Far from any road

From the dusty mesa

her looming shadow grows,
hidden in the branches
of the poison creosote.

She twines her spines up slowly
towards the boiling sun,
And when I touched her skin,
my fingers ran with blood.

In the hushing dusk,
under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind
to watch the cactus bloom.

A strange hunger haunted me;
the looming shadows danced.
I fell down to the thorny brush
and felt a trembling hand.

When the last light warms the rocks
and rattlesnakes unfold,
Mountain cats will come
to drag away your bones.

And rise with me forever
across the silent sand,
And the stars will be your eyes
and the wind will be my hands.

--

Far from any road - Handsome Family

~ Ankur.

Am back with news again from H&H fellows!

So after a hiatus of nearly two years, am back. And with same news - Haggard and Halloo published another poem of mine, titled 'Reconciliation'.

You can find it here - http://www.haggardandhalloo.com/2013/09/01/reconciliation/

I dunno why at the end they've added the word Poetry, seems like a typo. They've also used a godforsaken photograph. wonder if they were trying to be funny. It sucks, I hate it! Original can be read here - http://blog.srivast.com/2011/09/reconciliation.html

Anyway given that I haven't attempted to write anything for two years, this is a good push. Am also heading for a 3-day trek into Himachal this Friday, so inspiration in terms of nature and time to contemplate life should be abundant.

And of course, I quit my job in consulting (finally!) with a plan to take an entrepreneurial plunge. How it works out, time shall tell. The first baby step has been taken.

~ Ankur. 

Another publication

So Haggard and Halloo published a third poem of mine - Imperfect Tense, though they've titled it as Imperfect Tenses, but it's alright. Here's the link - http://www.haggardandhalloo.com/2011/12/12/imperfect-tenses/.

Somehow this news hasn't brought me as much joy, even though this poem is a personal favourite. Perhaps because they say in their guidelines that they won't publish cliches about one's soul, and this kinda hinges towards that. So I wonder if they did it for lack of material.

Bah, who knows. I would kick myself into dust if allowed to! Now I need to find other publishers too it seems :)

~ Ankur.

Second Publication!

Well these Haggard and Halloo people are nice! I got an email 2 days back that another poem of mine (The Fall) will be published by them on 27th, ie tomorrow.

Waiting for the link now, which I shall post tomorrow. [Edit: Here's the link - http://www.haggardandhalloo.com/2011/09/27/the-fall/] Till now the first publication was like a freakish accident. Now I'd say they're just being polite!

Anyhow, it's awesome :)

~ Ankur.

Punctuation

You've let me express myself.
I was claustrophobic; you lent me space.
I got confused; you questioned me.
I needed time; you allowed me a pause.
I wanted importance; you quoted me.
I lingered too long; you put an end to it.
I had to hide; you enclosed me.

And all I gave you were empty words.

~ Ankur.

Reconciliation

It was September: the equinox had
brokered peace between night and day;
around the world everyone took a pause.
Restless birds hovered over tropical flowers
cajoling them into pre-mature bloom.
Penguins stood still on the arctic, heads down,
silently grieving over egg-shaped snowballs.

Life again hung in a balance: your life.
Your steely resolve of eight decades
rested in a fragile body -
unresponsive, forgetful, rusty.
You asked if winter would be short-lived,
and they told you how much they loved you.
But you couldn't recognize them,
and it didn't seem to matter anyway,
so you closed your eyes and broke into a hymn.

~ Ankur.

The Fall

Music: Oasis - Whatever

It wasn't that your beauty was lost on me
though you were full of craters, and
bubble-wrapped astronauts were diligently scarring you
with angry fire-engines and cold-hearted rovers.
Nor had your radiant aura diminished
when an obscure telescope-wielding scientist
theorized that you were 200 million years too young,
yet perhaps well past your cosmic prime.
Your warmth was intact even when
they found steely ice dispersed on your poles.
And I hadn't deemed you lifeless
despite them unceremoniously dropping you
for seven hundred and six strangers.

In the end it was merely the discipline,
the monotony of traversing a lonely elliptical orbit
for eons. Your idyllic, single-faced utopia,
unaware of the dark side, was simply
a disconcerting mirror.

And yes, it didn't go with the music.

~ Ankur.

[Edit: This poem was published by Haggard and Halloo on September 27, 2011 - http://www.haggardandhalloo.com/2011/09/27/the-fall/]