Faith

The tattered man
Sitting under a leafless tree

Holds his bleak head high

Thinking of some hope to fall

Till the depth of the night.

Elapsing minutes weakens

His faith on heavens

That revolves with the diurnal course

Of losing life!

His conviction began melting.

And lo! a diseased dog brought

A left over half consumed refuse

Of some stomach stuff!

Sharing the food with animal deity

Restored his belief in the omniscient

Who knows every one's need!

Who knows whose

Trust needs to be restored!

Composed by ©  M K Mishra

What a bliss it was !

What a bliss it was 

To be with the sparkling frame

Of your long lone days 

When the tinted lips of sinking sun

Kept murmuring of its glorious journey

Along the azure tides of pelagic span!

What a dense delight it was 

To scan the dripping dance of blue birds

Amidst the dawn that kept hanging

Like the stained yellow linens

Just thrown on the face of the Sun!

What a mean mellow it was 

To behold a man's intent 

On seeing a lone mermaid

Who counted her unborn offsprings

And mermaid's eye beams sensing 

His long lost latent generations

On the go of his maiden voyage!

Life to its extent is but a painted story 

That keeps fading each day 

Casting crimson colours 

To the untrodden paths of the mortals.

Composed by ©  M K Mishra

The Corona Virus

This chaos, my dear, leads to tumult

Of the churning mind on soft pillow

Pulling all images to smack

With just a gust of strange bang

Of the virus that impelled the mankind

To play hide and seek.

Humans are hidden in their dens

Day and night

Night and day

Peeping out of the windows to behold

The rising and falling of the sun

And the hottest blow of arid air

That squeezes out the saved oomph

That once propelled to lurk

Amidst the meandering rills.

Patient less oozing tarnishes the inner force

Day by day & night by night

In the gully of the lone balcony.

Unspoken tales are mimicked and forlorn

On the concrete terrace by the evening

With no evidence of smile.

We wait day long for the evening to fall

To babble to some known faces

About the battle we overcome oft

Fighting with the rumble of exult.

This day shall pass, my dear,

With a bash of bliss waiting ahead

To have a giant leap in the annals

Of humanity we ever love to rejoice.

©Composed by M K Mishra

Rommel, O Rommel

Rommel Shunmugum lurks
With his hanging camera
Through out the year
Spotting for evident pose
Of effeminate lustre
Like a rumbling stone
And settles around the corners
On the haunches reposed
With the fingers in motion
To capture the breathing lives.

He goes wild in rainy season
For it calls him to embrace
The myriad murmuring beauty.
In winter he winks with squeaks
To shoot the dancing ebbs.
The summer calls him to hibernate
For he rejuvenates his lost soul.

His squeaky walks frightens
The croaking frogs in rain
And curly hairs settle on his ramparts
Through the round glass.
His searching eyes spot
The eloquence moving around.
He laughs but in loneliness
Once in a year on Christmas.

Rommel, O Rommel
Shrug the shoulder
With the friends in fifties.
Time spares none as gust does.
We mortals grow older soon.
None can predict tomorrow.
A decade will fetch us in sixties
And the uncertainty will roar
On beguile to drag us to the shore.

©Composed by M K Mishra

Her Eternal Repose

Nature never refuted
The lustre she radiated
Through her silent eyes
Speaking to themselves
Of the ephemeral eloquence
Beholding the skeletal skies.

None could sense the innocence
She was blessed with,
Serene calmness of azure lake
She was embalmed with,
Cluster of flying fogs
She was chased by,
In her replenishing tender age.

The blooming passions
Of polished demeanour
Lurked through her passing days
Walking into the silent chambers.
Fathomless fortune favoured
As the knotted bliss melted
Into the robust flow of Lethe.

She rolls with the rising sun
She runs with the setting moon
She sings with the raining drops
She whispers in the darkness
She lingers with her laughter
But she never clamours
Her eternal repose she is gifted with.

©Composed by M K Mishra

A Lunatic Intellectual

A lunatic intellectual,
Thrusting his fumed frames
Upward to dismantle
The undreamt warrant,
Mumbles down the lane
of opaque vision.

He dares not diffuse
The uncouth truth
He lived for legion months.
People laugh at his
Outward stature
For an invasive reason
He was loaded with.

But bright stars seldom peep
Into malice through a crooked
Smile scattered around.

The laughing chunks of life
Blooms the withered mind.
The hampered candid paths
Shines bright into broad light
With a jostling gust
To leap through
The unmeasured height.

©Composed by M K Mishra

Life Beyond Life

A whiff of beguiling commotion
Shakes the blissful
Chords of life
And pulls the nerves
To propel the saintly stance.

Of late in summer
The gasping breaths,
Trumpeting in wilderness,
Whirled the foams of faith,
And dancing eyes
Ebbed into the unison of infinity.
The curved frames sulked deep into
Moist fusion of conscious silence
To mutter the shyness of mantled eyes.

