This document contains 20 poems written in April 2014. The poems cover various topics such as souvenirs, mist, butterflies, trees, dreams, narration, earth day, gold, songs, turbans, children's inventories, uncles, old stories, physiology, torque, tinsel, inside thoughts, death, lampposts, hand holding, laundry, outlines, and unplugging. The poems range from 3 to 25 lines in length and explore philosophical and imaginative ideas through descriptive language and metaphor.

1. Poems written in
April2014

2. Poems written in April2014

3. This file was generated by an automated blog to book conversion
system. Its use is governed by the licensing terms of the original
content hosted at
hibiscusandgrowing.wordpress.com.
Powered by
Pothi.com
http://pothi.com

4. Contents
Souvenirs 1
Mist 2
Butterflies 4
Tree 5
In the eyes, the dream 7
Narration 8
Earth day 9
Cracked 10
Gold 11
Song 12
Turbans 13
Child’s inventory 14
Uncle 15
Old stories 16
Peristalsis 17
Torque 18

5. Tinsel 19
Inside Stuff 20
Physiognomy Of Death 21
Lamppost 22
Hand holding 23
Laundry 24
Outlines 25
Unplugging 26
Crowd 27
Decline and fall 28

6. 1
Souvenirs
All the times we had passed through
Stay embalmed and available, pickled
Sun- dried like meat pieces preserved
For all those unending vegetable days.
We have our passions still simmering.
Fates are toothless to chew and claw
From wizened faces, moonshine gone
From our thin pates, now bald moons.
Lucky we had pickled earlier moons
And preserved them for a future use.
And now we flaunt them as keepsakes
Souvenirs to show bored neighbours
We had been there, fort ruins and all.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: souvenirs

7. 2
Mist
I seem going down in my eyes
And all your gestures are trying
To match bodies with my own .
Eye’s smiles are failing to match
Your mind with my phonetics.
My lips drift away in the sands
By wind sailing to differentiate
The sea from overhanging sky.
In the mist are vague contours
Of people and shrouds of them
Walking towards me and away
Like wind that wanders in mist
Or a rain that comes in walking
On the road ,as gusts of a wind
As people and daughters about,
People and mine from a womb,
And white robed figures in long
Tails hanging from their necks.
My mind recognises sovereignty
Of the foot, functioning on own.
The fly does not walk its texture
Nor does the song set it tapping
A ghost foot declaring rebellion,
Preferring to join them in a mist,
As if parts are wholes themselves.

8. 3
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: mist

9. 4
Butterflies
A poet, before her dying, thought
Of butterflies on mass migration
From where they wouldn’t return,
Very natural thing for their wings
To die and fall off from falling sky,
That were monarchs of all survey.
All poets have butterflies in eyes.
A full blown poetry book may yet
Launch them on the wings to fall
Into waiting laps as beauty tokens.
Before a rich ripe uncle’s dying
Book might not see a day’s light.
Wings are folded round a body
On way to a misty evening land
From where will be a no return
And the wings will just drop off
On way, in the never ending sea.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: butterflies

10. 5
Tree
We try to re-live our mom’s
Memory over this very tree
Bending solicitously towards
The neighbour’s house wall.
It favours him by its richness
Of sap and fullness of fruit
So green it will turn yellow
Or end up as pickle on table
By when the cuckoo shall tire
Of calling the rain from sky.
Back where she took to sky
She is a tree now full grown
With ripe mangoes dripping
Like rain ,on soil freshly laid
For her to take roots and fly,
Held by the earth and its sky.
So I believe as belief stopped
When she was river from boat
And the quickly flowing boat
Did not allow us to look back
And find her in river’s eddies.
So I believe she is now firmly
Rooted to the earth’s eddies
Where roots plummet deeper
And deeper as memories fade
And then we are trees like her.

11. 6
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: tree

12. 7
In the eyes, the dream
Rilke’s father had no moustache
The brows touch,and in the eyes
A dream, the youthful filial dream
By a poet who looked for dreams
In vintage photograph creatures.
Like Ariel spirit who sang for you
To vanish and be gone for ever
Singing of pearls that were eyes
Of dreams that made his pearls
Five thousand rupees for a string,
In a pearl bazaar of four towers
Far from oyster hosting oceans.
We are looking for dream fathers
Without a moustache, their brows
Duly touching and knit in thoughts
From far off space, soft to touch
Like pearls solidified from dreams
Found in old photograph creatures.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: in the eyes, rilke's
father, the dream

13. 8
Narration
The grand narrative shall go on
Briefly interrupted by an event.
You see the narration resumes
Quickly after the event ends.
The wooden posts that enclose
The festivities are pulled down,
As temporary skies after event,
Leaving maps of earth filled holes.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

