Biennale Diaries

Those godowns,
gracefully silent in its
typically humid
and mouldy past glory.
They once fed my father,
his mother;
and her grandson twice,
or even thrice, I hardly remember...

They fed aspirations:
A few were to play football,
many to trudge Westward,
and some to fight for
small pieces of land,
hoping to find peace in Kochi,
salvation in her fresh fish
and dream-gilded sunsets.

An unknown bricklayer’s toil,
these walls;
they get abstract splashes:
Geometric visions, asymmetric missions,
reflecting the incongruent,
esoteric aspirations of
a town lost to time, tourism,
and a migratory identity crisis.

And yes...
Art breathes life into them all.

Is there more to
the Biennale than what
meets the pilgrim’s gaze?
Yes... And yes, No!

For we are damned
to feel the waves, and creation
in fleeting, attention-starved steps
that warrant selfies for posterity.
The immortal light?
The laborer and the artist?
Obscurity at sunset, yes… In the
long shadows of coffee shops.

Yet, yes...
Art breathes life into them all.

-- Leslie

The Cold Shuffle

I shuffled Burman CDs, flipped records
for my grandfather once.
And played for him his youth...

What do I play now?
When my own soul seeks
an anchor from yesterday.

My blessings end there.
Damn! Am I seeking nostalgia
on an Android mobile?

There it is... My AI grandchild
gifts me warm, lossless songs
with cold, emotionless precision.

-- Leslie

Whispering Pebbles

All those pebbles,
they whistle my name​ in hushed tones.

It is I
who threw them
into our backyard pond,
breaking its silence,
its ​monochrome serenity,
and rippling its sane emotions.
The still water,​ a ponderer’s haven,
a pool to reflect,
became a ​storm
​posing questions behind my home.

Brick and mortar,
laid over the pebbles​ in earnest,
​forcing them to groan
under the load​ of a house
laden with life’s residual gifts.
But they still...

Oh, they still​ have the will
​to whisper my name.

-- Leslie

The Receding Christmas

All those Christmas gifts​...
What remains of them is
​the slightly withered wrapping,
​the memories.

Their meaning and worth
saved in sunset-yellow cases,
as scents.
The whiffs I captured
through an untrained nose
​as a child,
and a trained ​Google searcher
​as a grown-up,
​are all neatly stacked.
​With them,
​I satiate, in futility,
​a life-evolved taste for posterity.

And, as a golden sunset
reminds me of
a receding Christmas​ vibe,
I seek the scent this year.
​For that whiff of longing.
​Oh, and a desire for belonging.

-- Leslie 

War Dust: A Loss Foretold

Dust is but a reality. There are more truths ​w​ithin your reach when it floats, ​tickles your nostrils, ​and makes you sneeze.  You conjure up a silly game with the sunbeam. ​A shadowy game of will and desire.

No one gets hurt in it, nobody wins either...

​Oh, is it? What if those opaque particles were dead conscience, the dust specs mortal remains of what used to be dreams. The wails hardly prick, the fireworks lack empathy, all lost in dust. If it is a war, then why are you at peace?

Hmmm... We all get hurt in it,  and, nobody wins either... 

​As the dust settles, on aspirations, ​on the books and the music box, a nightmare begins. No light to play under, a huge shadow looms, eclipsing all memories of a ​happy child at j​est.

​-- Leslie 

Worth My Weight in Dust

 

Hey, you, the respectable Dust. 

You are on an errand,

tonight.

The morrow, you shall trudge

for the rays of sunlight.

And day after,

you shall reach 

a place of absolution.

If and only if,

when and only when,

you deserve peace. But no, 

yes you don't.

The if and when

of life

magnifies the truth,

a reality, mine and yours.

The inevitability of

a tanking worth.

— Leslie

Birthday: A Self Portrait

Is it not on a birthday,
a lucid evening,
the struggle bore meaning?
A will to embrace life,
the urge to breathe,
and wail — a tad hard;
the first sigh of many,
we all breathe, don't we?
And there I was,
ready to win,
having only tasted life.
Today, I tasted more...

Now, as I stir
the cauldron 27 times,
anticlockwise, as time flies;
clockwise, to urge time to fly,
at traffic signals,
at modern post offices,
at the bank, facing blank stars,
at unscripted wrestling bouts
and scripted poetry jousts.
27 times it is,
the number, the date,
an obsessive compulsion
— it presents life,
represents living,
and in more ways than known,
reminds me of mortality.

Yet, I seek immortality,
to vindicate
the struggle we are born in,
to substantiate
the ire we live in.
The portrait ends here.
Abrupt.
The final stroke strives
to find completeness
in the incomprehensible.
A painting? No…
A Birthday.

– Leslie