The morning dawned with a promise
To suck the throbbing pains
Gurgling with a swift desire to
Transcend beyond the measured heights.

Time travels on divine chariot
And tangled nerves talk in pleasure
Of the life beyond life.
They speak in knotted morphemes
Of effeminate voices.

The locked frames rub
And intertwine like creeper
But with a soothing smile to lull
The resting soul in peace.

Grace of the age peeps
Through the skins.
But the lustre of the promise
Grows with the growing tree.

                                     © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

Keeping Quiet

Keeping quiet is often not doable 

When one toggles with
The strife churning within.
It pulls, twitches, and sometimes
Throws into the deep ocean
To sulk and bury the billowing thoughts
Into the vast stretch of void.

Keeping quiet is often not doable
When one counts to hundred
Into the depth of lurking night.
One wavers on the bed, east or west,
To get lulled into the soft pillow
Casting aside the harboured plank
And lofty dreams of castles high.

Keeping quiet is doable
When one throws himself off
Into the retreating waves
Of rooted trust to be swept away
into the azure world
Where gleams of morrow lie latent into
The smile on a summer's maiden call.

                                        © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

The Animal Instinct

The animal instinct 

Does not let us sleep

Even on the cosy laps.
It makes our nerve throb
And tatters our fine frame
We are made up of.

A single curved shrug can
Tear us apart from within
And thrash us into the Lethe
Of dubious challenges
To peep into the splashed blood.

Nibble the nails,
Stop by the wood and
Behold a blooming mushroom
By the side of a moist suffocating hay
And the life will reflect
Its own shadow
On the thrust of a stained mirror.

The ceaseless time machine speeds up 

And endless footholds measure by

The counted days to sustain
In the blissful ambience of trust
Letting the suspended breaths
Blare alive in the drowsiness.

What a faith man has
To correspond with the heaven
And harvest a planet of his own
And make a move to laugh with the moon
When he is not certain
He will witness the next sun !
                             © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

An Old Father

A young one year old child, pointing to a crow that was sitting on the branch of a tree, enquired, “Father, what is this?”

The father, almost startled, replied,"It’s a crow, my child.” The child again repeated the same question, “What is this, father?”

The father replied the same with same enthusiasm. The child kept asking the same question for countless times till the crow flew away. They went home.

The child is grown up now. He is healthy and robust. He is busy now in his own trade. The father has wrinkles on his limbs and countenance. He sits almost frantically alone in that house.

One evening, bored out of his loneliness, on the sudden arrival of his son, something queer happened. “Where are you coming from, my child?” the father questioned. The son nonchalantly replied, “From nowhere.”

The father was taken aback but did not utter a word. After few minutes he was going out.

“Where are you going, my son?’ the father questioned to break his silence almost as hysteric as a paranoiac.

“Don’t you have any business to be engaged in, except poking noses into other’s business? Why do you always fall into my personal affairs unnecessarily and ask nonsense questions? Can’t you remain silent and mind your own business?” the son jeered and went out of the house chafing his nose.

The father did not emit any word but nostalgically reminisced those old days of his young son when he never got tired of repeating the same nonsense sentence “It’s a crow, my child”.

                                                                                                              © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

What shall it profit a man?

Bygone days had swifter wings

That flied over the assorted lands

And brought the harmonious peace

To tune the music and the gong.

But present borrowed mind is leaning

Forward and backward

Backward and forward

Out and in

In and out

Of the closed room.

No knock, no sound, no stem

Comes from the crowded corridor

After a wavering noise of unbreakable syllables

After the heterogeneous mouth’s utterance

After the pronounced morpheme

From the outside room.

The inside room quivers

In fear, in horror it shudders.

On the bed mind struggles

Struggles and cracks, aches and breaks

Breaks and shakes

For no hand comes to weave

The torn fabric in silent peace.

Winning, defeating, defeating and winning

It runs its own spinning

Of worn out fabric like man made machine

Of iron and steel, of hardest wheel.

I have no rest. We have no rest.

Where should I go now? Where shall I run?

Shall I go to a bookstall or to station?

Or shall I take an aspirin and rest in oscillation?

What shall I do?

What shall we ever do?

Get up at five and on the bed at ten.

And if hungry, a satisfying lunch

And if thirsty, few drops of filtered water

And if no work at seven in the evening

Either a boasting chat or fifty-two playing cards

And if free at nine in the night

 The cosmic news on the screen

And if no sleep at twelve in the midnight

A man of full ambivalence.

We do our formal routine

With respected mind and cunning brain

With cunning brain and respected mind

Like a tired desire of the oldest kind.

