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/]