Don't forget to smile!

    It is pitching dark. It is black, the color of the sky. I can see nothing. 

A face roams around in the abyss of my thoughts and a smile lingers in my mind. 

       That is all I have left of you, a vision of the smile, a sound of your laughter, the smell of the perfume you wear, the touch of your coarse hands.

The laughter dominates, brings out an effervescence of joy in the damp air,     waiting to be filled with words.                        

 Silence cuts through my ears, begging to be filled. 

A single voice creates an echo, reverberates and comes back as the same. Can there not be two?    
   

Please say something.

    Anything!

Currents of time flow, wonder when this moment will be up. 

 Let us make a memory out of it. Smile! Laugh! Show what joy you hold beneath.                                  This second shall not pass sans you.                                   
What I behold cannot be empty, the air vibrates with your thoughts, encrypted and tunneled to some distant land of yours, your personal drop-box.

                                         A happy you, so gentle and innocent!                                                                           

               You know how light glitters in your eyes when you laugh.                                                            

 It is like you shudder off an eon of ages only to become a child again. 

           Serious?! Well you look hot when you are serious, but a bore too. 

                Cling to your kiddo self, the one that betrays all the wrongs and despair of the world, the one that gives birth to your very self every time, the one that rejuvenates you and brings a happy dent smile onto your face.

                            I wish all the good and happiness of the world to land on your side of the path, where you walk shallow.                                    

  

I wish you fathom the depths of which you never seem to mention about and merge out wild and fearless from it,

 overcoming every hurdle like a stallion.

And I wish a 'tickle' to bother you every now and then, so that that broad smile splashes across your face     every time, all the time.

 Back to light, back to the world! Over and out!    

Just settle down with rain

Settling down with rain

Into the puddles, stagnant and calm

Where even the ripples whisper

Into a melodious song

Through the filters of space and time

Being benign in every manner

Molding into the best

With all the peace to gather

Like icicles smooth yet sharp

Slowly formed out of cold

Glittering in the light of dawn

To fathom the self not sold

Risen from the dark and deceived

Hailed from the altitudes

Silvery, washed by the mercury

Ending all up in subdued

Strife marks its end

Tranquility and peace stand duel

The gold lies beneath the chest

The ink gets tainted to quill

The words come out as river

From the peninsula to the wide

The beds have shells and pearls now

No meaning in disguise

Purity speaks and shines in white

When the sun burns out to speak

And the lilies blossom and please the eyes

Once when ceases the bleak

And so shall on, so shall forth

Given the love a chance

Humble dances with honest

Devoid of constraints in stance

Yearn for letting go,

Holding on gives birth to pain

Look through the window

For let it not be stained

Just settle down with rain

Just settle down with rain.

I & Me

When I am with me

I am not me

The strange paradox haunts over again

Is this really We?

I am not one but two

If not me then who

Lives the present and worries about the past

And brings me back too

Then senses are the same

Then who shall I blame

When I start thinking aloud

Who holds me to tame

I am nothing but mystery

Sometimes I don’t know me

I flip like a coin in air, confused about

What I am and what I want to be

I can’t hold it still

My wishes and my will

I contradict my own self

And com back again to nil

I am not me, not myself

Then who am I, where do I dwell

So Comprehending on ‘I’ and ‘me’

Till I freeze and become still


Know more about Me: I am Change

The Window

There is a window in front of me

Which when I look up I can see

From one among the fallen blinds

That stays upright and discreet

From the view that it displays

I witness clouds and certain haze

The sky looks grayish blue

And those clouds glitter too

But why I am inside this glass

I think and am amazed

To find out that my soul

Does wish to just behold

What I cannot be right now

As myself, free and bold

I whisper to myself

Is this certain kind of well

From where I cannot come out

This living where I dwell

And then I look around

Where humans of no count

Seem working but are bound

Rising in life that already fell

A glitter crosses my eyes

As a shine begins to rise

From the willow of the clouds

A star speaks of the wise-

‘No matter where you are
In joy or peeled with scarsIn freedom or be it bars
Live, love and laugh to fullest Bring out what’s your best Fill in up that zest
I will take care of the rest’

 The Same Window, a different Story : And the Sun shone Again

Let it Go!