The world treads searching

The sense from nonsense

Like a poor young maid

Collecting wastes and fuel

Fuel and food

To us also feed just to the full.

This time offers no rest.

No rest to rest in peace

Except the duty and routine and daily an aspirin.

What shall it profit?

What shall it profit a man

If he wins the whole world

And loses his own soul.
                                 © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

An Intelligent Child

To test the intelligence of his son, a father calls his son outside his house. No sooner had the son reached near his father than they heard a piercing  sound  faring out of the kitchen.

 
The father postulated his son, “Go to the kitchen and see who makes the utensils  fall down.”

 
The son instantly responded almost electrified without moving a step, “It is none else, father, but the mother.”

 
The father jeered at this and rebuked his son on being rude and disobedient. Angrily he inquired, “How come you know it is your mother only?”

 
“Had it been someone else, the mother could have shouted like a bull. Since there is no sound booming out of kitchen, it could be mother only and none else” the son countered.

The father outspreads his smile with a gratified expression.
                                                                                                         © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

For It was Just a Dream

I ever dwindle 
Between two worlds 
Of faith and disbelief 
That she has thwarted me into despair 
And made my senses 
And flamed frame numb.
  
I know not why I charge her 
For being unfaithful to me 
For it was not she but I 
Who thought to be one with her 
Virtuous blessed soul. 
And for a moment I forgot
The snarling world of living 
“That I am the part of this universe, 
A part of the inhuman humanity, 
Where Faith lies in the secrecy of relations 
Preserved within the treasure of heart.”
  
I was in time so overwhelmed 
That I divulged myself so soon 
To be inspired to transcend beyond 
The living abode of human life. 
But it was just a dream, and dream 
That came while sleeping and be bygone 
Ere I woke up from the deep slumber 
Of half lunacy. 
  
Alas! 
What was great before is now so mean! 
The sea of Faith was once full of tide, 
But now, no Intimacy, no Love, no Faith, no Relation 
Do live in the world of wolfish fair. 
Every living lives with a certain philosophy 
Of give and take, and be apart. 
For this is the man, and this is the life. 
This is the grace, and glory of Age. 
The journeys of men now pass like this 
Treading hopelessly, having no greater bliss.
                                               © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

Nor can Time Stale Thy Grace

O bare beauty’s bride of immortals

You enrapt silence of mystery,
who can't tell your flowery history

And Fair Youth? And unstinted admiration you bear,

All profuse versifiers to your truth begotten,

They lie; of your mystic gracious beauty, swear.

This your stately grace can never stale time

Nor can eternity touch the untouched hymn

Of passionate heart-breathing passions all.

Ah! happy begotten days cannot shed

Luster, on your unveiled truth, soft to the ear still,

Nor ever can bid the spring adieu, till

Your soft heard voices are forlorn on horizon

And ceased in high sounding pant;

Your beauty and chanted incantation

Shall pass through men to men

On beaded wreaths, and ways trodden

Will recall the numbers of holy verses read.

O Fair Youth! You do tease us

As does heaven laugh

On our mortality, weak and half !

When old ages pass on Achilles’s heel

And days are crossed in burden, we feel

What immortal souls were given

But this generation is over on linen,

And past the eyes remain days numbered

We sleep, thus, in deep slumber.

You, ours, a friend to all breathing human passions

Of unwearied men and women, to whom he does say:

Time surpasses the immortality taught

And days of ecstasy, too, shall be wrought

Generations swift come and go

As souls and tide that flow.

But your unuttered voices will be heard

Till the Day of Judgment in peace

And your unspoken tales will ever exist

For today, tomorrow and all the ages I drift.
                                            © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

Life halts on the pavement

A mad man kept lying on the pavement of Bhopal. He was unaware of the hustle and bustle of the busy city. Pedestrians passed by. But no movement in the body! His tangled  and matted hair told the unspoken tales of his life. The broad day light made no difference. Birds and roaming dogs did not touch his food. It remained scattered & uneaten, perhaps untouched. Untidy and blackened dresses covered his limbs. Blackened feet and face were motionless. Folded hands perhaps were muttering silent prayers in deep slumber. His sky bound lying body exerted the feeling that he was no more. The truth defied the feelings. Lo! he breathed ceaselessly.

He has nothing to recall, nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing to count, nothing to complain, only to cipher the numbered breaths that carry his flamed frame.

What a life of insanity! 

God, it is only You who know your creation! I dare not comment upon.

An insane is never demented with the mania of owning things! It is we who do. His occasional feeble giggles defied the worldly possessions of sane humanity. He spoke but unintelligible words in his serene silence.

Many such unspoken  tales are buried in the wombs of this Mother earth. A simple touch of sympathy may spark the rays of hope in many lives.

Our indifference to such bubbling issues has made us pygmy by the side of our needs. The life halts with a jolt on the pavement thus.

