rush hour

a bottle of i-v fluid dangles tubes and all swinging wild
from a fist shot bristling
high through the open window of the car
zig-zag swerving
staggering
headlights flashing
horn
screaming screaming screaming screaming screaming.........

and then the silence of the rush hour traffic...

*****

flux

the whole avenue unfolds before my eyes.

buildings change shape,
billboards the letters of the alphabet.

neon signs blink bedlam.

man's never ceasing lust for conflict
scurries hither and thither and yon,
searching for non-existent answers...

faces change expressions
in a swirling flux.

*****

a ripple

the moon
a sailing smudge of butter in the clouds...

listen--
cuckoo song!

into the rain-happy chorus of a thousand frogs...
a ripple.

*****

holiday

a feather
spirals down
stalk first,
making a silent point that needs no elaboration.

a parrot
crackles
in sunlit flight from shade to shade,
making another point that defies all argument.

palms climb jubilant.
half-moon sinks.
a peal of laughter in the public pond.

holiday.

*****

amnesia

in a sudden flash i realize:
i have forgotten
the art of remembering you.

we simply sit facing each other,
a smile glowing between us,
speaking nothing.

i have forgotten the entire way
i had flown
reaching your side...
like a river
never remembering
the meandering way from where.

into your eyes i dissolve,
forgetting
even your name.

*****

poetry*

the trick is to empty the mind of all thoughts.

i have noticed how thoughts bog me down--thoughts of this and that--planning, scheming, wishing, fretting... always struggling to become.

the unburdening of thoughts is easier said than done. one cannot do it by trying. it has to happen without trying.

watch passively each thought that comes in through the door; watch it do its work.

then, by and by, you find it leaving by the same door it had entered.

only in the spacious silence of this emptiness is there poetry.

writing poetry is not important. you should not turn it into another burden. just be... as when you were a child, seeing everything for the first time, seeing the stupendous wonder of it all.

there is a different quality to the state of just being.

suddenly you begin to feel the wind on your face, see the clouds drifting in the skies and hear the birds singing in the trees. you feel your pulse beating in the arteries of every being around you. the whole flows into you.

then there is an overflowing.

in this overflowing is the flowering of poetry.

writing it can never be the same.

*****
(*letter to a friend confronting writer's block.)
*****

question

you are a winner
when you win;
you are a loser
when you lose.

has it anything to do with you?

*****