A Koyal Sings Amid War

Do not blame them if they speak Each other's language

Or drink from

Common rivers

Or the fact that they can reminisce their

Systematically robbed pasts in

Mostly unintelligent, yet

Somehow touching

Songy-dancy costume

Dramas.

A shared hodgepodge of

Emotional clusterfuck. 

And don't be surprised if they’re awfully close to each other

A kite flown high enough in

Amritsar could easily be spotted from

Lahore

If sufficiently colored with dyes made from Henna,

Mustard, and

Saffron

It is high summer in

India and in Pakistan

A season for

Mangoes and cool evening breezes

The otherwise outliers on the

Edges of hellish hot noons

A Koyal’s Mellifluous call is heard

He refuses to be suppressed by the

Roar of expensive war planes 

Middle-aged men and women suffer meltdowns 

On national television 

Froth billows at their hard-lined mouths 

Convulsive paroxysms of misplaced pride

A meadow is crimsoned

And villages are destroyed 

The Himalayas shudder with the 

Bright-burning, loud war birds flying amok

Chests are thumped loudly on both sides

Haphazard claims of victories made

A slow poison 

Crawls its way into billions of hearts

Displacing hopes of a meaningful co-existence

How’d we get here — what happened to all those

Loving, affable people otherwise used to 

Exchanging cringy Bollywood songs 

And Meaningful Ghazals

I am tired of the

Barrage of misinformation

Blasts on my phone

My hairline keeps receding 

And the world keeps going to shit

Every hour, every day.

__

Anant Dhavale

Koyal - Cuckoo

This

It is this unconcerned                                 chasm that widens

It is for this I write, the

Disguised fierceness   

                                     rushing, now and again,

What lament could justify the                     divide, the 

Coarse-lewd rhetoric, the 

Animosity.

My declamations – quotidian sighs; they 

Don’t necessitate any crises of moral 

Proportions;                                               

                No froth of curiosity. Agitation, a painful distraction.

What maddens us quietly also makes us 

                                                   Question the 

                                                    Beliefs that govern our decades. 

..

Anant Dhavale

1

Waking is dreaming 

In sleep— a new world of

Color returning to cheeks, of

Meanings rediscovered 

Waking is also walking 

Past known and unknown faces

On a long haul train of time

Zooming through desert

The coal runs low and a 

Fear of getting stranded midway

Looms large. 

..

Anant Dhavale

A ghazal

Well who would you blame 

When rigged is this game 

All of us are brutes 

And no one to tame

You call them the thugs

In parts you’re the same

When questions get tough 

Say what’s in the name

The rest were all gone

I muted the flame

.

Anant Dhavale

Speak

We speak like
                Protagonists from
Existential novels, in 
Long-winded laments of
Self-exploratory 
Monologues 
Never letting our
Guards down

We speak out of some

Urgent newfound

Necessity 

This nascent happenstance of some

Sexual- spiritual upheaval

That cannot be contained

We speak in a language of

Low-tide sandlings

Eager for some orgasmic

                   Eruption of the 

Illusive inner world.

We speak, fully knowing

Words are energy that

Cannot be redeemed

..

Anant Dhavale