Sunday, June 19, 2016

Beautiful Solitude (written in 1990)

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Hi, this is a poem i wrote on the 15th of February, 1990.
Am currently working on an annotated version of my entire collection of poems, for publication in a book, but i choose to upload this work here today:



Beautiful Solitude
                                                            15/2/1990
Much has Man created
__Much more than meets the
     Eye
And I speak not of fancy things
Nor of war and peace speak I.
Stop, my friend, and think
                                    awhile
Of human relationships and
                          human ties
We revere and accept these earth-time bonds
__Live we not in a fool’s paradise?

     Some time of ours is spent on
                                             Earth
Call it a gruelling test,
Call it a short respite
Where human beings align
                         themselves
With others of their race
As if forever
Here, in this dream-like place.

These bonds are but the
                 creation of Man
That offer him security
In this short span.

Hark! let the truth unfold
It is not as bitter as it seems
__Not as cold.
    For alone we come
    And alone we go
  And so alone we shall be
      Forever more.



Friday, June 17, 2016

Reportage

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

i suppose only nonsense verse
would serve to converse
on matters such as dreamt thoughts
or heard news
such as 'holy communion' quite far away from the pews
(realms of dreams)
-applied then
to visuals in the morning's papers:
a striped one with the pope
being administered
holy pop!
then the word 'campaign'
quite universally applicable, no doubt
irrespective of which podium
or exit
you use.
you know what.
earth first.
RIP? the spirit stays.
then a racy, heart-stopping actionsequence
wherein
a ferocious canine
retrieves fair game.
signature: 'barack'?
how awesome is that
but i have to ask:
how does one ensure the republicans' defeat?
would a bernie think-alike, look-alike suffice as a last-minute entrant from another party?
yeahyeah
we could speak for the greens
if only to set the stage
first, for hilary
and in time to come
for a successful green party candidate
before the planetary system
is ready for an earth president
(for now, divinely ordained earth empress shall clumsily write)
and read.
i suppose.
and string together

Sunday, June 12, 2016

#DreamtOfRamanaMaharishi

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

I wish i could recall the trick
For how to write a limerick
A simple feat,
one could tap into the beat,
and google would solve the mystery quite soon
(i’ve done it before, a syntactic score
of minor import
in the larger picture, no doubt)
But a simple rhyme
ought to suffice this time
-twixt this era and another divine.

Woke up to a near-holler-heard:
“Do you know a Monk!”
(ah, that bottle of dark rum of the said nomenclature
that was a part of the previous day’s caricature resurrected as such) (and one returns here to clarify that one hadn't imbibed any, so that wasn't why!)

But what was a bit much
To comprehend
Was the visage of a monk-like
Or, rather, sage-like persona
That came into focus without any hocus-pocus
Followed by the visual of a yantra
You know, a diagram of the holy sort
All authentic, with a dot and what-not.

Just researched images of saints and monks
And believe it or not, the funk
-It was the face of Ramana Maharishi

(one barely recalls the names of individual saints and suchlike
So the coincidence was not entirely trite)

And the bio says born on 30/12 (just like me)
Though neither of us uses linkedin much as of yet
the right-hand felt the stirring of an electro-magnet