From The Streets of Bihar

From The Streets of Bihar

The streets of Bihar
Are the face of an abstract painting,
Sad.
The colors of history,
It seems,
Someone has washed away.
Or scrapped with fingernails.

A river has changed its color,
And the sky here is not blue
Anymore.
Tired sky and forgotten rivers.

The morning still basks
In an orange glow
Of a lazy suburban Sun
That fades
In the echoes of night,
Muffled screams.
The day is lost
Pretending deaf.

Fantasy poetry of
Unseen revolutions
Have often knocked
The doors of destiny,
In sweaty envelopes,
To be rewritten in blood…

But eyes have failed
To tell impoverished, meager heroes
From shameless, naked demons.
Reality, sadly,
Is a little gray,
Half lie.

I have often seen
A volcano
Walking on the streets,
Threatening to erupt
On evenings of nothingness.
Somehow,
It never does,
As the radio continues
To ramble shamelessly.

Streets of Bihar still believe
In prayers
With eyes closed.
And dream
Ignorant of a fear
That sits all night
By the bedside.

Streets of Bihar
Have lost their feet
In the race.
They are forgotten leaves
Of autumn.

They are the eyes
Of a frightened child
Who is learning to
Drag his feet
To unwelcome tomorrows.
They just stare.
Mute,
Like the volcano
That has remained quiet.

(c) Ankur Srivastava

Timeless Love

Timeless Love

I am quiet.
My mouth is filled
With her warm breath,
And a storm
Of passion.

She whispers in my ears,
A fantasy
Never heard before...
"Love"!

Love?
Indeed...
I smile foolishly.
She covers my eyes
With her lashes.
I dream.

Her voice fills
The air around me.
Like the scent
Of her breath.
She says
"Promise."

My heart beats
Are faint and slow.
My world sways
In the gentle breeze
With thousands of butterflies
Of unseen colors.

I promise
To hold her close.
And she is weightless
In my arms,
In my love.

Once,
I slept with her
Under an undressed moon.

Her promise,
"Always or never?"

I wake up,
Every single morning,
In her olive eyes,
An eternal lover.

Timeless.

(c) Ankur Srivastava

Rain Poem

It rained yesterday,

After an unending wait

Of summers

Stretched so long.

And I sat

By the window,

To sketch

Each falling drop

The way the earth smiled

Teased by the rains.

Lines that I could read

In the long summer nights

When we sat by our windows

And prayed for rains again.

This evening,

I read the Rain poem,

But the words had been
Washed away,

The lines had turned

Brown again.

There is no poetry in rain,
These days. 

Poems are not written...

On little green twigs

That grow in my garden and die

So soon.

About naked children

Running in streets

With joy

Soon to be lost.

Or about maple leaves floating

In pools of muddy water

On broken roads.

There is a woman

On the roadside.

Her skin, brown,

And hair,streaked with dust;

Her eyes are deep

Pits of emptiness.

Her lips are dry

Parched with thirst.

Her husband doesn't speak

These days.

He did smile when it had rained

For a moment,

And then cried

For some nights,

Turned quiet forever.

She sighs and looks

Towards the empty paddy fields.

The roof of her home

Leaks in the rains.

But she cares not.

If only the paddy grows

This year.

Or else?

There is no poetry in rain,

These days.

The woman told me,

"The rains were too little".

It will rain again

I smiled...

"Too late, may be!"

She sighed.

Poems are not written

Sitting by the window

Every time rain tickles

The sad face of earth.

Poems now lies silent,

And brown

Like the earth

After the rain has flirted

And gone back.

When the children

Try  to sleep,

Hungry.

And their eyes are wet

And shallow

Faces brown
Like pools of muddy water

On broken roads.

Poetry tosses and turns

In bed at nights.

It's verses

Are wet with sweat

Mixed with blood.

And lips are sealed

Forever.

(c) Ankur Srivastava

Words!

To mend that imperfect line,

I look for words again,

A lost poet tries hard,

To dip his love in sea of pain.


If words ever mattered,

I would have found a way,

You walk over the tottered pages,

Where my afraid dreams lay.


My heart beats in stern silence,

I care not for the blessed rhyme,

I have lost my song,

In the noise of indifferent time.


I still love for the sake of love,

And love talks in broken sighs,

Have you noticed the blood,

In my two smiling eyes.


Desperate to lose it all,

I walk to the edge of dark,

I have hoped long to heal,

My wounds remain open and stark.


To mend that imperfct line,

I look for words again,

Why write a poem for you,

Words are destined to go in vain.

(c)Ankur Shrivastava

6 word stories

1.

Dreams floated in her eyes, misty. 

2.

Bubbles of hope..
grow..

shatter!
.
.
.
Survive...

3.

My jeans, once blue,
faded...
Me?

4. 

A candle melts before its time. 

5.

