Royal Beggar

Oh Royal Beggar!

To fill your coffers

Why dost thou seek?

Nor lofty mountain top

Nor oceans deep

Hold ample treasures

For you to keep.

Verdant meadows

But smile a while

Winter’s frosty gales

Undo their secrets

In silence they sleep.

Look then in you

Blue and flaming orange

Blaze your hues

Bright with them your skies

Thy emptiness

With them suffuse,

Thy royal state

No more abuse.

Eternity and a grain of sand

Oh little grain of sand, 

Where do you come from?

From mountains high where marauding winds

Give you shape and form.

From river beds where flowing streams

Kiss you noon and morn.

From erratic waves that crush and grind

To whittle down your strength,

From sea gales fierce where blowing gusts

Sweep you across lengths.

Millenniums pass unwatched, unseen

None to see you change,

One by one you gather force

Size for might exchange.

As desert storm you fiercely rise

To obliterate known worlds,

By the seas you live and breathe

Wiping prints with swirls.

Mountains, oceans, rivers, rocks

Hide in your tiny form,

You live a life full and long

From dead of night to morn.

Unknown Journey

Unseen runs my stream

flowing in depths of silence deep

hidden far down or buried in heaps

‘neath layers and layers of sleep

a lonely walk down vacant streets 

while the world abounds

with abundance of lights and sounds

twin light and dark together surrounds

blurred my vision, faltering feet

unknown the goal to which I creep

steady and slow, blundering along

on my lips smiles and songs

sweet and sour the tongs

that hold and mar

wade on,  wade on, wade alone

no time for grief, no time to mourn

somewhere, somewhere there is a morn

a sunrise resplendent with stars.

Change

Can I change the colour of my skin

Or the way my nose grows?

Can I re-orient my age

Or keep my youthful glow?

You chain me, you bar me,

You beat me with sticks

You say I’m unhealthy

Or that I am sick;

Why not look at the world around

A world in which vagaries abound?

Where lust destroys lives

Then persues the dead like hounds:

You are a pot calling the kettle black

A jailor within a jail

Your efforts defy gravitation

And gradually grow pale.

Lessons

Teach me to laugh at vagaries of this world

Teach me to smile at the stones they hurl

Teach me to bow to the hand that kills

Teach me to live as You will.

Teach me to live in stress and strain

To do my work with no complaint.

Teach me to love, to eschew hate

To open my heart to all at the gate

Teach me to stand when blows rain

Not to turn my back, or succumb to strain.

Teach me to navigate my way

And reach your shores without delay

Home

Home is a space in my heart, where I laugh and cry

Home is blossomed love and withered flowers that die

Home is my mother’s breast, and my lover’s embrace

Home is my child’s sweet smile, my day of toils endless

My home I create with care and a world I destroy.

Home is the evening breeze after a sweltering noon

Home is a shelter secure and bondage unworn.

My home I build with care, my home at will ignore

In my home I live, of my home I dream, for my home I long

Years on years go by, my search for home goes on.