RAMBLING STAR

Between two dark-crimson moons –

One in the middle of night, another in early morn,

I’m a tipsy star caught rambling on heaven’s floor,

In love with wet clouds that drive me here and there

Falling into the abyss and rising again,

With the Sun of hope

Lurking at my thin, transparent, fragile door;

Not sure if the blue petals of sky will close me in

To a tight hug of their exuding aroma to publish my light

Into million prints in hearts of the Earth looking up me to sight,

I’m a tipsy star caught in clouds in a lonely fight

When my fellow stars watch and enjoy infringement

Of all my divine birth right

To love, to blush, to dream, to fantasize

To moan, to mourn and murmur about lost dreams

And again dream anew,

To be caressed by parrots aching to speak

In language of my heart;

I’m a tipsy star in love with self

Falling and then rising to make my new start !

Copy right : saroj k. padhi 12/03/15

VORTEX

The petals of your soul open

Like plumes of a colourful bird

Where I sit like a drop from a stray drizzle

In wait for salvation to a bard—

Caught in the vortex of conflicting tides

Of inescapable emotion ;

Raised by infinite stretch of a virile imagination,

On the wings of a wind blowing

From your love’s sweet reflection ;

I know I will dry up soon

Like desires getting fulfilled slowly in heart

Of a morning forest under a penetrating Sun--

To beam with handfuls of rays dancing

On  each leaf waiting  for the celestial fun

To merge, to mingle and mesmerize the self

Before vanishing into the glory of ether

Without the burden of worries or agonies

And burning without the slightest dither ;

But before that let me be the author

Of the lines of my own redeeming prayer,

In a language common to all mortals

In its depth, beauty and eternal glare .

@copy right: saroj k. padhi/ 13/03/15

ACID ATTACK

Your acid no doubt has burnt my body, my soft skin

But my tormented flesh has tautened my resolve

To fight for my right and bring to life better sheen

In halo of love by selves that around me revolve --

With a desire to change the mindset behind attack;

Love forced is not love, not even a shadow of love ;

For lovers true have died in remorse or at a bivouac ,

But dared not force, knowing it drizzles from above ;

How could you think that you will rob my freedom

By such dastardly act of spraying hate across a sky?--

That must be burning you inside with a big, big why

Which you may not show but to self how can you lie ?

Believe me, one day you will drink that acid you threw

With your bitter self under burns from hates of acid dew.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 13/03/15

RIVER  OF LOVE

As I slowly drown into the deep chasm

Under the waters of your intense love ,

All my tears of bursting agony are gone

Into the depths of your devouring soul ,

When the half moon of my memories

Floats on the surface your azure body

Like flotsam of my sad, lost, lonely being

Battered in battle with Time’s harsh sling.

Even your last hand-written love letter

Is marooned in the island of my ever increasing amnesia

Sulking like a lost baby in dark corner of a fair,

When the words of my elegy jump off the last floor

Of the skyscraper of your ambition to the fatal ground

Of my blatant fall, with a desire to open a new door;

Let there be not a slightest remnant of my lost body

Anywhere in this world so occupied with things other than love

Let me sink into a silent oblivion of your devouring passion

Like a trapped, voiceless, sinking, brooding  dove .

@copy right: saroj k. padhi

14/03/15

MIDNIGHT  LOVE

Nerves crack into chasms wider as emotions get tougher , tenser

Under the burden of proof, demanded by Time’s suspicious eye ,

Seeking  greater profusion of flowing tears in voice growing louder

When you soak my silent agonized cries into smiles on cheeks shy ;

I know you will come in my dreams dangling the bait of your body

To drowse the pangs of my soul in the transitions of my midnight,

When the sky would be bare-chested, blue like my lone, lost desire,

With smokes of empty words, deferred promises, to set things right ;

How oft’  have I resolved not to think of you in hours of loneliness

I don’t remember, but now I find that you’re a miniscule of myself

Entranced with life in its many coloured splendour and sweetness

Lying at the root of all tragic experiences inside depth of my delf ;

Come Love, let’s make a pact with this midnight moon in our midst,

To offer blend of half agony and half ecstasy as cocktail for our tryst .

@ comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi---15/03/15

IN BETWEEN

You are a dream

Caught between an instinctive desire to possess

And my  conscious struggle for complete detachment,

Miles away from the past sheen of our love

And its present fear of a tantalizing sin ;

Trembling like a tremulous Sun on lips of leaves newly born

To speak of the mystery of an inspired new morn

Inside their lungs’ eloquent swells ,

Where desire silently dwells

Like a drunken wind that nestles

In the nest of my swinging thoughts ,

In connivance with wet clouds to end Earth’s droughts

In sprawling deserts of teeming denizens’ unconcern

Where flowers of my longings turn into spikes and stunted thorn.

As I stretch out my hands to catch handfuls of spaces

From the magnanimous blue immensities of your soul

My mind catches fire even during fall of incessant rain

Dousing my  incomplete being with its limitless  pain ;

Why am I interspersed so like a hunger in between

A desiring heart and a deterring mind

An ever expanding image of an idea unfulfilled

And yet so sweet in its agonizing grind ;

I crave, I crawl ; I coo , I call ; I rise, I fall…

Yet I  love to rise again like a robotic doll .

@copyright : saroj k. padhi 16/03/ 15

LISTENING TO DARKNESS

I listen to whispers from lips of darkness

Speaking in a language replete with alphabets

Of your secret dreams to inhabit forever the terrace of my mind

That smacks of the stolen moments of our togetherness ingrained

In the oozings from crushed leaves inside your hands

That fidgeted in the forbidden garden of our sinking lands

Waiting to merge soon into sands of oblivion ;

One where you dwell with shadows of familiar bodies

Waiting to be buried in the grave of Time’s cruel fun ;

And the other one to which I think I belong

Living a life in gay abandon, when I decay like a dead fern

In tune with night wind’s mournful song ;

Darkness wins me back to a peace

That light hardly finds ,

Darkness seals me into a box of memories

Making me enjoy its ceaseless loving grinds .

Copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 18/ 03/15

 A HOT NOON

Memory is a crippled bird wingless ,

Disabled for any flight ,

Softly cooing in corner of a tree

Like a stuck- up torn kite ,

Sulking in sad voice of a noon wind

Away from common sight .

Your jasmine body drenched by rain

From yester night’s sky is formless now

In the heat of smokes rising from lightly wet sands ,

Heating up in the dead bank of our river ,

Lost to obliterating strokes of times ;

Making it quite difficult for me to restore

Your aroma and form  in nuances of my rhymes .

I’m a dot in the outlines of your thoughts

Transpiring thro’ pores of your wrinkled spirit

That pines for salvation in the folds of old desires

Shrinking and then withering

Like petals under this noon, blistering ;

And I seething like an embattled desire

In the womb of fallen mire,

Writhing like an insect

For redemption in the dark web of a noon fire .

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 19/03/15

SPRING TOUCH !

How much didn’t I wait for your Spring touch

In the Winter of my frostbitten mind

Clamouring for a sheer look at the Sun setting--

Your waist long flowing locks behind ?

But you hardly bothered to look back at the smokes rising

From a transpiring heart caught in a disaster of burning

In a Spring morning

When Winter rules here in the garden of cold hearts

Still slumbering as if in a daze after the cyclone’s brats

Left them dying speedily like trees hit by lightning  !

You are so systematic and sincere Love

In your insistent infliction of woes so enchanting !

Your tortures so long lasting !

I have no other option but to awe and wonder

At the beauty of your killing

That leaves me for ever pining for more and more of your cruelty

So lovingly familiar and satisfying !

@Copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 22. 03.15

ABSENCE

Pigeons jump on the grass field

Engrossed in their picking worms under a warm Sun

Like words on a green page in the eyes of Dyslexia ,

When you appear with your intense invisible presence

On my white page like the deep scar of a black aporia,

Untying riddles about my secret love of the infinite sky

That stretches out beyond the reach of rustling trees

Like an inexhaustible enigma of an ambiguous  silence ;

As I pretend reconciling myself to a life in your absence .

