just in case

all this traffic and my careless driving
the newspaper today morning offers no respite
and yesterday during teabreak someone looked at my palm
and said my life line was very short

iam sure you will reach this space somehow
not now but when you are old enough to read
without running your index finger under every word,
without me next to you
when you are not sitting on my lap anymore

and i dont know if you remember me at all
and the wonderful time we have had.
but my love can never leave you completely
i will live on in your smiles , in your tears
in your songs, when you fall and when you pick yourself up

when you were born Samuel, i was still a girl
unprepared and still searching
but when i held you for the first time
i knew happiness. it was three in the morning
a very cold july morning and i felt like a queen.

you were born four weeks early. i was impatient
tired with the waiting. i didn't listen to your grandmother
i washed all your baby clothes in advance,
laughed at her superstitions, cleaned all the cobwebs
balanced on a chair atop my old desk.

but when the water broke that night
i was scared. that maybe you wouldn't make it.
and i buried my head in the pillow at the labour room and cried.
but then when you arrived you were so handsome
and the doctor exclaimed that you were not a day early.

you are only eight but you give me so much joy
to watch you play batmintion and win
when you rattle the the states and capital for your social studies test
when you fight with me when i tie up the puppy
when you hold your chest out and smile

Sarah, you were born with your eyes open
precocious. beautiful and content .
the perfect little girl. my knee, your favorite perch.
you arms tight around me ,you bind me to life.
splashing light on me with your crayon colours

no you weren't planned.
your brother was not yet 2 when you arrived.
my neighbours thought i was a fool.
our maid cautioned me indoors during the solar eclipse
but i couldnt. mayabe thats why you are so special

for now i sleep between the two of you
in between my own version of Cinderalla
rumblestliskin and Snow white.
for now i know i live near angels
blessed with innocence love righteousness

and my heart has never encountered a stronger tug
and my life is blessed . twice over.
and if i didn't climb Mount Everest or get to say that well rehearsed oscar speech
its alright. i got the chance to be your mother.
you taught me how to love.

confession before easter

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The Confession before Easter

15 minutes. And I would have missed the train to heaven.

No signature against my name in your Confession Register

But here I am.

You look at me and sigh. Then smile.

“How can you smile after this endless outpouring?”

I wonder as I kneel before God and you, his friend.

I open my burden of sins for this quarter,

Father I’ve been bad this summer

Must have been the heat, the maid has been gone a month

Or maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother of three

Should have stayed single and taken up mountaineering or something

I played truant on 10 Sundays in a row

Saying “the baby cried during mass and Must I go?”

Don’t cringe, Father there is more

I sat home and watched MTV.

I can quote Khalil , even recite his poem “On giving “ by heart

But Giving exhausts one so. The Downturn hasn’t helped.

I thought I ‘d give to charity and all but then I go on a shopping spree

I wrote a poem on the environment, in that I am pagan high priestess

But I piled junk in my backyard.

As you know I completed a course in Divyabothanum,

But shouted at the kids all summer.

At least now the monsoons have started

The other night I woke up to find termites swarming

Under a light I had forgot to switch off in the drawing room.

Standing there in the middle of the night half asleep under a eerie dark cloud of insects,

Hundreds of them dying for a wrong cause.( It’s a wonder this insect isn’t extinct)

And I switch off the lights and rub insects wings from my face and hair

Lie awake half the night. Thinking, Am I living for the right cause?

Or will I die like a termite, growing wings for a night

Only to throw myself at the wrong light and dying for a wrong cause.

