Life of a Grasshopper

 

I happened to fall in love

With a dandelion girl

In a long-forgotten past.

Do I still love her?

I'm supposed to think about it

In an arranged leisure;

Maybe in a late autumn night;

In somewhere quieter

With the spendable idle hours.

 

Maybe I could check

Some of her letters

She had written me

A decade ago

When we used to be friends

And hang around together.

But, I'm not sure now

If she loved me,

Or I'm still loving her.

 

I've got to search the file

Of old letters in my old shelf

Nearly submerged

In the piles of dust.

But, does it really matter?

I'm not a wayfarer anymore,

With a tender heart.

But, I've got to think of a leisure

I’ve got to shed off

The due drops of pain,

The frozen flow of tears

In the shades of a monsoon rain.

And where's the spare hours?

 

I do really need a leisure,

Maybe,

A quiet time along a lonely shore

To think

If I still love her

Or if there is any love left

In my life of a grasshopper.

But, where's the time to spare?

© Atique R.

Love and the Monsoon Rain

 

There are questions

That get spiraled inside my mind

Like trapped in the eye of a tornado;

Reckless.

There are questions

That squeeze my heart hard,

Enough to make me feel strangled;

Breathless.

And without ever sprouting out in words

Still they remain twisted, sealed;

Helpless.

 

There are feelings

That keep boiling through my veins,

Like lava

To be exploded out of a volcano;

Merciless.

There are feelings

That take every single bit of my strength

To contain

Like a hurricane

Inside the freezing soul;

Speechless.

 

And there is the love

That keeps my questions unearthed,

And twisted

In exchange for a soul;

Roasted.

And there is the love

That let my lava feelings

Fly unshackled and boundless

With all those untold questions;

With all those frozen sighs

To drizzle down the drops of pain

In the monsoon rain….

© Atique R. 

At the End of a Winter

 

The white misty layer

Sprang up out of nowhere

Just after the twilight

In an early winter night.

The Moon was on its ninth,

Picking up the pace

To be in full bloom,

Amidst the shuttered rays of light.

 

I was all alone in a foggy lawn

Watching carelessly

The shy drops of Moon,

When I met her eyes

In a sudden sweep of rain

On a derailed monsoon...

 

She was drifting in like a bunch

Of light white foamy clouds

With a sweet autumn breeze;

And I got stuck by like a magical spell

To see my fall in a pair of blue eyes

Floating past my heart ringing a bell.

 

I used to write sometimes

On borrowed emotions

From the poems I seek to find

How it’s like the poetic passions.

Now, with all the maddening feelings

Brimming out of my mind

I kept looking at the blank page

Staring back at me with the blue

I got enchanted by in that fairy wind.

 

I loved to weave dreams

With winters fluting the summer rains;

Bridging morning dews

With the lonely nocturnal pains.

And all on a sudden

I found myself in the layers

Of dreams in search of the eyes

I lost my soul winging in.

 

At the edge of one winter

There will be no sign of

The long-forgotten spring.

The trail of fallen leaves

Will get drier and heavier

With no trace of greening…

 

All the tales of the world

Will come to an end,

With all the colors fading out

In a devouring bend…

 

And there will be just dreams

Over the ashen blue sky,

Floating like bubbles

In the colorless layers of streams…

 

And there will be an unfinished poem

Riding with a pair of blue eyes

In one of those dreams;

 

The eyes with a straight look

Swinging between a nonchalant smile

And a mystery of the Forgotten Isle;

And a poem in a mess of failed words

To paint a passion so deep

In my empty manuscript…

© Atique R. 

To Be Or Not To Be…

 

-So, you are active here?

-Hum.

-And in the Facebook?

-Sometimes.

-Are you surprised or annoyed?

-Why would I get surprised?

-The same question for the latter one?

-I don't get annoyed so fast.

-But, I see you sometimes looking straight

Focusing on nowhere:

Slightly annoyed

But more of an apathetic look…

 

She got silent like many

Other times, leaving me confused

Yet again;

Making me keep wondering

Yet again

If I was bothering her

With my caged emotions

Leaking out some buried feelings

In an unguarded conscience...

 

But, I've got so many things to know,

I've got so many questions to ask.

And yet I just don't know

If I should text her again

With the last one gone

Lost in an abyss of pain.

 

I can start again

Just by saying "hi" or

May be "what's up".

And I know

She would reply

In the succinct most way

With one or two words,

Or with silence.

But I could explain

Why she wasn’t surprised

With my text messages:

Either she doesn’t give it a shit

To the unwanted messages;

Or she somehow knew

I was going to contact

By a hard found number to hit.

 

And I could hope against hope

That the latter one was her reason.

But, then she would opt for

The silence mood, yet again,

Without answering

The multiple choice question.