I don’t know where to stop the time

Be it when I was born to my family?

Or when I started speaking words

When I learnt balancing on a cycle

Or made my first pal?

When I went to school, shall I stop it there?

Maybe when that boy seemed to stare

When mom & dad were proud

Or Shall I stop it when I got a kin

When promises were strong

And lies meant sin

When best of the best relations

Commenced when I went out

And explored the world around

To find a perfect bout

Those times of wonder

And times of awe

When I lost my breadth

Or held my strength

And touched the pinnacle

Or when I finally did settle

For time that was going then

Is going now

This moment

Only the present

I hold

And let go off the time

Tipsy Lit Flash Fiction Contest Entry

                                                         http://tipsylit.com/category/story-contests/

Snoopy's Tale

On early Sunday morning, Snoopy strolled out of his kennel, rummaging for smell that his nostrils caught on to. Though he had come across many smells from malodorous ones to savories, this one seemed different.

Master!  He thought, he needs to get back before master wakes up to take him out for a walk. Through that missing piece of fence, he crossed the boundaries, as he had done many times.The smell trailed off to the barren field behind a huge house. He followed his sixth sense unhesitatingly. Right in front of him, was a huge stretch of fields, with wild grass. He stood few feet away and barked.

 No answer.

He walked to and fro in anxiousness. Something moved!

His tail upright, his muscles flexed his adrenalin all ready to pump in another shot in a response of fight or flight. The smell seemed to intensify every moment.

He barked louder, his body was quivering now. It was dark but he could still smell the presence coming closer to him. Something made its way from the lands of grass. Petite and frail, dark with no fur on him, walking on two paws like master’s kind that was something Snoopy hadn't seen before. As this thing came near Snoopy, instead of getting alarmed he became unexpectedly calm and studied the strange creature.

There was no snout, but it had a tail, that wagged to and fro. Snoopy responded positively. It brought its hand and rubbed under his neck. Snoopy didn't refrain. The touch was not meant to harm, the stranger had conveyed him.

 The first touch was gentle and he loved the rub and pamper. He licked it back, thanking it for showing care and not harming him. A silent conversation commenced between them. He told it about the day when master hit him with a stick, the fight with Boxy and the painful wound on his snout. He even told about his puppy days comforting around his mommy’s tummy, suckling and calling for attention and the lovely random licking, his mommy would do. He described his day of the separation from his mother and being given to his master who didn't care for him. He told it about the times he starved and had to wander off at night for food. He expressed his grief on how he was just another show-toy for his master.

Apart from that the stranger also got to know about his skills, his ancestors and how his breed was not a pure race but a mix of many mongrels. Snoopy in turn got to know about the stranger, the place where it came from,  its world, its colony and its life. The strangers became friends over that brief conversation.

He followed it into the grass field, as the stranger turned around to leave.

Snoopy didn't return to his master since that day. He had completed his days on earth and now he freely wandered somewhere in the sky with his new found friend.

You Fall..

As you look into her eyes, you see a panorama of blush, joy, confidence, sweetness, elegance and versatility. Her smile lingers for long in your mind, wanders in almost every nook and comes back to reality by gleaming on your lips. You wonder!

You feel the melt of adorable self waning into something you want to cherish. You build an image of her, in the deepest chambers of your heart, restrained from even a close one and then hold it in your eyes while straining them somewhere for long.


You can’t inch closer, neither far. At this distance of stillness, you breathe deep, let it all go in the air that you exhale and with it all the emotions that beam up parallel. You used to think you are a keen observer but you realize you were wrong. Else how could you have missed the shine in her eyes?




Those deep brown eyes that let you hallucinate at your own will. They have a glitter of confidence in them and a twinkle of blush. And you get woven into your own thoughts.

How could anyone have missed the morning star by the dawn, which marks the first rays of the daylight falling on the sleeping earth?

You lean across your thoughts and wonders in anticipation of degrees of splendor and then you realize there isn't any.

