A Christmas story

A Christmas story

In a small crowded room filled with hay

Surrounded by donkeys, sheep and cows.

Troubled and afraid the mid wife knelt to pray

Accompanied by a couple of cooing doves.

While the expectant mother in a dark corner lay.

The young woman mourns in pain and fright

The animals shift undecidedly at her cries.

Zebedee’s wife prays for just a little more light.

Troubled and helpless, shaking her head she sighs,

“I wonder what would happen this gloomy night”

Then a scream of light through roof tiles pour.

Strange, loud and brilliant beams of sun.

In awe she watches this beauty in labour,

Crying in relieved happiness for her son.

Clothed in light, the night with starlight tore.

Thirty years hence she watches that child afore

Drawn out between two thieves, hung out on nails,

Painted in pain and blood and shame and gore.

She wept as his mother, for her own John and James.

That day clothed in darkness, Jerusalem’s curtain tore.

She witnessed,

Two births but of one from different scenes-

One as a woman’s child, the other God’s Son.

The heavens revealed the power He wields

Over birth and death, but for us hope was born

When day turned to night, and night the day reveals. 

The string

It ruffles proudly when filled with the breeze
Darting into clouds or just spinning around.
The little kite mischievously pulls and tease
At the long string that’s holding it down.

Growing bigger in himself as he gets higher
The world sways slowly and begins to shrink
And as everything else starts becoming smaller
‘There’s nothing holding me down’, he thinks.

The view from up there on high is spectacular
The kite tears away towards the happy sun.
Pulling and tugging till it can’t get any further
Unlimited freedom to fly, by a thread undone.

A child pulls and tugs at his mother’s strong hand
Moving out into the world, everyday growing smart.
And finally when mother does let go, alone, unmanned
Remember, there’s always a cord, a line drawn to the heart

Across boundaries and traversing distant lands
The conqueror and the wanderer tired to roam
Will search and find that there still is a band
That string that draws you back to happiness called ‘home’.

In its element

Dripping wet from the cold bath in the morning rain
The tickly excited chill of a new day to be served hence
Atishoo sneezed the Brahmin poojary onto the lane
Atishoo sneezed the mountains in recompense
Atishoo, much more feebler from a Harijan in pain.                                                The unhappy poojary runs inside, his soul to re-cleanse.

      A million drops from heaven reign upon the land
      Washing tears, dreams and differences into the sand.

The many windowed house disturbs the valley mown
Waiting emptily for so many faces to frame
Click click. A worn shoe softly taps time alone
Click click as lights come on in slow train
Click click. A flint fails to spark, a picture is torn
The sounds of time hang in solitary strain.

     The distant void carries not a hum of hope,
     Unchanging memories, a trigger is groped.

On stiletto shoes, hips strut in provocative mirth
Standing tall, fiery red, across the 43rd street haze
Flash. On the cat walk with camera bulbs flirt.
Flash. A fleeting reflection of a lined face.
Flash Gordon a happy memory on a T-shirt.
Walks on, never delving long in that beautiful phase.

             Every day beams of air fill up with boxfuls of sun,
             To light up eye, mirror and shadows on the run.

Crouched, veins stream down taunt and tense
Dark thin fingers powder the dry thirsty earth
Thud. The pounding of little grain into sustenance
Thud. Another hungry body thrown into the dirt.
Thud. A heart feels for love lost to dark silence
And the only hope is the welcoming arms of death

           An expanse called home to the dead and living
          An abundance of hope but mostly unforgiving

Happiness runs on little legs, her hair flying in the breeze
Clutching a little smile, to chase away gloom's dismay
Swish. Angelic wings flap away from cold's painful freeze
Swish. A swing in a field ascends to the clouds of May
Swish. The wind laughs through the great big trees

           She dances through the clouds and emptied spaces
            A peck, a kiss on the lips of oh so many faces.

Main characters in this poem: -
Life and the elements - Water, space & time, Fire & light, earth, air & wind respectively. 

O Afghanistan

"Kahlil, Kahlil, come here. Where have you been"?
He stands proud, hands folded, laughing through
Little eyes like his father's, who he has never seen.

Thy mountains tamed by horses grand,
Thy opium fields with haze of purpled dreams
The majestic might of the Hindu Kush land
Once creased in happiness, now riddled with screams.
Thy rivers devoid of life melt into the sand.

Beautiful eyes that danced to the strings of the dutar
Hearts that wait for their husbands breathe.
Hands that consoled and wiped a reckless tear
Now beauty hooded in the sorrow of death
And trust and love lay barren to the spoils of fear.

To find one man a handsome nation is defaced.
The stroke of some paranoid master's rod.
To remove a tiny little thorn a mountain raised.
Homes now emptied of hope and god,
Where man, woman and child are disgraced.

Thy skies once over awed in stellar performance,
Now holds the fear of massacre riding on stealth.
Thy stars guided herdsmen across the plains unfence'
Now metal birds defecate the damnation of wealth
And the great dome flash colours of a war of ignorance.

"Kahlil, Kahlil" she screams running towards him
As shadows dropp their elaborate parcels of death.
Tearing her last love into shreds of blood and tin.

Why?

Children happily skipping around a tree,

Playing the age when innocence was free. 

Time has not grabbed its share of smiles.

Shadows have not stretched doubts on the line.

       A father weeps, gently cradling his scarred child.

      “Dear Lord, why? Why did it happen to mine?”

The laws of the land are made by the wise,

Not just in the mind, but the pocket size.

For want will never cease to be greedy,

And justice can be blind to the rightful needy.

      Tearfully she waits at the gates, for a moment with her son.

      “Dear Lord, Why? Why does he have to be caged in a prison?”

Somebody decides what’s right for this world,

Sending the young to die for the banner unfurled.

To right the wrong, or that’s what they say,

But they, on the other side, don’t see it that way.

      She hugs her daddy’s picture hopelessly clutching his medallion star.

    “Dear Lord, why?  Why did daddy have to ever go fight a war?”

The dust had settled on Jerusalem’s street,

The clamor is over, the fear indiscreet.

The dream is in doubt, the crown is weak,

Miracles forgotten from the previous week.

         A sweat of blood pours, as ahead, humiliation He does see.

         “Dear Lord, why? My Father, why does it have to be me?”

No. 9

An intuition twitches as she walks down the platform
Then turns around to look as another will soon roll in
Along the day hundreds of this incessant passing storm, 
Tiny puffs of smoke transform into mighty beasts of tin.

Like wind-up caterpillars aimlessly running down a line 
Carrying people coloured by God's unfathomable passion 
Chasing eternity again and again at the end of every mile.
Stacking up or disappointing dreams at the next station. 

She watches eagerly as the last gets off every train
Hoping that on one of them her first love would return.
With little ones, the platform's now home in sun or rain
Waiting with true hope for a love that still burns. 

She looks sadly across those endless lines
Varied dimensions of life's inestimable prison wall
Heading her family home back to Platform No.9
Hoping that at least their wagging tails never stall.