Ratnarao’s short verse

We tried hard not to dream
While awake and in sleep
We leaned against the parapet
The shadows seemed to tease;
The sounds were unduly harsh
And the sights mere fragments.
Our dreams were a hotchpotch.
We could go back to  then space
But surely not that time-space
The subtle corners were there
But not those soft shadows;
Everything was not the same.

I  sense the tingle of your fingers
On the shadowy curve of my back
Through their after-fragrance.
You ran your fingers on my belly
I could almost hear their music.
I could hear your carbon smell
As the sun burnt your crackling back
And we lay, on the beach, oblivious
Of the crustaceans crawling around us.

She stared at the wooden beam
The wood that was once a tree
A tailless lizard came from
Behind the wooden beam and looked
At her for the seventeenth time
kitta kitta kitta said the lizard
She who had become ‘it’ stared
Unremittingly at the wooden beam
At the beam that was once a tree
The beam looked at the tailless lizard
The continuum flowed [...]

Things happened very fast.
The body quickly gave way;
The sanitized walls closed in.
The lone crab struggled
In a puddle of scalding water
There were voices around
All happened in a split-second
When someone shouted
Pull him out, for God’s sake;
This is a mere dream.

The monk grinned  from ear to ear
As the celebration went on endlessly
There was no end , only a beginning
There was a twinkle in lotus-eyes
And a mere flutter of her eyelids.
So many bones , so much dust.
The monk celebrated her transience
Laughing at the ephemeral reality
That began as a mere idea
In the artist’s chaotic mind.
The artist’s power [...]

The luminous red-and-white chalk-lines
On our profoundly furrowed foreheads
Extended, over  tenement tops and temple towers,
Into an anarchic aggregation of scriptural argument
The truth lay, mainly, not in monistic oneness,
Not even in  dualistic separateness
But in the fiery union of the flesh with the spirit.
* A Vaishnavaite in the Hindu religion believes that Vishnu is the chief God, the [...]

What floated idly in our dreams
Incorporated our liquid selves
Into its fluffy cotton clouds.
We are not we of our dreams
But fleeting fragments of light
That roamed the silent inky night
To coalesce in dawn’s phosphorescence.

A pretty little low-cost house
Still remains in the back-yard
Of my heavily cluttered mind.
So pretty , such fine roof-tiles
The drawings are still fresh.
Memories of long years blend
With fears of the unknown
As I rake in the autumn-leaves
Of my unrealized dreams .
But I still recognize its contours
It will be such a fine project
This model will revolutionize
Low-cost rural housing [...]

The body lay there in the room
With flies and people buzzing
The pale face looked indifferent
Tomorrow at dawn it will go down
Into the bowels of the earth .
The body had a fatal hunger
Just like the woman in its life .