Who knows tomorrow? Who can predict the next dawn? Neither I nor you. Journey of life continues..............
                                                                                                                 © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

Lines Written in Solitude

Sweet aching sounds come
From an unknown land,
Breaking the organised chords of life;
They enter into pure soul.

This sound that was once the melody,
The motion which afforded the paused breath 
A dancing life like a mermaid
And vision, chasing the phantom delight,
Are  now the tangled mists of burnt-out passion.

Ah, you sound, you motion, you life !
All are gone to strained land
Haply never to come back.
And moist ashes are scattered solely
Past me to sit gazing like flying fogs.

Hark ! this big bang honks
Of unfeigned relation
Where certitude of faith lives
And love gets its full fruition.
                                     © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra

Love is but the Celestial Ecstasy

Living hangs swinging

On the two perches of life

And death. Death is a mysterious

Dream land and life a sweetest reverie

Of the day’s sleep.

Love is her sister

And passion passionate friend

Of which you and I were

The two inmates unknown.

Time with us travelled forlorn

And we made the desert

An oasis so sweet.

There were thus the flowers and buds

In which methink

Are now we players most known.

One day, a humming sound

Jaunted from Heaven

That you my heavenly Moon are

And I, your star,

Created by Lord

To live always afar.

But you and I and I and you

Played ever countless hide and seek,

Sat for a moment

In the Eden,

The loveliest place of God,

Conjuring the hymn of Love.

“For I am your blessed moon”, you said

“And I your brightest star”, I murmured.

Chirping of the birds,

And humming of the bees,

And bliss of the unknown

Thrilled our nerves

To be forgotten in the eternity—

Where there is neither life nor death

Beyond eternity.

And we sensed together incense of rose

In the sweet darkness of embalmed night

And took the wings of poesy

And had the longest flight

Where I and you were only dreamers

Nor any living, nor even singer.

You again muttered, “I am your Moon lovely bright,

Will you me forget ever sprite?”

I then reposed for a moment in brooding

And patched her gently thus asserting:

“I am not the part of this yucky world

Where men always live but love for a moment

I loved you ever and will love you ever

You are my part and part for ever.

Though we live always afar,

You are my moon and I your star.

I have promised to keep it alive

And I will do it till I survive.

If you keep it or don’t you know

I will live with this, and have my bliss!

And I will live with this to make you immortal

Like a melodious song of Nightingale.”

After I paused I saw her sobbing

Sobbing incessantly, dropping her pearls priceless

None was there to behold her grace

I only saw but half her passion

I became numb, and my sense was out

She lost herself and I myself

“Don’t do that”, said I, “O, don’t do that.

I am always yours and yours always be

Seeing like this I die and live

I live and die, don’t you see?”

She broke her silence by “you my star,

I cannot be living by living afar.”

The passionate feeling was never so intense.

She like Goddess embraced me now

And I, her part, had lost myself

With rolling tears in her eyes

She again thought to have her flight

But I said, “No, no, don’t do that.”

She became silent and I her embraced.

Thus she spoke as an elf mysterious:

“For women never forget once any loved

You may desert me but I never will

And will keep my promises till the decay

And even will live without ever you

Bracing your love in my tender heart

I never will but you may desert.

Women know well how to live with the name

But men only know how to live with the fame

I promise and promise and promise again

And will be the same and same I remain.”

This is the light you flung off to me

Which lighted my life with superb glee.

And have my bliss to the core of my heart

To stand out shining my sweet bright star.

I your inspiration always be and you be mine

And I and you and you and I would always shine.”

We came down then soon to the sense

We were now on the real living land

Where we saw the two paralyzed hands.

If they were the hands of the wicked eyed man,

We would have fallen prey to the omen. 
God's grace showered! 

He always saves the innocent and the weak

Whosoever asks for his bliss.

We turned to rejoice placid sea.

It was now the world at dawn.

We watched the ebbs of the tides

Coming and going, up and down

Like a sporting joyous fawn

Roaring with the pebbles and singing with the foam

Ships on the water dancing on the isles

As if a mermaid offering her prayers

And the another shore!

A blue crystal plate,

Prepared to give up the offerings of grace

Spotted sky as if its flowers

Golden sunbeams being its wreaths

Forged to meet limitless horizon.

Night was over and darkness bygone

We on the shore were souls lone

Scarlet was East and West had Moon.

It seemed to both living souls

That they were uttering divine philosophy

That they were then but frail incarnate

And on the pilgrimage to known infinite

Leaving behind mortal eyes

That all are fast subject to decay.

Drops of dew wailed silently

But we had had the immortal way

That Love is but the celestial ecstasy

Of the two blessed souls

Finding their rest in the Supreme Unknown.

                                                    © Written by Manoj Kumar Mishra