Featured Poet - Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma

NOTHING TOUCHES?

Using the folding hands emoji

You told me not to make a call;

I thought the cause of it will be

Forthcoming, but I was wrong

I wonder if it is the arrogance

Of isolation or a nagging sense

Of being questioned unjustly

That you choose to remain aloof. 

Trust is a reliable bridge to bind us

Into unsuspecting relationships, but

Sharing the cause of keeping quiet

Or the reason for long silences --

Even so slightly pull curtains of mind

And look at how the other minds work! 

You must not be the only one to look

At the mirror into which you reflect.

To surmise that nothing touches you

May betray in spirit pride in contentment, 

Yet how can you overlook how others 

Suffer being touched in mind or in body?

DREAMING REAL?

Soundless explosions of light manifest

As divine effulgence in personal dreams. 

Not solicited by space and time, images, 

Familiar and stranger, appear as real, 

Truer in form than fluid tones of daytime.

We may consciously wonder at what

We see in dreams, yet during the course

We seldom question with logic or reason

The age or trouped up version of reality.

No doubt raises its suspicion of truth.

Dreams need no veracity to confirm and

Even genuine fears of the false are not

What bothers the dreamer, but inevitable

Acceptance of what's seen and heard is

The given, unsure is the fact of dreaming!

THE INTENT

You shall grow old and I may die but

These words shall ever be whirling

With human breath as present time

Yearns to regain what's turned past.

You say, strangers will take the prize

Even as I sit down to write of this life, 

Who knows it may happen in realtime, 

When now we plan and envy this hour!

Not that everything is unsure, mocked at, 

That time may dispose off our proposals 

With ruthless indifference, but the intent

We entertain in our hearts alone is ours

CUL DE SAC

Happy to be an aged man he thought

A woman cannot shake his manhood

As that of the young stripling of a boy! 

More sturdy in mind to thus withstand

The abrupt silence, the sudden break, 

A whimsical pique over just any reason! 

A word uttered, feeling hurt, who knows?

Half the world grows dark, or rather say, 

A whole universe drowns to fade away! 

You rehearse the last conversation and

Fail to guess what led to a cul de sac!

Shades turn loud in loved photographs, 

Dim now grows the bright countenance, 

Of a stranger seems the familiar face!