Love invites, passion lures... night surrenders!

6.

Dream inspires, hope survives...

Destiny cheats!

7.
A small-town street-fighter with royal blood.

Friendship

Friendship

I wonder...
When did it start,
And how
Boundaries merged.


I was a liar,
But not to you.
You were shy
But not to me.
You called me a flirt,
Yet, trusted like a child.


Did we begin
With the first "hello"
Or,
only after the last "bye"?

I look back
For the moment...
When I found you
In me.

Was it..
When we cried together?
Our stolen giggles?
Or your comforting words?

Why do you trust me?
When did I decide,
To stay by your side,
No matter what?

I try to trace the roots
Of this wonderful friendship
But it goes deeper
Than my soul can reach.

We may be miles away,
But from my evenings
A little lane
Reaches your window.
I know
You are smiling now.
"Do you think
I am flirting?"

At your little door,
This envelope comes
Kissed with love,
From me.

So many things
I still don't know.

But...

When I look back,
I see you!

When I look ahead,
I find you!

(c) Ankur Srivastava

(written 3/6/07
revised: today :)

I Sold the Twilight

I Sold the Twilight

The day ended
Quietly
A crimson love
Gave in.
Tarnished...
In twilight.

And birds hurried
Back to their homes.
The sky is not theirs,
Not in this twilight.

Memories
Of a lonely boy
Sulking,
Hiding..
In dark.
The boy was lost,
Forever,
In a dusky twilight.

Your sad face
Smiled
In the afterglow
Of the evening
I kissed your lips.
With your kohl
Mixed in our tears,
I painted a twilight.

A cup of tea
By the sunset.
The long road
Back home.
And our sweet nothings.
After a tired day.
We wait for the twilight.

I ran once again,
Barefoot,
Forwards and backwards
Across an endless sea
Of hope.
And you waited
By the lighthouse...
In the twilight of love.


But...


I sold the twilight.




(c) Ankur Srivastava

Dream

Dream...

Through the open window beside my bed, pain comes in quietly on measured steps in moonlight. It touches me in my slumber and my heart is lost in a dream; a dream I have seen many times and have often forgotten in the morning. Rightly so, because the mornings never had a clue. Only the nights had seen me pacing on the terrace of my hostel and stealing a glance at her every time she buried her face in the book, every time her dark tresses fell over her face, and looking away just as she looked up and tucked them back cutely behind her ears.

My student days in New Delhi showed me a view of life that I had never seen in my home town; the way life ran with frenetic speed on the smoothest and busiest roads and I waited endlessly for it under the shed on the sidewalk. I remember losing my footing in the crowd and the fear in my heart that I will be run over. I remember coming back to my cheap, lonely room. I kept tuning and retuning to my favorite radio stations so as to find a familiar voice, a familiar name that I could listen to every day, even if only on a radio. Those were not the days for a romantic dream. And then I found her in the quiet and dusky subway under this road on which life ran. I walked behind her slowly with unhurried steps in my slumber and I lost her just as I reached the other side of the road.

She lived in one of the flats in the building opposite to my hostel. She was perhaps a little older than me. I first saw her when I had come to my terrace in the night to escape the mugginess of my claustrophobic room. She was studying with her friend. In a few days, I discovered she used to study there every night until dawn. I knew her name one day as one of her friends called out for her, "Anjali". I gave the name to my nights, "Anjali". I never stared or smiled at her. I just used to steal a discreet glance every now and then. Her face might not have been the prettiest, but her eyes had a calmness that gently stroked my heart into a sweet rhythm. She smiled rarely but whenever she did, time used to freeze around her; and in that moment when time remained blind I used to smile too, cheating all my pains and fears. I never felt any need to talk to her.

One night, she acknowledged my presence. While I was busy listening to the radio, I felt her gaze tenderly roam around me before settling on my face with love. I turned slowly and for the tiniest fraction of time, our eyes met and shied away leaving a ruby bliss on her pale cheeks and a sweet pain in me. Since that moment, love paced restlessly on that terrace every night, hand in hand with me, aching for her gaze to stretch its tender fingers again. But the distance that separated her world and mine, the silence that floated in the breeze that come to me from her terrace remained. I never tried to transcend it. I let the dream remain a dream for it was so perfect.

Like a day always comes when a little paper boat delightfully floating in muddy pools of sweet rain water has to be lost, that day also came. It was evening and as if in harmony with the moment, the sun was melting into darkness, in the background. She stood on the terrace and looked around, her hands rested on the railings. Her eyes traveled the emptiness of an infinite sky that was losing itself in the arms of dusk. Then she looked at me, I could not have missed as she blinked, a window of dreams opened and closed in her eyes, her lips twitched a little, trembled and love glittered brightly in my faint smile. Perhaps, the longing of the moment could have transformed itself into a few sweet words by its own, if that moment would have lingered a little longer. But... her friend called for her, "Anjali, the taxi is waiting." She went away, forever into the memory lane and she left her address somewhere that could only be reached in my dreams.

