Ambrosia

I walk a mile around the road, just to avoid the rickshaw and cut down expenses.

Ten rupees saved by walk –an offering I always keep for the roadside temple.

I do this almost every day without fail.

My daily pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine on tired legs;

I think of it as a penance for the guilt, for confessing sorrows,

and for sharing toasts.

One can see ideas and debates on living life rising as fumes above that roof –

The roof of the temple, by the corner of 7th Street in Choolaimedu.

Near a Neem tree, so pure, our holy temple stood – a modest tea shop for every commoner.

Nothing less than Ambrosia itself is a Chai flavored with friendship, I say,

lifting the weight of this daily routine at the altar like priest and his chalice.

Isn’t a glass of tea similar to the soothing touch of the oldest therapist working her long fingers on every mind?

Sipping this nectar – Heaven’s drink – down here on Earth.

I dare say, a day gone without Chai is blasphemy.

And I walk a mile around, to cut down expenses,

Now that my offering to the temple is done.

http://www.literaryshanghai.com/jgeorge-two-poems/

The Voicecall

Oh! I could barely contain this joy, this excitement spilling poetry from the edges like molten lava of a volcano; on hearing your voice through this corded universe coded. My heart here knows today, such tremendous explosion, like the sudden boom of an underwater sea bed. Sending those ripples of zeros and ones across the sky surface, I decipher them in the space between us, to a bottled note of love, music in the ring of that call; and there is a voluptuous eruption of joy in my bosom as I taste your hiccupped laughter over the line, like bubbles in my cappuccino, my latte. Ha! The words flow nearly noiseless like honey from a dipper, smoothly dripping from your lips, shhh! reaching my ears too far away from your tongue tracing its curvatures, yet piercing my innards you go on talking. Oh! Your voice, so rich so intense cutting across this silver network of signal, fails to make believe me; how far a kiss is homed, and there I curl my fingers over some lately cut bangs, cuddling to a leech in the gaps between your fingers, I try to knot you in my tangles, 

First published in https://troumagazine.com/

St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

By evening seven, we are sitting opposite each other, at Café Coffee Day,

in the less crowded Ispahani Centre by St.Teresa’s Church,

on the Thousand Lights Road of Nungambakkam bearing witness to our meeting.

St.Teresa’s Church, where you said the choir was always lively - not a word on the sermon.

And Ispahani, a fading landmark, in the maps of closely-packed constellations of other malls.

Like us, opposite each other, they have always stood, cut open by a busy highway;

St.Teresa’s for the lop-sided altar boy and Ispahani for the socially-awkward-writer-girl;

One by faith went and the other for the memory, the view of the barbaric yawp came.

It’s quiet there -

like in the library, like in the chapel of St.Teresa’s and in the elevated grounds of Isphahani,

a divine quietness shrouding, as we take those sips of cappuccino.



While I try remembering the color of your eyes today,

all I could recall is the roasted beans in the showcase;

with a tint darker than that – incandescent - hanging above us.

The warm cup of cappuccino between us and the busy road.

Your voice three months later on phone, telling me, how desperately you need the road,

a two way road, barricaded in between, so that St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

could stand opposite to each other, never meeting, in no universe,

confiding an entire cosmos between.



Coffee tastes great there in Ispahani, red velvets too

It’s an old mall in the great city of Chennai and she carries memories of love all kind.

She stands there, withstanding the great floods, hurricanes and earthquakes

like the best antique property of the city, priced, incomparable.

And I write this poem,

not because you asked me to.

I can’t contain the ‘you’ in me, anymore -

https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems

Almond trees on 4th street

The red ripe leaves of the stone fruit tree garnishing these streets

falls raining on the empty road, tarred black.

It’s Autumn again;

the leaves are falling down in hope of rising.

To a dormant sleep of vim, they tumble

like bright orange embers, waiting for the winds of harvest.

An endless forest fire, he would initiate in them, on his visit,

They know, so do I.
https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems

The Dust Storms

image credit DUST STORM BY STEPHANIE FROSTAD

The dust storms have clouded my lungs
Dunes of solitary ruminations.
Brewing heaps of scorched drab dirt
In my burrows of some unresolved sorrow.
They clog my pores of respiration
Choking me, on my phlegm of paranoia
In this exotic land of doldrums untold
Enthroned by fear, I live my peasant life
Trying to rise a feet above the soil!
Oppressed by the rulers of my own democratic ink.







http://www.museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=feature&issid=85&menuid=8335a

The Mystery

                                         

image credit etsy.com

Doors that seldom open, despite frequent banging
Fastening away from the monsters, or enclosing within the devils?
Muzzling the demonic wails, maybe
Or warning the restrains, could it be?
Buying time maybe,
Killing time… can it also be?
Shrinking in silence sometimes,
At times sinking to a hush.
But always locked inside,
From the broad roadways, few subsist.
A mystery to this world
That claims The God’s eye

http://www.museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=feature&issid=85&menuid=8335

The Roller Coaster Ride

Two heart patients on a roller coaster ride, 

and their hearts tied at the end of a string,
the frail string of a matrimonial sacrament of the faith.
Like a balloon held high above their heads, tailing them
they held to it so strongly, so firmly
their hearts at the edge of that string,
ready to take flight any moment
ready to do that ultimate jump of fear, at any moment of a slight blink, and cry,
when the string might slip like water, like sand,
through the slight gaps of the fingers,
drifting their hearts away, in the path of the blowing winds.
Yet, in the course of the ride, it flutters…
trembling in the fleeting wind changing its path
the hearts, the balloons, much above their heads
fluttering, trembling, trying to break free from that hold
from that firm hold of fear, it sways in the ocean ranges of a cyclone.
And maybe when they get down, they will notice the fleeting balloon,
how from their huge palms, it ruptured free unnoticed.
how the bruises were made, by holding that string too long
and how two heart patients went on a roller coaster ride and called it a marriage.

https://issuu.com/theparagonjournal/docs/volume_eight___september_2017-merged