Gipsy

 I was spiritually more aware as a 

 Young person than I am now

 What really happened to me —

 The world sucked me in? 

 Did I nurture too many aspirations? 

  

 I say ambition isn’t wrong

 But you should know if it’s for you 

 Sooner or later 

 A vagabond Gipsy inside of you

 Admonishes you for being 

 This involved.

  

 But here’s the thing 

 Nothing and no one can solve this puzzle

 Not a careless screw-up

 Not a person of the world

 Everybody is as fucked up as you are —

  

And that mere thought is oddly comforting. 

**

 

Anant Dhavale

Rhythm

 WIP - Part of a long poem

Rhythm: Tap, Cling, Tap, Tap, Lapse.

The empty vase lacked the glory of voluminous red roses – so they filled it up, with a dozen

of red. In Eastern cultures, similar large jars are used for pickled fruits. Bright and brown, almost olive, fruit preserved in natural oils. Time attached to things and Places. Food, flowers. Culture travels through your feet, the journey you make. Eliot’s magi Were pilgrims. Every breath is a pilgrimage, reverential, feared too. Pour some water into your vases so the flowers won’t wither away, use the flower food that came with the dozen. Dozen – one of those words with a feeling, a brazen sonorous hum. Nature to hand-made, akin to the flow of time. Sheepish wind can bring stranger aromas, relinquished languages, and grained stances, in a way meddling.  If those ignorant feet stepped into puddles – there would be splashes, sounds, and stains - by-products of journeys. Flowers become proclivities turned into meditations of loss and learning, some bespoke knowledge wide open for interpretations. Awareness a burden, for heaving chests.

Rhythm: Lapse, Tap, Cling, Tap, Tap.

An inconsequential post-rain night, the neighborhood gone quiet, no droning of fans, no music from televisions. Radios gone quiet for the night. Crickets – incessant sounds, swelling up to the blue, dark blue, bluer expanse. Almost eight and forty, but a memory like some vain lunacy refuses to die. Eight and forty, but the number is a made-up notion. The blind won’t go all the way down, an opportunistic light peers through frosty glass. Her ways are brisk, but strangely her smile idles on my mind in a luscious way, those hazel green eyes with all the power to fetch in arousal – not absolute but a distinct possibility. Bereft of senses, pushing aside the sane – the right thing to do. More far than close, as abstract as it could be. Who is to say -- that finding something at random is foretellable?

Rhythm: Lapse, Tap, Cling, Cling, Cling, Cling, Tap.

The sense of failing underwrites sermons of loss and findings. A fantastical tale of molecules, the energy an unwavering constant. 

Anant Dhavale

Let

Let then our proclivities rule the day

Till the shadows hit the waters

And winds change in ways

Unmeasured and abrupt 

This cumbersome-ness of breath etched 

Upon windowpanes 

Aggravated by the coolness of air 

Is a burden far too great 

To carry all the way

Seasons will hunt for inlets

To get inside our heads

Flooding fragile senses 

With a perfunctory dimness

Of thought and desire 

How then will we refuse ourselves the little 

Respites of exultation along the waves of 

Life, rushing through the rivulets of time.

..

Anant Dhavale

Forgotten loves

Forgotten loves- 

An aging mother 

A father long lost.

Forgotten loves -

Sweet childhood days

The smell of fresh blossoms 

Forgotten loves-

Simpler joys

A little less convoluted 

World.

Forgotten loves - 

A contented heart 

A careless laugh 

A merry hop in the wind.

.

Anant Dhavale

Relinquishing - En Masse

The train stands still 

with a dis-inclination to move

the dust-laden tracks were made that way, 

their lack of empathy is by design

but people are either stoic

or they've merely given up,

on a large number of things:

themselves, society, governments

things a watcher cannot discern, 

the lack of will that omni-vales beyond

wrappers

hiding truths that matter, histories that 

have occurred in this great odyssey

a mist of hopelessness floats

around the monoliths rising up 

from the barren, sun-burned ground, 

bare from the feet of millions - millions who've built 

these magnificent tombs of greatness 

with their work-hardened hands 

a relinquishing happens en masse 

a collective un-happiness gets embraced

If I'd been haughty or judgemental

I would've called it ignorance 

this ever-present need to not know 

this flat-out refusal to question things

but at this moment in time, through this

solipsistical rant

I am trying to emulate the stoicity 

of generations

attempting to

find its roots in the protein- strands we like to call

our DNAs.

.

Anant Dhavale

Previous version of the poem :

Apathy, generalized

The train stands still 

with an apparent dis-inclination toward the desire to move

dust-laden tracks were made that way, their 

lack of empathy is by design

and people are either stoic

or they've merely given up 

given up on a plethora of things

themselves, the society, the governments

a watcher does not know, the

lack of will omni-vales 

wrappers, dust-laden - happily pervade

not feeling the need to know 

could be termed as ignorance

by the haughty and the judgemental

but at this moment in time, with these

 solipsistical musings

I am trying to emulate the stoicity - if we can call it that,

of generations - attempting to

inscribe it on the protein- strands we like to call

chromosomes.

-

Anant Dhavale

Let

 Let then proclivities rule the day

Till the shadows hit the waters

And winds change in ways

Unmeasured and abrupt 

This cumbersome-ness of breath, etched 

Upon windowpanes 

Aggravated by the coolness of air 

Is a burden far too great 

To carry all the way

Seasons will hunt for inlets

To get inside our heads

Flooding fragile senses 

With a perfunctory dimness

Of thought and desire 

How then will we refuse ourselves the little 

Respites of exultation along the waves of 

Life, rushing through the rivulets of time.

..

Anant Dhavale

Nehru’s ghost

It lurks - in the corridors of schools and colleges 
In the yellowing pages of history books.

Its presence can be felt in the brand new swanky
buildings of the Sansad Bhavan.

It bothers people, reminding them of their 
constitutional duties, and the set of behaviors that keep sense and sensibility alive.

It crouches on steely chests of proud
politicians and rulers.

It is said that Lincoln’s ghost haunts the white house - possibly to warn people of the dangers that come from mobocracy. 
We can say the same of Nehru’s ghost.

It lingers and hovers around the hallowed halls of
India’s democracy, maybe like a guardian angel - 
or an angry spirit.

But who is to say? 
. 

Anant Dhavale

One

 silhouettes of democracy 

magnificent buildings 

struggling people

.

Anant Dhavale

One

hardboiled eggs
unsweetened black tea
morn-time shenanigans 
.

Anant Dhavale 

Wordshed NYC poetry reading event.

I am one of the featured readers at the Wordshed poetry reading in Bowery (lower Manhattan) this month. I might read some of my newer stuff, let's see.

Haiku

in a surreal world 
dance is a state of mind 
a phase of being

.

Anant Dhavale

Icy

your icy demeanor
reminds me of a cloud
dying to burst open 

#

Anant Dhavale

Ode to humanity and William Carlos Williams

The coffee has gone cold

I can nuke it if you want 

she says it's alright

so I turn to my phone again

the news streams keep getting worse

and I am a little dazed this morning

from yesterday's beer

it was a European brew 

a little bitter 

the ones that come in green bottles

with edged crowns 

and lesser-known names.

 

It’s a muggy day

and humanity is almost on the cusp of a total meltdown

so we get on with the hours

like William Carlos Williams 

would have, 

through the narrow streets of Rutherford, New Jersey

after a home visit to an ailing child.

 

Anant Dhavale

( From "What the Tornado Left Behind.)