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

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 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
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

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

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

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

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

There are times when unreason rears its head
To throttle the voice of reason
Its opponent, its foe
Its ultimate adversary

It casts a magical spell initially
To lure even the well reasoned minds
And for the unconvinced who dare to question
It doles out the gift of treason

These are the times
When leadership appears rudderless
When you seize the moment, almost unknowingly
To shake the earth from its roots

You have not planned for it
And yet you are there at the front
For the sake of that one intangible
An idea you hold so dear

Your voice may be drowned out
Amidst the propagandist loudspeakers
Spewing out shots of venom
In leviathan doses

You may be caned, tortured, jailed
And yet, the pain unleashed on you
Becomes the very source of your sustenance
Your courage, your eternal strength

Your win or loss is not that important
Not anymore, not even your life or death
As the vision of that one idea subsumes your being
Your very existence

Your show of raw defiance
Unleashes limitless power
To convert many such unknown voices
Into an unstoppable torrent of reason

Subir Chakraborty
20th Jan 2020

A moment passes
Or gets buried, in the sands of time
Overladen with bitter sweet memories
Overburdened with expectations of mine

It slips through my fingers
Sliding away of its own free will
Totally unmindful of what I desire
Totally uncaring to the hilt

Where does it go, this moment
Which makes for bits and pieces of time
For which I toil and sweat endlessly
And trudge while the clock chimes

Wish I could access my moments
Secretly, silently, at my leisure
Wish I could store them in my chest
And cherish my hidden treasure

Alas! That is not be
For they have dispersed far and wide
Flown away into the ether
Without an address or a guide

Subir Chakraborty
28th May 2020