Drab

These days I mostly 

Read, then I read some more.

The warm glow of the

Tablet, shimmering in the dull-luster glow of

Long-form literary journalism — 

Too intoxicating to ignore 

The article always starts with how the 

Author met with protagonist 

On a humid afternoon 

Or morning 

Before detailing out other mundane 

Things

How the con unfurled or how the mountain

Killed the half of them

It is essentially a drab thing to do

Say slightly better than doom-scrolling

Or reading some abstruse French theorist 

Or even wondering about your 

Conniving thuggish relatives 

Then at the end, the deal gets sweetened  with

Another enticing read

Privilege, racism, narcotics, AI

Whimsical writers and their equally insane

Editing counterparts 

No dearth of fodder in this big bad

Beautiful world of ours 

The gullible consumer inside of me

Is an easy prey 

Even for the otherwise docile 

Literary journalists. 

. Anant 

Yakṣa's tale

Quit drifting 
It is broad day-light after all

The Yakṣa who spun this daydream
For idle merriment
Put enough desire and pain and suffering in there
To make it palpable

Wake up
The day moves with the
fierceness of an unknown mason's
Clang

Hordes of ambition maraud the streets

Go join them.

.Anant Dhavale

Nothing's beyond reckoning —that 

dissolution of the self does not happen, dang

it does not matter much in reality

And though reality is relative, what with the passage of time

and lives in a continual transition

Pain is real, so are smiles and breezy mornings

Nothing relative there

When soul-crushing things happen, and there is

an ache difficult to set aside, the questions of 

existence become moot

People have still strived to find scraps of meaning

E-book

 "What the Tornado Left Behind" ...The e-book is now available for free at multiple online book stores. 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-the-tornado-left-behind-anant-dhavale/1143416221?ean=2940167331808

Raw stuff

Come walk with me
We will talk about things and laugh
At our frailties 

And the banal intricacies of this world

Love Stays
Beyond questions and dilemmas 

When we smile and eat and drink
Together 

Life seems ok
And things are alright. 

2

I leave but I do not reach
More of a drifter

I walk with the bird’s intent
And the need to return 

Every man needs to return
Home
An odyssey undefined

So I walk
But I don’t reach

So I walk with the emptiness of
Oceans 

And I walk
And I walk

Beguiled the universe floats
Around me 

It’s a gossamer I have weaved
A tale I have spun

Let me color the tale
With my moments 

So I walk
So I drift

Evenings anchored in my
Lungs
A melancholy on my
Hands

It’s the rain of an individual
Apocalypse 

An individual
End of time

Passage

In the air a sadness
Looms large

I haven’t been the poet that I am 

This monsoon is different
A reminder of
Another time
Another life

I have changed
With the universe
Around me

Mountains and valleys
Of my days
A quiet passage
Through my time

We live in our time
In our hearts, in our life

And time flows by
Like it never knew

Like it never knew

-Anant

Mayflower

A gossamer-thin ocean hits low notes today.

Only the lower ones; the hapless sullen lover,

The nonchalant up above couldn’t care less. 

 

Wind bleats, boat creaks, pet dogs merry-hop

In the sea-wind. Voices rise and fall with the waves.

These shores, they say, have seen the Mayflower.

Countless others have sunk to the bottom,

A slow dissolution of collective merciful being.

People of the first light walked here; These waters 

Are the finest monuments. Revered flotsam of undaunted lives.

Lighthouses, moved and freshly painted, still carry the

Dim fragments of light; strewn from the blue hollow.

The biggest moon of the year's impending, we must head back 

Soon. Quietly, we exchange smiles like vows. 

Sense drowns deep in me or perhaps it’s the nip of the wind.

Like a fool I toss away my shoes and walk 

Barefoot on the beach, soft sand and silken touch and all. 

Anant Dhavale

( Edited significantly from the previous draft.)