RELIGION

The religion of my dreams
Is not adorned by scriptures
Transparent and mellifluous
Free of suffocating strictures

The religion of my dreams
Knows not any ritual
Knows not any divisiveness
Residing in the spiritual

Knows not any language
Other than that of love
Tingling with sweet music
From the heavens above

It knows only of humanity
And of unlimited humaneness
Imbued with limitless inclusivity
And permeated with rare sublimeness

Subir Chakraborty
10th July 2020

ARE YOU LIVING MY DREAM

Are you living my dream
Cause I am living yours
Cause dreams are really
All you are left with, for sure

When your dear dreams
Cross the limits of your reality
I am there right beside you
To add to your sweet fantasies

So that your precious dreams
Can blend with mine
And create a chemistry
Uniquely divine

When you finally begin
To live my dreams
You may notice familiarity
A place you have been

Cause you shall observe
A set of known footprints
Imploring you once more
To blend with the imprints

Subir Chakraborty / 24th April 2018

TIMES ARE CHANGING AGAIN

I sit, I lounge, I eat, I sleep
I remain locked down in my own house
Yet everything’s not quite the same
Cause times are changing

Cause the winds of change
Do not stop anywhere
Bounded by any circumference
Restricted by any artificial perimeter

Millions have been affected, many more to go
The violence of the times striking surreptitiously, silently
At the citadel of human existence
So haughtily constructed for everlasting permanence

The candle of human life wavers, stutters
Facing the fury of Mother Nature
Causing all pride, arrogance, conceit
Pale into helplessness and insignificance

Almost back to square one
Just like our ancestors in the prehistoric past
Trying to pick up the pieces after a calamity
Trying to find a new meaning to existence

Cause times are changing again
As they have changed many times in the past
Only the eternal question remains unchanged

The purpose of life on this earth

Subir Chakraborty
26th July 2020

AN INTERESTING LIFE

When do I feel
The world is mine
Why is it so blissful
Atop cloud nine

Why do I need
To feel eternally happy
Monotonously serene
Lacking in variety

Why do I yearn
For an insipid life
Devoid of twists
Conflict and spice

What is so daunting
About an eventful ride
Filled with the energy
Of a sea gull in flight

Welcoming all winds
With outstretched feathers
Gliding majestically
In the heavens above

Does not matter
Which way they blow
The show goes on
For the mortals below

Subir Chakraborty / 4th June 2018

 

THE REBOUND

The poison arrow of insult
Is released from my bow
For the target near at hand
For him to fret and crow

And yet what happens next
Takes me by utter surprise
For all the invectives I throw
Greets them all with a smile

Blind with anger and rage
End up shouting some more
Without any effect on him
Putting up quite a show

Till it finally dawns on me
That pound for pound
An insult not internalised
Hits you on the rebound

Starting off the aggressor
And winding up as a victim
An unsavoury situation
An unpleasant ending

Subir Chakraborty / 1st May 2018

THE PASSING RAIN

The passing rain
Passed me by
As I waited for life
To give me a try

The passing rain
Asked me often
What was I waiting
So patiently to happen

I had no clue
But was just content
To lie in wait
Without a torment

Seize the moment, it said
Go out and get wet
To feel the unfelt
To say the unsaid

To hear the unheard
To reach the unreached
To see the unseen
To breach the unbreached

For life is not about
Just seeing the rain
But to swim in ecstasy
And the tides of pain

Subir Chakraborty / 13th Aug 2018

FROZEN IN THE PAST

Some painful moments burrow into your being
Creating parcels of memories
Sitting pretty, sitting troubled, entrenched
In the deep recesses of your mind

Erupting with volcanic intensity
At times when least expected
Sometimes entrapped in company
At others, enveloped in loneliness

Each parcel unleashes its own tune
Draped in melancholy
Screaming with silence
Drowning in tears

You may choose to revive the memory
And release the emotions imprisoned within
Or dismiss it away
Playfully, unmindfully, nonchalantly

If you decide to hold on
Clinging on to shreds emanating from a cast
The true present may forever evade you
Keeping you frozen in the past

Subir Chakraborty / 31st Aug 2018

MOVING ON

What shall I claim tomorrow
As my very own
What shall I lay to waste
And ready to disown

Old furniture, collections, books
Shall lie unmarked
Old relationships once treasured
Shall lie untouched

What I shall carry with me
Only the spring in my gait
Willing to give my all
And put to test my fate

A time might come after decades
When the past would have happened
And the future would look very short
Perhaps a trifle uncertain

When memories may come calling
Knocking on my door
Old artefacts, relationships, trifles
And very much more

Will I be able to look squarely
With my head held high
At all those asking me questions
And those I have denied

Shall I be able to justify to myself
All my past decisions
Without a tinge of regret
And without any compunction

Subir Chakraborty / 26th Nov 2018

MAKING SENSE OF MY DREAMS

I dream in the language of dreams
Where desire and my unconscious
Coalesce in an unholy alliance
Nudging me to a state of sweet surreality

And yet this unreality has a meaning
A connection, however slender
To my own daily existence
To my own fears and exuberance

The mind speaks a language
Of its own choice and preference
Unchained from its moorings
Frolicking around in gay abandon

Drawing in bits and pieces
From suppressed traumas and unspoken desires
Drowned from my conscious world
Under sheaves of neuronal cobwebs

I try to make sense of it when I wake up
Trying to distill order out of disorder
Reason out of unreason
Logic and monotony out of uncharted chaos

Subir Chakraborty
5th Feb 2012

STORM

Life as we have known so far
Is about to change
For when the storm subsides
We would all be tamed

All our money and ego
Reduced to a mere bauble
For the stupid virus did not differentiate
Between the affluent and the rubble

It also did not differentiate
Between the weak and the magnate
Such an ill bred and an illiterate virus
Without any manners or etiquette

It has given us all
Serious food for thought
An urgent course correction
Lest the future comes to nought

This is the real essence
Of a once in a life time storm
For at the end of it all
Ushers in a very new morn

Subir Chakraborty
7th June 2020