You just can't catch her, even your shadow makes her flinch, she knows. She drills through your eyes. You try to avoid getting paralyzed. You get paranoid but you can't help skip the first beat.


                                           




You jeopardize yourself with her memories and alas you fall.

REBATE

I don’t know what to say
For the pieces that just don't fit in

No matter how much I try

May be I don’t get the right ones

I try n find my way

Through the labyrinth up and down

But don’t know which is right

All seem like mirrors in betray

I trust you, you all so much

And then you make and break it

What container do I hold?

That pours the water through holes

And I carry it with me everywhere

Filling it with self again

But nah, it perforates, precipitates

And I make the mistake, to delegate,

To entrust upon you

Rather you all just walk through

And let it disintegrate

While I rebate

My good deeds

In expense to your misdeeds upon me

Again n Again n Again.

WorDs of EYES

They say ‘Eyes are windows to our souls’ .Well, indeed they are. And I am not telling this because someone said so but because that’s how I peeped into some souls, straight down into their hearts.

There are dark brown eyes, chocolate brown eyes, light brown eyes, amber eyes, cat eyes, green eyes, blue eyes even white dilapidated eyes and of course the fake lenses eyes. But does the color really matter much? Does that tell if the person is truthful and trustworthy? Not Really…

A beautiful kid, with blue eyes that seemed to shine emerald when he would be angry, turn to blue when he was sad and reflect  the vibrancy of the sun in daylight, was a friend of mine when we were kids. A few years later it turned out that the sweetness with which I am describing his eyes right now met with a contrast to his character that had degraded with time, the color of his eyes still shined sapphire at noon.

Petite amber eyes that hung on this little boy’s face seemed like sparkles of the morning dew over the blades of grass. With the twinkle that lingered in his naturally chocolate shades, he could make many hearts skip a beat or maybe even two. But alas, his stories only ended in betrayals.

Yet another pair of green eyes, more of cat like, one look and a godly figure would seem to appear before you with a gaze that strong, that it could affix you to stay and watch him blink a million times softly again and again and again. What could be worse that these playful eyes wore the mask over a playboy.

Brown eyes, darker than the color of mud, mysterious, mystical puzzle in every way. A gaze that could follow you and hypnotize you that very instance, clutch you in its vision like a snake grabs hold of its prey. And as with every struggle of prey the predator gets a stronger hold over it, so do those beautifully carved out eyes as they catches a glimpse of yours.

I don’t know how I determine the underlying feeling behind recognizing a person with a gaze in his/her eyes, but here are some moments when I find the reflections of the sweetest souls floating over the eyes of the few.

Dark brown are they. I see them almost every day. There is a sense of softness and patience in those pores that I doubt I have seen anywhere else ever. Tender to the others around, like a tendril to a climber, like a warm feather over the new hatchlings, the vision in between melts wherever they look, making the course seem softer and milder, even if it is not.

Innocent and gentle, they are the color of mud. Big, large places they occupy as they control every expression on her face and pour out the deepest of emotions from, if any, ever made corner in her heart. You know her stages of sensitiveness, anger, playfulness, worry, fun and truthfulness.  You know she is pure and though quite judgmental yet so herself and not even a mist of fakeness surrounds the curves of her eyeballs.

White, reflecting in morning light, clearly giving signs of a cloudy vision of cataract, she gives the hints of worry, stress, sleepless nights and more clearly fear. There is weakness in her vision, her gaze not too strong. When you meet her eyes, you see them distantly looking into yours, lost in thought of some distant world or fear of the consequences of the present. Her rings of iris, as if trying to spread apart with time and trying to fade off into the white area, so much wanting to meet its serenity and tranquility. Her tiring gaze with half shattered hopes, as if tired of making a clay pot over a wheel that turns out into a bad shape, with every hard spin she tried to give it . Her eyes, swelled in their sockets, out of the tears that makes the rest of the space. Her once beautiful, lovely eyes seem to now plead for the freedom of the beneath trapped soul.