But in the morning the sun was all over the garden

The kids playing in night clothes were all smiles

The baby was laughing, the kitchen tidy

And then I sat and counted my blessings and prayed

I cleaned up backyard and then went in to clean my heart

The songs I sang were all hymns, and washing up after dinner

My prayers wafted into the night sky

Hypocrites need some more help, a contrite heart is not enough

So Philipachen when you say mass this evening make it especially sweet

And when Jesus leans to listen, plead my cause,

Tell Him Iam trying but I failed, I am still searching

Tell Him to send me some angels and more sweet rain

Tell Him to keep me tight when I am dazzled by city lights

This evening, rise up on your wings of prayer and touch His feet for me.

recycle guys!!!

its 12 ,midnight.
while day sleeps, the night is awake with windy dreams
lashing on the edge of consciousness
thoughts disconnected , lighting up then falling away softly tingling me in my half-sleep and then dying

and i sit , selfish. Because i thirst a turquoise poetry wave
a lashing of exquisite words. of this world yet not quite
for the day: kills every thought. there is no more perfume in words
maybe it is that the incessant rains and flood , have drowned my dreams

nowadays i brood too much on plastics,
depressing moulds of plastic and food bundled together,
Testimony to our busy mechanical lives

Nowadays  herons sit around the open drainage ,
that flows next door,
 Instead of paddy fields
their long pink beaks beaten down, they fold their majestic wings-hiding them
wary of opening such visual luzury in such darbiness

eleventh hour citizens cannot write much poetry, i guess
we know too much and yet we cling and clutch on to our laziness
the world is crumbling-but slowly. and we yet  hurry on
The rains never stop, nature is raging,
the herons are dead , the trees mourn silently ,
their cries stretched out from dried branches
But we look at our excel sheets, delibrate over mutual funds,
The stock market ,our childrens report cards

But wait as day dawns
Life calls out ,don't give up
Nature even in her fury throws a beautiful sunrise,
Cajoling us to rethink
To  lift our eyes and see the truth
So listen with a selfless heart
That skies are shouting , the seas rise up to warn us,
The earth shakes to wake us from this slumber
Slow down
Live and let live

after the flood!

After the flood i dread the rain

I hide my face from lightning streaks

After the flood i catch my breath

When the winds blow at a faster pace

After the flood i shy away from sunrise

Iam a little scared to romance the moon

After the flood i feel a rift

As if iam caught cheating at last

After the flood i know nature knows

That the love i showed was only in words

After this flood i promise to live my love

Every breath i take i will redeem my debt

I have suckled, have grown up in your lap

After the flood i will try to earn back your trust

fighting for God?

Fighting for God?

Maybe that's when we fight our hardest.

For Our beliefs , our earliest truth.

My grandfather's God lived on the first floor corner room,

Next door to mine, there before Dawn,

He grappled with his demons,

For a full hour, in the dark.

I lay in bed soaking in his sorrow.

Always loved my grandmother's God better.

She didn't have time at dawn for Him,

I sat dangling my legs on the wooden fence of the cowshed,

At dawn ,waited patiently with the dogs, the cat,

Listening to the sound of creamy milk jetsetting on to the full bucket,

By evening when we returned after grazing the cows,

The church bells caught us always by the Brook

At sunset, the sky aflame, the hills mellow ,

The emerald of the paddy feilds never ending,

And she would stop , lift her hands to the heavens

And we with her.

You know why I dont fight for my God?

Because He is the emerald paddy, the azure of the sunset, the mellow hills and the gurgling Brook,the peasants' smile, the mooing of the cows

My God lies scattered in you too , my friend

Death Upgraded!

Death upgraded.

He rides the Yamaha 350, red and silver.

Looks twenty. Is stylish. But knocked me over.

For a second I lay on the road,

Admired the unbearable blue of the sky

Like I saw it for the first time,

Disco lights of the afternoon sun, through the canopy of leaves, the  colours of the market

 Evoked a new longing in me to get back to life,

Life was truly a blessing, I thought

Need to watch our precious flame of life

For it's a gift . And lying in the middle of the road

Just seconds away from being crushed.

I knew, it was the only gift we need.

All the rest was so infinitely miniscule compared to the richness

Of just being.

And the night before.in my dream

Jesus came home to stay.

I found him at the door,and he strode purposefully upstairs.

Have come to stay. Have To watch over you.

As I changed the sheets in the guest room

I remember being perplexed in my dream

Shouldn't he be at church?

But looking at his face, his love shone through

Burnt through my dream , my sub conscious

Blanketing me  forever.

Now as I  lay helpless , the traffic a ferocious  river around me,

My dream skimmed by and I heaved and sprung back,

To life. Truly alive.grateful.