 

So, it’s better to switch on the darkness

And light up my evening sky

To do all the talking with the stars,

Dead and alive,

And to shed off all the heavy words,

Laden with hopes and despairs.

 

If she hears, she hears….

© Atique R. 

Truth on the Other Side

 

The Moon stops the clock

And tunes it

To be in the midnight block.

But, it's not night anymore;

For he has gone past

The nights of life...,

Past the body

He'd been dwelling in so far...

With all the shadowed memories

He used to water…

 

The shredded drops of Moon

Falling in pieces

Onto his swinging body,

Can no longer trigger a flight

To the world of the nightingales;

For he has gone past

The crowd of nights,

Leaving behind

A bunch of withered dreams,

Adorably preserved

Under the darkness of borrowed lights...

 

The wavering touches of the blue

In a tranquil seclusion

Under the dwindling light,

The southern breeze

Flowing in from the bay

Through the unprized shades of night

Will no longer give him

The thrill of a free fall

From the wuthering height;

 

For he has flew past

The bays, the beauties,

The tale of an idiot

And the Styx river,

Leaving behind

A thousand splendid lies

To catch up with a truth

Lies on the other side of the border...

© Atique R. 

Will You Take Me Along…

 

I heard you the other day

Rode on the waves of an ocean

To fly along the crystal cay

For the touches of the blues

Drawing dreams on the west horizon...

 

I heard you walked miles

Along the salty, sandy shore

To feel the feet, sands and water

Melting in together;

And to quench

The searing soul for a bit more...

 

I heard you, friends, together

Got lost in the trail of old days

To track back your squandered dreams.

You talked a lot and laughed aloud

And smashed the long frozen memories

Back into the flow of your streams...

 

I heard you learned to dream again,

To write lyrics and give life to them.

I heard you learned to paint life

With the color blast of autumn;

You learned to wear off the grays and pains

With the dew of every new dawns...

 

And I want you to take me along,

If you plan another trip to water,

If you ever again tune to the song

Of the foamy waves from the far.

 

I've lived long alone

In a camouflaged seclusion

Amidst crowd;

In the relentless chasing

For a life in a mere illusion.

Now I want to breathe my life.

Will you take me along?

 

For I've never been to beaches,

Never feel the blues in my toes

Nor do I ever dreamify my eyes

With the bliss of a winging albatross...

 

Will you to take me along?

For, I want to dream again

In the streams of the memories;

For, I want to fly again

In the dreamy dunes of Moon;

For, I want to drink the life again

With sweet light drops of the Sun

And the rhyming splashes of the ocean...

© Atique R. 

With deep respect for Sir Lionel Richie and even deeper love for his masterpiece ‘Hello…’ it’s just an attempted lyric as my version of the song. And I know there is hardly any chance that it will ever reach him. But I can’t just stop singing it all by myself in the tune of the earlier one….

Hello, Please Let Me Know…

 

Hello, can you please just stop by

Just for a moment; for a little while?

For I want to breathe again

In the beauty of your smile…

I can feel you in all my dreams

I can feel you through my inner streams

Even when I pass through the passers-by

My eyes always keep searching you.

 

I just wonder if you feel

I just wonder if you care

Someone somewhere feeling lonely,

Someone loving you...

 

Hello...I’ve got to let you know

With all my feelings flowing out

I can’t stop just loving you…

I just want to let you know

With all the lights fading out

I can’t stop just seeing you…

 

I keep searching in your eyes

I keep searching in your smiles

To see what I ever want to see

If you ever feel the magic

The way I feel for you…

 

I just wonder if you feel

I just wonder if you care

Someone somewhere feeling lonely,

Someone loving you...

 

Hello...I just want to let you know

With the Moon in its beaming glow

My heart is drowning slowly

In the flow of loving you...

And I wonder with all my soul

If you ever care to know

Someone missing you so deeply,

Someone loving you...

 

I just wonder if you feel

I just wonder if you care

Someone somewhere feeling lonely,

Someone loving you...

 

Tell me what I’ve got to do

Tell me how I’ll let you know

How I feel you in all my dreams

And how I can't stop loving you...

Can you please somehow let me know

If you feel those crimson pains

If you feel those summer rains

The way I feel them by seeing you…

 

I just wonder if you feel

I just wonder if you care

Someone somewhere feeling lonely,

Someone loving you...

 

I just want to walk by you

Along the dancing of monsoon rain

I wanna greet you with the drops of Moon

And the kisses of the winter Sun

And I wanna greet you in every morn

Just by saying…I love you...I love you...

 

I just wonder how you feel

I just wonder if you care

Someone somewhere feeling lonely,

Someone loving you...

Hello, can you please just stop by,

Can you please just listen to me

With the words falling heavy on me

I’m feeling so breathless

I’m feeling so lonely…

© Atique R.