Thoughts ~ Me To You

Thoughts ~ From Me To You

I have thought upon it many times, that how you open up my mind, swiftly similar to how you arrive out of nowhere. There is a dam that I hold, and hold on. It lingers in my mind like ripples in stagnant water, round and round yet static, It- the Thought Process. You know what they are called? The floodgates or levees, yes, you turn around their levers, before I know and then it comes out, vividly and beautifully, the way I want it to, so that I myself can understand it one at a time. It brings me to a higher plane that makes me realize how extraordinary I am, in a bunch of average minds roaming around me. With that plane, I wish not to come down, but you see we need to fit into this world, to get through it. You must have heard that saying, “When in Rome, do as Romans do”. Yes, now you get the word ‘fit’ relevant in context to what I said.  

This conscious talk about the subconscious has a tremendous affect at the backend, which we don’t realize now but we know, we know about its effect. Within the senses, when you are and you reach to a higher level of realization about the things around you, it is when you achieve the mountain called ‘oneself’ from where you can control things your own way

.

The mountain, it reminds me of the story. I am glad the stone I wished to fetch from the impalpable heights is now resting in my fist. I am the proud owner of myself. A sense of gratitude dawns upon me as I reach here at this time, on this line, in this paragraph and I wish to express it through some more words. Thanks for allowing the windmills run, the turbines twirl, and the gears shift. (I don’t know how to put it up in a more mechanical way so as to explain it.)

Rocks seem to become pebbles; waves seem to freeze and get the definite shape I want and something numb inside the head seems to rise up like an albatross with almost stretched wings. VPN- virtual private network is not just an anonymous networks term anymore while I look down at the world, so lame and baseless, floating over an abyss of its own, almost ready to fall down.

Everything is measurable, even the flow of thoughts, with the beam-balances of the controls that we have over it. Some we use to build our gifted powers, some to degrade us ourselves. They are dangerous, that is why dormant in all but few, who are capable of controlling them. They make us and sometimes even break us apart, but they are a part of us and we live through them.

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                                                    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Crabbit Old Woman

"Crabbit Old Woman" By: Phyllis McCormack

What do you see, nurse, what do you see?

What are you thinking, when you look at me-

A crabbit old woman, not very wise,

Uncertain of habit, with far-away eyes,

Who dribbles her food and makes no reply

When you say in a loud voice, I do wish you'd try.

Who seems not to notice the things that you do

And forever is losing a stocking or shoe.

Who, unresisting or not; lets you do as you will

With bathing and feeding the long day is fill.

Is that what you're thinking, Is that what you see?

Then open your eyes, nurse, you're looking at me.      

I'll tell you who I am as I sit here so still!

As I rise at your bidding, as I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of 10 with a father and mother,

Brothers and sisters, who loved one another-

A young girl of 16 with wings on her feet,

Dreaming that soon now a lover she'll meet,

A bride soon at 20 - my heart gives a leap,

Recalling the vows that I promised to keep.

At 25 now I have young of my own

Who need me to build a secure happy home;

A woman of 30, my young now grow fast,

Bound to each other with ties that should last;

At 40, my young sons have grown and are gone,

But my man is beside me to see I don't mourn;          

                           

At 50 once more babies play around my knee,

Again we know children, my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead,

I look at the future, I shudder with dread,

For my young are all rearing young ones of their own.

And I think of the years and the love that I've known;

I'm an old woman now and nature is cruel-

Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.

The body is crumbled, grace and vigor depart,

There is now a stone where I once had a heart,

But inside this old carcass, a young girl still dwells,

And now and again my battered heart swells,

I remember the joy, I remember the pain,

And I'm loving and living life over again.

I think of the years all too few- gone too fast.

And accept the stark fact that nothing can last-

So open your eyes, nurse, open and see,

Not a crabbit old woman, look closer-

See Me.

 Crabbit Old Woman is a poem written in 1966 by Phyllis McCormack, then working as a nurse in Sunnyside Hospital, Montrose. The poem is written in the voice of an old woman in a nursing home who is reflecting upon her life. Crabbit isScots for "bad-tempered" or "grumpy".