Goirick Brahmachari- A Poem

Bus, Inertia: Leaving Himachal, Reaching Home

1

A smile will never know the lane
Through which the eighth house of sadness lies.
Only rivers will guess in whispers
And the nights will escape the dawn.

2

A river flows through my window
All the way to Punjab. Three and a half hills
Within the frame, and a wooden chair.
Houses that morph into stars by night.
White riverbed, stones, trees,
Roads and bridges too.
No clouds,
They float below.

3

The sky splashes blood over my face.
Does not promise rain.
The mist is heavy, this earth
A desert in my throat, ice, lost in white time.
Gypsies dance to the
Drone of a snake, a river,
Fireballs in their tongue
Hula hooping, butterflying
Shades of dusk.
Chains burning, smoke
Rising over the ashes, mountain peaks, white stones, water.
And an evening hangs

Between two flakes of hills
And many unanswered questions.

4

And we shall meet
At the banks of a white river
By the gypsy town

Of stones and miracles
And we shall sing of chains on fire
Of love, other demons
Skies and tears
Travelling through the ash mountains
Breezing through rain
Snaking across the roads and the frozen rivers
To agree and disagree on reason
Rising like the thin air that cuts memory
Tears everything, you and I.

5

Clouds could breeze through your face right now
and turn it into dust, when the Ice suffocates the trees
and the river is a white dead snake.
It cuts the earth with its curves.
Drones many silver nights.

I count the villages that hang by the deep green gorges.
Himalaya- an endless rhyme. Three green eyes
Look back at me with hope and despair.
Clouds in their hair, trees hang over their skin.
Black rocks spike out of the hills like killer’s knives.

The sky flirts with colours, breeze cuts memory;
And I lose my hands like a broken window,
Eyes wide open,
To fight the dizziness of this life.

6

I float through the Himalayan forests
Ugly and naked, hair on my chin
Bad breath, foul mouth,
Trying hard to forget,
To live the rest of my life
Dreaming mountains
And vultures that float
High above, white
Circling a ritual
Free falling waterfalls
Breezing heartaches
Heights.

I melt into the liquid earth
My body trembles
My speech fumbles
In search of rain and
Cold water reason
Of this universe
That has locked itself into a dot.

7

A flying kite over the iron walls of a deserted factory
Is all we need to continue to believe
In early mornings, as the city snores
Life. And a blue kite flies through the rusted landscape
Of an old machinery, iron pillars
Hallucinating shadows of Firoz Shah Kotla
And that unmistakable smell of pigeon shit
That grows on you as you age.

8

The only thing that remains now
is nothing. Beyond past rivalries
And new points left to be won
Nothing, nothing matters anymore.
No point to prove.
No games left to be played.
No winners, no losers.
No laurels to be won.
No humiliation can irk me now.

Not offended, not Zen
Not entirely angry, not saddened by this existence.
Only time
With its aged skin
And my limbs that want to separate,
Disintegrate, in dreams.

Like asteroids that float
In the dark, black space for years.
Only nothingness,
Can comfort me now.