Ratnarao’s short verse

There was the girl of the cross-eye
Her long pigtail tucked in blouse.
The nose told stories like eyes.
Her long back arched silently
As she crouched and waited
For history to break and begin
With fresh stories in the making.

This tiger is pale, pearl-white and pure
Its purity shone from its fine taxidermy.
Rewa’s royal pride shines forth indeed
In the stuffed purity of its whiteness.

A mere single phase electric line
Makes me much afraid in the dark.
I am in the first phase of my old age
Groping for a matchstick with unsteady hand
In the dark recesses of my mud-wall.
In the quiet afternoon, I sit by myself
Much afraid of the crow’s metallic caw
Marking my life’s phases matter-of-factly.

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.