed. The shimmering star transforms into a scathing dazzler as the beams of light force into my room disregarding the curtains. I squint my eyes, not being ready for the increasing brilliance. My mind is still positioned in the dark of the night; the thoughts which had resonated in the lucid nocturnal fade away in lurid diurnal. A cocktail of confusion my brain had created, and in darkness these confused thoughts had marinated, but before the grey cells could be inebriated, the Sun came out and all sense of thought dissipated! The parchments of thought, the fiery sphere has charred and destroyed, nothing concrete comes out of my nightly ignited mind.

Clubbing the Club

The last time he had seen the game, he was a mere spectator. It used to hail then, and the rules of the game were different. He recalled, the hail stones that had been collected in steel bowls and glasses (tumblers some called them). The hail stones though, had long gone; dissipated. Their time was past, they knew, like the green serpent which had hissed and mingled with the grass. The crabs which waded in the rain water with him, the ones he had smashed with stones, lived in absolute fear. They did not fear the stone or him. It was time they feared. None ever came out to welcome the torrents that lashed the solitary fields. It was a different era now.

When he came on the field, he knew that the turf was not the same. It was to his advantage now. He had looked at it from a distance; it was a mirage then. It never revealed its true nature, the turf. Comprehension dawns when one walks onto the turf. The insidious face is a farce. It fears defeat and subsequent subjugation. While the turf raved in rage, he knew the world was to be his pet stage. He respected the game, not the turf. The game was his aide; it would be the source of the macabre turfs' annihilation!

He played with brute force knowing that the vent of his wroth lied in victory. This truth, to all, was to be denied. No one would ever know the source of his anger, taste the joy of triumph but all now would understand the importance of being earnest.

Botterphlaies!!

The moon, in the placid lake shimmers.

I notice when I am told.

An epitome of beauty is one among,

the thousand praises of the moon, I have heard sung.

Even for a moment not, does this beauty in my brain register,

although a question for a moment does arise.

The black, dark lake; Murky, almost solid,

does the darkness deceive me?

The black marble reflects the moon,

but where from has this texture it attained?

The answer comes in a flash.

Concentrated urban garbage! Decades of solid waste!

The affair makes haste.

My brain drains the residues of the idea,

that for a moment had kept me occupied.

For my grey cells were busy, preoccupied.



My mind is playing games, the abdomen its target.

A cavernous cavity, in there has developed,

butterflies, then are let loose!

Meals I had heavy, but no amount of food, could this hunger, satiate.

In a hall with numerous chairs I sit,

with people, scattered in bunches unperturbed, unaffected.

Does nobody a problem detect? Does the queer problem only me affect?

I catch a whisper, it booms in my head.

And I know there is another soul, who has butterflies swallowed.



In a dim discoloured stairway flanked by bushes, I walk.

Not in the bushes, but in my stomach the butterflies rustle.

The voice, pacific and composed, has a body this time taken.

I feel the touch, and the butterflies know something is amiss.

Their existence is in question, just by a solitary kiss.



A lengthy tin block hammered into sheets,

the sheets moulded into blocks,

had the wheels been any smoother, the marble lake would shy away!

A seat in it I take, rickety though it may be.

The monstrous steel-tin amalgamation, unparalled in its job,

traverses the traffic, negotiates the nonnegotiable.

There is commotion, noise and racket rocks the junction.

My ears are impervious.

I hear no haggle, detect no horn blares, not a screech seems to register.

I move towards a preset destination,

the voice embodied, sincere in utterance, mature in speech, accompanies me.

The sound is enchanting.

The butterflies it has dispelled.

NOX

The sun is yet to bid proper goodnight,

but there is already a rush to switch on the light.

We live in a constant stream of beams,

of the bulbs, tubelights and the LED gleams .

In a perennial beam of lights we are swathed,

and so, not just in the sun have we bathed.


A late night flicker of the computer screen,

the floodlit cricket ovals green,

an orange orb of the street ligh’,

the blinding headlamps of the cabbie passing by,

together they for sure will deny,

darkness, to the human eye.


The synthetic light has us blinded to many a wonder,

the darkness in its wings, has taken under.

The sky was once with stars and comets dotted,

like the one Doctor Halley spotted.

The haze, that the city lights ensure,

diminish the twinkling stars’ allure.


When did the last time monsieur,

you enjoy the landscape pure,

without a shimmering patch of blunder,

scattered here and there asunder?

Did not the eerie sense of satisfaction, blanket you at least a fraction,

when the intercity that night you took, crossed a terrain with no luminous interaction?


Have we dismissed the crackling fire,

or is it just the companion of the funeral pyre?

Where have the flickering fireflies vanished,

who once were, for burning candles famished?

Has darkness with all its intricacies gone?

Has it left us all forlorn?


Let the brightness be reduced, let me in peace muse,

or let there be a bottle of booze, and brightness, let the friends infuse!

One Shat Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Unheard, is what it can be called of at best,

the cuckoo, it seems, had bulit her own nest!

The crow saw the cuckoo in glory bask,

furious, he was, because it was all his task.

Humiliating the one, his nest who had occupied,

was an instant decision. All the woe on cuckoo betide.

At loggerheads, they were, every bone and sinew,

but the rivalry, in between them, was nothing new.

Before the birth of you or that of the first Jew,

it was known that friendship between them would never ensue.

The portrait of the world had just been made,

but the crow and the cuckoo were without a shade!

All the colours, they say, had been taken,

but black, a choice of the godforsaken.

A letter to the artist himself, was written,

by the duo, who claimed to be grief stricken!!

Unhappy, in the letter they mention, they were,

and demanded an unbiased attention, from Herr.

Said He, that black is the only colour to spare,

dear crow and dear cuckoo, you will have to share.

Neither was pleased with their particular tan,

and this is where the rivalry began!

Never did to the crow it occur,

that his nest was what cuckoo would conquer.

He knew, the cuckoo, he had to vanquish,

in order to satiate his innate anguish.

The anger did not let the crow contemplate,

so the plan he made wasn't so great.

To see the fallen, cuckoo's crest,

the crow shat over the cockoo's nest!!