Ratnarao’s short verse

Evening rain glistens on the road
As bread is bought and bananas are
Turned over for ripeness and less ripeness.
The rain is dancing on the car roof;
From the car the camera tries to catch
The wet sun on the leaves of the corner tree
Soon the wipers catch fever and quickly
We make our way in a sea of umbrellas

The black spot on his face

Is in  muddled thinking

The half moon of rising-

Words crackling in the night

Desires out of quizzes

And reform thoughts

Breaking down half way

Wanting to set the world right

An insensate ironic world

Whose  laughter emerges

Out of his heavy hat.

This wordy struggle went on for too long

It is airy words which chased beauty-thoughts

While several filigreed images filtered light

In the rock lay my lovely child-God

Who was born today morning.

There is this saffron-robed monk

Under the folds of water in the rock

Lighting the perfumed camphor for him

In the dark recesses of my mind

Whenever the orange sun is missing.

We try our poetry daily

Under the pale sky

With fluffy clouds

And silver-lined streams.

In the river evenings

Men too get thrown in

On the river bed, pale

But glowing in shapes

Their textures tell-tale

In the dusk of the camera.

The camera speaks poems

As the sun’s gold grows

And the river shimmers.

I do not want to contain space
All the while I only try to unfill space
The space that reaches out from me
To the hills and the ever winding road.

We click our tongues;
We wear our oldness
On our hanging selves.
The symmetry remains
Wholly outside our grasp,
Whatever we do still.
Beams of yellow light
Flood our parks, our eyes.
Those pixels are getting lost,
From our translucent skies
When we lie under the sky
Squiggly worms no longer
Swim behind closed eyelids.

Wonder if the twitch of that woman

Meant I existed.

She rests a hand on a wobbly knee

Her bones could be heard creaking

What can she do but move with

So much exciting shopping to do.

There had got to be something

Beneath all this big movement

And umpteen noises in the vessels.

We thought deep-set irony was all-present

A smirk, a delicious wink, long strides

In green spaces towards empty buildings

As though it was all settled.

That was not. Even their irony lacked.

Absence did not matter. Nor being.

We smacked lips for nothing.