Yesterday, those dreams, those nights, the love and the longing broke away the shackles of years and stormed into my office in broad day light. She was sitting across my desk. Her hair were now pulled back and not a single strand fell over her face. Her eyes were a little nervous. I might not have recognized her at all but her old, familiar face smiled at me from her job application that was in my hand. And the first column read the name I had given to my nights, "Anjali". I can't recall how the interview went, my mind only remembers the last question that I put across her nervously, "Do you remember me?". And I continued without waiting for her answer, nervous, without even trying to hide it,"I lived in that hostel, opposite to your apartment in Delhi, 2004?" She shrugged and then smiled,"Ah...hmmm..yes sir, I do. I was doing my masters there.....". As she continued ahead about Delhi and her course, my eyes looked in her eyes, searching. I don't remember what happened next....

Those eyes were stranger's.

I wake up, jolted, tonight, just as I see her dream again. I try to remember where did it go so wrong.

The dream was so perfect!

(c) Ankur Srivastava

I Am a Generation!

I Am a Generation!

Through my eyes,
History changes and un-changes
As in the eyes
That saw it before mine.

And when I look back,
In the pages of history
Will I ponder,

"Who am I?"

I am the one
In the corner of a classroom
Writing poems
On the back of an engineering book.
Half baked poems and
Half learned lessons.

I am the one who
turned his back on temples.
Instead,
I sit on noisy sidewalks
Sipping bitter tea
In plastic cups
And contemplate and reflect
Search for my soul.
In the bitterness.

I often cut my hair,
And color it
In accordance
With "post-modern art"
I am the face on the banners
Who has changed his name
To have some fame.

I forever join in the debate
On the soul of Gandhi
And sometimes,
The poetry of Tagore
The Nehru and the Ambedkar.
I am often caught,
On both sides of debate.

My mind ponders
On why Sukhi died.
(Sherman In RDB)
Patriotism or friendship?
Or was he afraid
Of the meaninglessness of it all
And of his existence.

I wear a secular mask
And I cried
And cheered a certain Mr. Khan
As he walked
To break the greatest boundaries
Of my times.(yes, perhaps.)
And beyond.

But I didn't walk
With Mr. Khan.
I wasn't stupid!

I am the one
Who applauded
A Slumdog Millionaire
As he charmed and amused.
I also slapped him in face,
For the other Slum-dogs
Who were still slum-dogs,
With empathetic heart
And well fed stomach!

All the while,
While, I split my pocket-money
Between petrol and pizza,
I never realized
I am not me.

I am a generation.

I wonder
What will I take to my grave...
A generation that had ambitions
Before it could dream!

A generation that put the blame
On the generations before,
And slipped into the grave.
With eyes shut.

I am scared
How history will be seen,
Through my eyes.


(c) Ankur Srivastava 

( For those who don't know about Sukhi and Mr. Khan.

Sukhi
Sukhi is a character played by Sherman Joshi in a Hindi movie, "Rang De Basanti". He reluctantly chooses to help his friends in killing the corrupt Defense Minister of India who was largely responsible for the death of their friend, the pilot who died in a crash of one of the MIG planes due to technical problems in the plane.
He then reluctantly goes with his friend to confess before the whole nation through radio and is killed by the forces. Through all this, he remains scared and confused and gathers some strength only when the end is near.


Khan

Mr. Khan is played by Shah Rukh Khan in "My name is Khan". Rizvan Khan is an honorable Muslim man from India, living with Asperger's Syndrome in US. When his son is killed by people due to the hatred against Muslims post 9/11, Khan selflessly embarks on a powerful journey through a contemporary America. He innocently becomes that most unlikely act of defiance, one of peace and compassion. In the name of the woman he loves, he wants to meet the president of USA just to tell him that, "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist." )

A Poet Died

A Poet Died

"Once upon a time",
On an empty street,
Poetry touched him.
And ever since,
He groped
In emptiness.

He used to sit by the window
In afternoons
His hands shivered in cold.
The sun had no warmth
Just a glowing dot
Like the tip of a cigarette.

Love visited often
The address written
On pale envelopes.
But no flowers ever blossomed,
Poems grew
Like weeds.

He had little ladders
He kept them between the lines
To reach one's heart.
And he wrote with his gift
Many a letters
That ended in trash.

On a sad evening, yesterday,

He stole a poem 

From his soul

And wrote it on the sky.

Dark!

A candle flickered,

Dim...

And melted 

Before its time.

Yesterday,
He read the epilogue
All to himself,
On the same old street
He sat and cried.

Yesterday,
Was just another day,
For, no one noticed it;
Not even the man
Sitting beside him.
Yesterday,
A poet died.

(c) Ankur Srivastava