The distant swaying banana leaves unfurl

The mystery about your secret love of my agonized heart

Like pages of a romantic novel turned one after the other

In the white heat of engagement with unknown shivers

In the depth of my soul

Craving for your surrogate presence !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi, 23/03/15

                SHADOWS

Fairies in flight drop shadows of lovers on my street

Who get drunk enough with wind to move their feet,

And squat down to listen to a song from a night bird

That has lost its way back home and intends to be heard;

When leaves are driven out of their stay in half lit pits

Like torn letters of love where scattered memory sits;

Rapt the trees listen to the echo of voices of solitary beings

That pass along the street, pulling at their hearts’ taut strings ;

To remind us of the Evening Star that grew so much stunted

After years of chase behind a proud Moon who got violated

By a casual Sun , to bleed and let souls bleed like flowers wounded ;

The Moon peeps from the chinks in wall of the bi-coloured Sky

When the giant lizard of a trailing black cloud darts by

Devouring the Moon and the Star

As the fairies keep looking at this cosmic event

From the doors of heaven flung ajar;

Making us realize the frailty of human love

Turning fleshes into shadows

That are rocked like cradles by hands from invisible above .

@Saroj k. padhi / 30.3.15

MURMURING MEMORIES

Memories stick like fresh jackfruit gum

To my soft skin till the oil of dispassion

Soaks in, to help rob off desires glum

Squatting at roots of hairs’ passion ;

When the beauty of the morning entices

Me away into familiar nests of illusion,

Where birds of love roost during storm

Making me forget all renewed affection

Of many old  names :

The road in front of your old hostel  

Where I wander like a persistent shadow

Refusing to move across Time ;

Rather being driven along like an eternal dry leaf in wind

In search of its raw colours in shades of bright green.

You smile from the cheeks of million leaves

In the crazed look of pretty flowers ,

Writing the song of salvation in the wind

As the murmur of memories merges into a silence

Of a lonely kind, into deep roots of a brooding mind .

@copy right : Saroj k. Padhi, 29/03/15

FREEDOM

The wind feels free today to speak

In the language of my heart vaulting with emotions

That tide over old passions reeking of death ;

To sing of liberty of imagination to build

Nests, may be with thousand imperfections ,

To sway even in storm with simple faith .

Why should someone stop me as I wander

In the star-lit sky searching for beloved’s letters soaked in tears

That fell into the breast of compassionate God long back

Storming the clouds to break heads on mountain tops

With no stops till the sky turned red

With oozings from clotted wounds  of black letters ?

The wind of my spirit is crazy today

Brushing its invisible body on green skin of leaves

That radiate streams of light behind those mountains

Soaked in our love to awake to dreams of such lovely beams !

Today I feel that I ‘m free to steal drops of dew from lips

Of my Love when she is into a slumber too deep for any call ;

I feel too that I’m free to fall

After every rise however big or small,

Free to wander, rest, fly or crawl !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 27/03/15

         AVIAN  ANGELS

As the avian angels swerve past me

In dawn’s twilight to shock me with delight

I suffer from a temporary fright ;

But alas ! The grains I scattered on my roof

 Miss their loving , penetrating sight ;

For the flurry of their excited wings scatter

Pearls of misty blinding dreams

That overshadow the Earth

Making them revel as they fly

In thoughts of yester  night

With its dizzy Romantic height--

On  the smooth glade in the jungle

Where their great grand parents danced

With the sweet children of their nocturnal desires

In the halo of thin streaks  of sun light

Streaming in thro’ dense foliage

Awaking the forest to the bliss of dawn’s

Elevating delight.

