Dragonfly

Sitting by the window

Against the twilight,

The last shimmer of the rainbow

Fades into the night -

Out in the garden

Flowers of the last season,

I look at them

I’m looking for a reason;

And then I see it, as it flies past me

The dragonfly riding the wind from the sea.

A season that was past

Where the blue-bells hung

The primrose shoots of love had sprung

The Wind then had prayed the Spring to last

For the tender shoots tied to the mast

But too barren was the soil to hold the mast of yearn

And the Ashes of the dragonfly buried the Earth to burn

This evening, the fluttering wings I can hear again

Like the voice of an ancient miner calling my name

Deep down from the valleys of a heart born and bound

Ever locked away from the world where light was found

I’ll weed the wilted flowers -

The rendition of my toil,

Sow new seeds in the seasoned soil

The Spring can’t last

But new seasons will come

That’ll nourish the flowers

For the Dragonfly to return

Through the dimming twilight

I see a silver line,

Wings rubbing the wind – a familiar sign

Relinquished the knot and ruined is the mast,

Shackles of a season that was past

As the dragonfly buzzes on with guilty delight

I want to cry,

I want to pluck the wilted flowers goodbye…

Not a fenced garden

Walk a road untrodden,

I want to sprinkle new seeds on a path saffron-brazen

To cherish what will remain,

I’ve to be born again;

I’ll scream, I’ll climb to find the me in me

And then I’ll know what’s it’s like to be free

Will you come then to carry the wind to the sea?

I’ll wait to paint my Kingdom of Oz on the canvas of the sky –

I’ll live, I’ll die, I’ll pray to ride on the Wings of the Dragonfly

©

Entry from my Diary: November 13, 2008

This is a strange night. I can see the lights outside but there are none within. And Life just flashes past me with flickers of memories leaving faded sparks of futuristic blackouts – just like this candle.

My sleepless drowsy eyes look on and the candle burns, is burning, and the wax is reaching its end while the wick of it keeps elongating every moment, bit by bit, slowly, trying hard to make the flicker of the fire longer - the tip of the fire inadvertently as if trying to reach somewhere, a hopefully hopeless height…

Lit in the dimmed light of the candle are pictures around me clinging on to the walls; the pictures too get dimmer and dimmer as the wax melts and melts away slowly – a set of pictures that can define your life. Though the room will be dark in another few minutes, they’ll remain illuminated in me – and I can again see them at morning against the sunshine.

Books, clothes, pictures, few official papers… all strewn around, flickering in the flame of the candle will vanish in another few minutes – all that tell who I am. But they’ll come back again with the sun trickling down from my window pane in a couple of hours and the candle makes me wander on…

A momentary glimpse of peaceful sense of loss – that I get everyday when with beckoning sleep; peaceful sleep; balmful sleep; is snatched away today. Tonight, the burning elongated wick has prolonged the night a little longer, prolonging the comfortable chaos that I live in, that I have cherished so long, slogged for so long, craved for so long, breathed into so long. Tonight I know that every night when I sleep, I think everything will be forgotten and at morning I’ll find a new start, a new morning, a new me, a new hope that the chaos will find me joy someday.

But Sleep is just like a wearing candle, whose elongated last flickers just is so much good as giving a momentary sense of illusion that there is light. The comfortable chaos that had defined my life till now, is just like the pictures that remain on the walls no matter how long I shut my eyes, or how long darkness pervades. Take them out, and still they’ll exist in some part of my room, my existence, my blood, in the same way, just as they were – and they’ll never change. They’re a part of me now and they’ll never let go of me. It’s just like the fire and the candle. They exhaust each other, there is death in their co-existence; but they’ve no identity without each other too. Separate them, and they exist as individuals – whole and happy – but there’s no light unless they burn each other – light is from their dying together.

Such fake is the light and yet we need it to clear our vision; such momentary pretence of peace is sleep and it’s a sustenant; pictures… can be thrown away; and yet mind clings to them – they define all that one has given and craved for – all that the thirst of life is for – love is for…

I give these pictures a last glance, as my candle struggles to stay alive and I wonder – these pictures will cling to the wall for their existence; their lifelessness beckons another futuristic set of them in a futuristic past; they come and go in every person’s life and they never ask – who needs the pictures? Do they need us or we need them? Why the initiation of light has always been a resultant of the exhaustion of something? Why do we need light at all when universe itself is dark? Why can’t we see the real without the fake illumination of light? Why do we want to forget over sleep when nothing changes? Why do we need sleep at all for our survival when it means nothing at all?

Why the hell do we live a life that’s so damn fake?
©