14. 9
Earth day
We are of the earth in a pot
That will break in mid -river
We do not look back to see,
Speeding away to see pieces
Re-form earth we have lost
And regain in rivers of time.
Our earth-pots had waters
That smelled of the desert
And a moon in our women.
Earth pot had holes of light
From which the oceans fell
As sprinklers on day’s earth
For lugubrious trees to rise.
We are an earth that breaks
In shards of our gone times
To be preserved in museums
And re-forms as tiny lamps
Holding all our earth hopes ,
A sun rising on a new earth.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: earth day

15. 10
Cracked
Lest thirst should seek water
We give much to future eyes.
Water will flow in mud dams
The upstream flows drowned
By speeches,on long – routed
Roads fleshed with rain mud
That smells like new monsoon
Coming from south-west hills.
We wear our palms on board
And lotuses smell fresh mud.
This monsoon is treacherous
On cotton in the cracked land.
Minds go cracked like the land
And bodies disappear in fans.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: cracked

16. 11
Gold
We like to think of the midnight sail
Amid light sounds of a boat paddle
On night’s waters on gentle breeze
As a moment of eternity lost to time
With some gold added to it as in love.
We do not like strokes in television
Watching, staring at a clock fixation
As if smiling for ever, a frozen smile
Not moving shadow on face ,flitting
As if a white cloud passing on a hill
And soft sunset hue added for gold.
Poets like to add gold everywhere.
Our stroke of luck does not happen
All the time ,in the television or out.
This sort of a smile is just some ice,
A frozen Arctic waste on mom’s face,
Fixed for ever and there is no gold,
A worn sunset with no talk of dawn.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: gold

17. 12
Song
A creak cannot be a song
Unless it be at a midnight
When the arms of the tree
Coalesce to belt out song
A soft moony wooden ditty
A painful friction,cat’s purr
Love,with no subject-object.
Object is no love but wind.
You get windy like doors
Banging shut for a nothing
Their stoppers stopping
Short of love expressions.
Words fall somewhat short
All for sounds to take over
In crucial moments of love
Like death that is a sound.
Death is an act of love said
Without sound,just a poof.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

18. 13
Turbans
From the sleepers I get up and go
Past dreams by their inert bodies
Careful not to brush fragile winged
Butterflies of their eyes enacting
Fierce war dramas behind the lids
Their butterfly movements in sync
As in choruses of some tragedies.
Now I survey bodies and turn back
To remove their turbans as trophies
For my own dearest sister who took
A private fancy for their many hues.
At dawn’s crack , bodies will get up
And go, their colored turbans gone,
And their swords drawn for a battle
With below- the- turban knowledge
That dreams are gone with turbans.
(From a scene in the great Indian epic Mahabharata)
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: turbans

19. 14
Child’s inventory
To know when to order new ones
I must have their proper inventory.
The stars shine up there endlessly
And have been, since I came here.
I shall now make their inventory
Night after night,strewn like salt
On sea shore, left drying in pans.
Since I came , stars have changed
A lot against the dark sky, behind
The well where the waters glisten
And rope and pail wait out a night
Ready to bring up the fallen ones
Shining by default in well waters
Dropped by somewhat loose sky.
My fingers are tiny , not that pointy
For the counting and I often forget
Where I stop and where to resume
When I have to do my home work,
In between and run up to the roof.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: child's inventory,
inventory

20. 15
Uncle
Time is to cease to be an uncle
A lecturing dad , a senti brother
To he who stares from a photo,
In grayscale rolled shirtsleeves .
Uncle & nephew will jointly stare
At the bottom of the starry sky
In due course ,below the house.
Nephew will join him by and by.
While uncle was at it ,in his life
He had bitten his sarcastic lips
About the world and its maker
And you nephew were peculiar.
Nephew now asks uncle to wait
Till he reaches a house bottom
So they will jointly stare at sky
Making fine sarcasm together.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: uncle

21. 16
Old stories
They come back with a vigor
Seeming new but old stories
That happen again and again
Just the language of thought
Frôm old skulls, not very far
When their seams come apart
As if to admit starlight inside
Or for geodesical knowledge.
We were there another time
The old brick walls with moss
A flower creeper in crack sired
By a bird’s chance dropping
Or the terribly busy antlines
Crawling as if they were fate’s
Calligraphy on our foreheads
Across our skullplates, where
Stories are writ to repetition.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

22. 17
Peristalsis
This way our tunnel moves
Down and further ,to gravity
And against,this way our fate
Wills it through Its dark grief,
Accidents of human history.
Inside is the dark tunneling
That moves through our stuff
A monster of thirst and hunger
Where everything is pushed
Like a relentless juggernaut
A snake that slithers as body-
A body to a daily conclusion.
When a daily conclusion fails
The snake is massive stone.
It turns afraid in snake folds
Of final conclusion reached
Too soon,a logical dead end
Where the snake forgets tail
In a forked head,now a stone.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