Look how hastily does the whitish Moon slowly alight

From the steep steps of the sky

To watch, and then dance away with clouds

Into a new sky strewn with petals of roses

Burning all bright !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 25/03/15

FICTION : FEMALE   FRENEMIES :

------------------------------

(Part—1)

Dark Dawn

---------------

There was a strange palpitation in his heart. In last so many years he had never

felt like this in his habitual company of loneliness.  A shooting star crossed the

 sky of his heart reminding him of  the moments of passion  lost into the ripples

of the river Mahanadi . It was a morning . Some lightly dark clouds came floating

in  to shadow the silhouette moon in a moment . She sat beside him on a piece

 of rock on the bank dangling her bare feet into the waters of the river

narrating her dilemma, “Do you know, Saroj I’m really torn between my love for

you and my proposed marriage with Manmath Panigrahi. You know I can’t live

without you but I also don’t know how to get away from the snare of my

involvement with him…do you understand ? “

Her tongue was getting choked as she spoke.

Saroj kept imagining many moments of objectionable intimacy between the two

as he kept looking deep into her eyes shedding drops of warm tears.The river

looked at her in amazement .Then he took her  right hand into his fold of his

palms, kissed them and said, “Don’t …please don’t cry…I’m ready for all

consequences.”But as he was saying this his hands were getting moist with

 droplets of sweat dripping from depths of the pores of an anguished skin where

her palm’s maroon mehendi was taking on a red color .The rose that sprouted

long back in the garden of his heart shrugged its petals to look at the chemistry

of love weaving mysterious beats in two hearts into a bead of an invisible rosary

with silent chants of a divine feeling of togetherness at a secret place…for rarely

had they such opportunity to meet . Slowly the dawn darked with a few drops

of drizzle awaking the two souls to rise above the material body into feelings of

strange love in the soul of rain drenching them .

They sat on in spite of rain, rather with rain. Saroj was picking pearls of those

moments of intimacy  from her tears they had a few months back in the

courtyard of Leena’s house under a full moon. Leena sat shivering somewhat

amazed, wondering at the reason behind her tears.And the great river kept

 flowing with drops of rain and droplets of tears mingling into the giant flow…

(to be continued…)

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 

BEGUILED

I’m in love with such beautiful Evenings on run

That pass thro’ uncertain nights of casual love with moon,

Sometimes ending up with vermilion of Sun

On their foreheads, acquiring new recognition all so soon;

Here images of trees in the pool are more real

Than promises made by creatures of flesh and blood,

For they keep on constantly trying to sip in the depth of pool

When Evenings change their nature of human blood;

Images merge into the sky despite the layer of moss

On surface of pool’s water cooling anarchy of passion in wind,

When Evenings are restless like insecure stars at loss

Of wit, in face of temptations made by false suns at the hind ;

O God why do you put man in such situations of beguiling mid air

Forcing him to sway like a hopeless plantain leaf under Sun’s ire !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 10.03.15

DREAMING PALASH

Ripples in the river freak out in wind multiplying ,

Filling in the blues in my mind with beauty of waters

Rare like blue moon in a placid March morning ,

Lost into her joys of giving the peace that she offers ;

As I sit waiting for you in the labyrinths of my desire

Hangovers of dilemmas familiar still haunt faintly ,

When squirrels rush out of tree tops with tails flicking,

Their excited chittering merging into waves so lovely ;

White butterflies flit across carrying the glory of a Sun

With loads of grains of dreams on their wings shining

Like the lost stars that were so bewitching but gone ,

And the luscious young mangoes in love cutely smiling ;

Don’t touch me for I’m now a red Palash in bloom

Waiting for beaks of Spring for an end to my gloom .

@copy right : saroj k. padhi 11/03/15

            

SEARCHING OUTSIDE

Mother :

Severed from the umbilical cord

I was flung into arms of many foster mothers

but none was like you

in their kisses, cuddles, smiles and tears,

love and fears ;

in my reflections and recollections

awe and wonder

I love the Goddess in you.

First love:

Away from your arms , my Love

I was wooed by many

but none was like you-

in their sweetness or saltiness,

anger or shyness,

in tantalizing closeness or pining distances,

or in the taste of their honeyed dew,

you were you

and in spite of not being with you

I love the Goddess in you.

Goddess:

Don’t know why I’m always in search of you

in my relations with the ‘other’

knowing pretty well

that the ideal can never be real-

a secret search for you silently smothers

and the debilitating man in me whimpers

at last to drop perhaps

into a singing swan’s falling feathers .

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi /8.03.15