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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.)

Things

Hands warmth hugs kisses
being near being one

journeys long afar brows
the heaviness ajar 

time ripens fast slow
songs jade stale

discordance thought
memory deep trench years

flaps wings the gallop
the heart the stories the 

solitude in-between. 

- Anant Dhavale

( The conjunctions/ prepositions were blocking the flow 

so I got rid of them. This note too was unnecessary, 

but there is too much real estate on the page. )

Kanher

No recompense for the thousand shards of self

Buzzards one and two, high they used to fly. I noticed them
Frequently on my long wind-bitter winter walks
A whimsy with its own color and smell

I did not see them along the decaying heights of New York
None. Drifters, yes, hordes of them, fellows 

Stranded on the artistic bends. Quiet
And turbulent souls on late-night homeward trains

No respite from living, from breathing the continuum
Veins are freed from the weather’s wrath; but storms?

Always always on the way back, a clockwork of the absurd —
The Kanher loses a shade of red each summer with me

This evening could almost kill me and yet.
 

--

Anant Dhavale

(Kanher : Nerium Oleander)

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

These shores they say have seen the Mayflower

And yet, several hundred others sunk to the merciful bottom

Going down is hard albeit low effort

People of the first light walked here; waters are the finest monuments

To have seen it all. Flotsam of undaunted lives

Lighthouses, moved and freshly painted still can't shake off 

Dim fragments of light swept in from the depths of turbulent nights

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

Notional Pie

a kiss

missed

is akin to 

the notional pie

you would want to

but couldn't

consume.

-Anant

Mir's Poems

back then

when we were 

obsessed with 

poems of Mir

a cloud of melancholy

would shroud 

us in

the sadness, inexplicable

yet beautiful in

some bygone way

and how we sat through the

hours

and how the hours 

lingered for us

with us

much like they did in

Mir's poems.

-Anant

quest

another quest

another day

a loner path

waives away

history drools

by awkward shrubs

huddled together, in

the desert's way

-Anant

attainable

men and women of

our times

we trudge the muddy waters

of our circumstance

in search of 

obscure individual

glories

some un-realized splendor

a certain summit

shines in the 

distance

always visible, yet

never attainable. 

- Anant

lethargia

 lethargia

some the rain

ushered in

some the

existential

boredom

a lulled knock

on the windowpane.

-Anant

Meanings

minuscule drops
of water
as old as time
itself

in them, I find
meanings, new and

never occurred.

.Anant

Notional Pie

 a kiss missed

is akin to 

the notional pie

you want to

but you cannot 

consume.

.Anant 

Poem

the dark
it sifts down the 

Chimney

the invisible
unavoidable void

claws at you

you acknowledge it
and walk on.

..Anant Dhavale

#vss365

Flow

nostalgia is ache
a prison of the mind

we are hard-wired to be
miserable

through our knowing

the ancients knew it, and offered
symbols into the flowing river

to let go of what
we carry; 

what we perceive to be our
ultimate reality.

.Anant Dhavale

#vss365 

नैन

 कुछ ऐैन हुए कुछ ग़ैन हुए 

बस यूं समझो बेचैन हुए 

दो चार जो बीते उसके संग

उन लमहों के कौनैन हुए 

दो चार जो लिखनेवाले थे

आगे पीछे सब बैन हुए 

कुछने नेहरू को गाली दी

बाकी नेहरू के फैन हुए 

देखे क्या क्या फ़ितने मुशफ़िक़

आवाराकुन जब नैन हुए

अनंत ढवळे 

Cracks

 cracks appear 

ever so slowly 

a gradual decay of the 

individual until the denouement

hits. Lineage of 

blood: a trail, a story of 

what happened that

keeps happening 

generation after generation.

.Anant 

Naum as a point in time, much like Berryman’s Henry.

1.

In- between indifferent 

Drafts of wind

And restless strands of thought

Naum takes the plunge

Into a river of people

Jumps he, Naum does 

Rather well 

A noise-less topple.

2.

Naum folds time

Tucks it under his bed

To doze off again

 

He sleeps

He is always asleep. 

3.

Don’t prosecute me

Says he

Naum does

My only crime is I am 

Not myself these days.

Mr.Police man, he says

Leave me be.

4.

Now he runs

That man’s otta be crazy

No he dont run like crazy

Only a case in point 

A point in time

Running be his escape

Run Naum run.

..

Anant Dhavale

Short poem

stale

smells the

facetiousness

sounds and seems too

time 

catches up

years line-up

the horse

gallops 

ahead.

.Anant