23. 18
Torque
Mostly are facts, a birth
That cannot be refuted
Or wiped off from eternity.
A creature became itself
In the floatsome air fluid
To dance as the arc on seas
To bring a being into being
The fishtail would be gone.
A tadpole would forget tail
To be a normal swimthing.
A tube goes the way down
Matters of mother’s gravity
But somewhere facts are twisted.
Alphas are sigmoid,in beta version.
A version stays permanently beta
In tortuous path to food and drink
The tube’s sigma turns volvulous
Facts are twisted to suit designer
A making defect from perfect hand
Or a frivolous experiment to truth.
Now can you undo a few birth facts?
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

24. 19
Tinsel
This is how the mind conects
After the hard night’s bargain
With a sleep’s dreams in rags
Now mere recalled landscape.
Body finally connects things
Of a mind,its bits of darkness
Its interstices ,its pausebreaks,
As body thinks itself to fever.
Bodies pause for their wholes
As noises go flat, turn smooth
In a new landscape of words
The poetry that does not real-
Take place ,only sound tinsel,
Tinsel the sound is Godlawful
Many sounds and nightluminous
A temporary fireworks in sky
Not to be mistaken for all time.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

25. 20
Inside Stuff
We can’t make all this public
The inside stuff, a monologue.
We speak under our breath
As tubes go long and deep
Inside a stomach and below
Where speech dies in thirst
And a breath air turns sticky
As monsoon of recent earth.
We are the insides of nature
A sky’s overtures to the body
That has a sky and an earth
Become one in single breath
Inheritors of recent real man,
A soul dying to be mere body,
A body since changed to sky.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

26. 21
Physiognomy Of Death
His death is difficult proposition for us
Its countenance is our matter of space,
Wedged between two chunks of time
A vast plenitude, a richness of texture.
We carry on discourse as if he is in room
Sarcastic about other’s talk in the room
Below window of an oppressive summer.
We pretend its ongoing through the long
Shadows of an April, the cruellest month
To pretend otherwise ,breeding marigolds
For eighty plus men, hanging their boots.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

27. 22
Lamppost
I deserve all the respect
Due to my advanced age.
I bend slightly from age
As light turns out heavy
Under the yellow flood
I nightly garner to drown
Walking people and dogs
Who eat their shadows .
I have never disciminated
Between man and beast,
Susbstantial or a shadow,
While distributing my light.
One- night moths rise from
Earth to make wise halos
Round me on rainy nights.
But this is between us two.
I cant forgive the mongrel
For its utter lack of respect
Shown me , night after night.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: lamppost

28. 23
Hand holding
Will you please hold my hands
Said she at the edge of the bed
As if it was her precipitous cliff
And gravity was down pulling.
She would know ,as in her time
She had done her handholding
For others, locking their fingers
In hers, so they would not fall off
The edges , in their eerie dreams.
This time round , hands are not
Locked in position, in a firm grip
And it is now any time they will
Loosen for gravity to do its work.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: hand holding

29. 24
Laundry
We beat our common stones
Jointly and severally owned.
Our laundry washing spirits
Are completely perked up like
Goosebumps at a temporary
Excitement, recent feel-good.
A rhythm of beat is the thing.
Detergents are freely mixed.
They smell of fresh lemons
Taken off their trees to hang
On a sun drying clothesline.
We have left all our currency
To remain in the shirt pockets.
That is for their nice laundry.
We are looking for our hangups
We wear always on our sleeves.
We shall give them a nice beat
Once they are off dirty sleeves.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao

30. 25
Outlines
I barely see the outlines
In the darkness of trees.
The sun caresses them
The nape of their necks
Erect in a stranglehood
Of his overflowing hair.
Hair makes fine outlines
In the dusktime of wind
When it removes traces
Of unique face identity.
The faces shall disappear
After they turn outlines
Under a sun’s hegemony.
The sun takes them away
Abolishes them quickly
In the darkness of trees.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: outlines

31. 26
Unplugging
We had thought of nights
As temporary unplugging,
Sleep a re-boot mechanism
From digital engagement.
Deep within we are afraid
Of unplugging from world
Our dreams hanging on to
Handheld threads ,in skies.
Dreams are held digitally
In cloud drive, from where
They play out in the day
And their shadows by night.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: unplugging

32. 27
Crowd
Crowd turns midnight tide
For politicians of many hues
Submerging minds like sea
When the moon is high up.
It breaks too, when it does
With flotsam, against sands
Digging heels in crab holes
As moon is down in dumps.
The beauty of a crowd’s face
Is no longer in the ballgame
When there is a moon in sky
Turning ugly when it is down.
It is in an electronic machine
Where all else is swiped off
Except the anger to shout no,
A roar heard every five years.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: crowd

33. 28
Decline and fall
After the decline has started
The empire is a wooded black,
Trees stopping to grow except
To shed tears of yellow leaves.
Old fool’s imperium declines
And falls, a false empire that is
Never there, beyond the flickr,
Past its outer circle of flame.
Flame’s dying fragrance mixes
With flowers on God’s images
Their smell is one with its dying,
A decline is complete and fall.
Filed under: a poem a day by A.J.Rao Tagged: decline and fall