Nativity

  I burn with muted flames

  A slow change of state.

  Find me if you can, in this heap of things,

  That once shone bright.

  I am the lost planet of a dead star

  With no strings of longing. 

  My solace is my carnage,

  A bloodstorm of desire.

  Sorrow is not infinite, and

  This hour of nativity

  Is also the hour of my end.

.

Anant Dhavale

Civilization is a Zero-Sum Game

The Kung San of the Kalahari Desert, the Tuareg people of Algeria, Libya, Niger, and Burkina Faso, The Berbers of Morocco, the Maasai of East Africa, and the Hadzabe People of Tanzania.

The Copts and Nubians in the Nile Valley. The Maori of New Zealand and the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia.

The Warlis, the Bhils, the Santhals, the Gonds, and the Korkus of India.

The Navajos, the Cherokees, the Sioux, the Ojibwe, the Choctaw, the Apache,

and the Lenapes of the United States. 

People older than the histories of the nations

They are now listed under. 

Civilization is a zero-sum game of pushing the sons and daughters of the soil to the brink of extinction.

.

Anant Dhavale

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 weary as fuck from the barrage of information 

B*mbs 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 widening the 

Coarse-lewd rhetoric, the animosity.

My declamations merely become cadence; they 

Don’t necessitate any crises of moral 

Proportions; nor arouse any froth of curiosity.

What maddens us also makes us question the 

very beliefs upon which hinge 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