Karna-Katu : Staccato

My wet feet made great haste to greet

The sea's sheet that swept up to meet

The leadened skies though deadened the gait

As I boarded the boat, a bard bade 'Wait!'

And he sang a song that stung to the bone

A singeing song sung in a testing tone

False Dawn

A false dawn hast thou promis'd me
A score candles will no Sun make
Grant me no fleeting glimpses thee
Nor words for conversation's sake

Thy heart lies mired in yonder past
Cleft by Time's vile sickle's sway
Thy life a play of fickle cast
Strewn in cynical disarray

I face His burnished idol old
That polish'st thou with hindsight's Faith
A joust most unjust dost thou hold
Fallible flesh 'gainst Perfect wraith

This war I lost, before He won it
'n leave thee love, this four-fifth sonnet

1857

The bugle was blown that fateful day
When we were in full retreat
A hundred years of the white man's sway
When our hearts were in crush'd defeat


Taunts and threats and hateful spite
They threw at us on and on
They broke our backs with guile and might
And our will was withered and worn


And then we rose in ones and twos
And we rose like ocean waves
The dam was breached, we broke the truce
We dug those whites their graves


Sepoy and peasant and journey man
Lifted their sickle and knife
Mullah or Pandit, we were all one clan
As we plunged into perilous strife



At Meerut was this fuse first lit
By the fat of pig and cow
Defiled we faced the smiling Brit
And we could not hold back now


We thundered on to Delhi then
And crowned there ourselves king
We killed and burnt and fell and died
But now Death had lost its sting


At Cawnpore we fought long and hard
Under Nana's fearless flag
We killed with utter disregard
We saw the Company's morale sag


And thus we coloured the battlefields red
And the Jamuna a crimson hue
In scores and scores were our warriors dead
But the yoke we now overthrew


A band of mad mad men we were
Our craze had set us free
They killed in swathes but we didnt despair
For their fear we could clearly see


We were caught and hung or cruelly maimed
Shot in the prison of Cawnpore
But we never once bowed, or our Motherland shamed
E'en as we licked that blood-stained floor


In the end, we lost that War
And they called it a Mutiny
T'was no new dawn, but a very bright spark
And for a moment, we called us Free

The Second Coming (WB Yeats) - an interpretation

Spiralling out of control, the instrument has broken free of the wielder. Guns and weapons have taken on a life of their own. There no more exists cohesion; people no more come together , nor does identity or unity of good purpose survive. Order is lost and chaos takes over - the only law the world obeys is that of Entropy. Violence and hatred spreads, and it catches them young. Children are unceremoniously jolted out of childhood into harshness. Men and women of good intent stand around wringing their hands, while the evil advance, confident and passionate in their misguided convictions, ready to give up their lives for their neurotic causes.

Surely we have reached a tipping point? Surely the tide must turn? I imagine this world, the singular conscience of all humanity, stirring slowly awake. But this brings me no calm! What I see is grotesque - a monster with a human intellect but possessing bestial undercurrents and primal motivations. I see no human love, no generosity, but mere destructive energy. It seems righteous, but who is to know what its thoughts are moored in? There is indignation and confusion at this transformation of the psyche, but this juggernaut cannot be stopped.

The last two millenia will seem tame compared to that which we are set to see soon. Indeed, we may have had flashes of foreboding about the impending disaster. Humans are now to be transformed into beasts, who disinterestedly see violence as an unexceptionable means to any end.But who knows what exact form it will take - this new philosophy, this hardening of resolve, this deathwish that we will become hellbent upon?

Daylight Saving Time

When the Morrow bodes a luckless lack
Of all that's deigned divine
E'en the clock doth scramble back
For a few more drops o' Sunshine.

The Choice

They lay together, side by side, he and she, their lips inches away, full and rosy with young life, her hand on her shoulder, inevitably protective. Their eyes were closed, though entirely aware of each other, their lips now gently curled as if enjoying a private joke, a dream they were both in.

They stood together, side by side, he and she, her hands clasped in his, she looking at them, he looking at her, the same thoughts swirling through both, the same question, the same guilt, the same helplessness, the same sharp heart stopping pain.

"Are you sure about who gets the common heart?" asked the chief surgeon. They nodded, he signed the form, she didn't stray her gaze from them. As the surgeon walked away, they stayed on next to them, the four Hobsons, for tomorrow, there would only be three.

What did King Richard III 's wife.....

....shout when she couldn't find her underwear?
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A hose! A hose! My kingdom for a pantyhose! :-\