The Soiled Keyboard

​At the fork, I am all in  for the impending fight. Destiny, eh?

A tomb that offers

posterity to my right.

A restless struggle that gifts

immortality on my left.

​I squat down,

feel the rubble, 

knead till I soil my fingers,

and then type out my will.

At the end of it, alas,

I stare at a blank screen,

and a soiled keyboard,

tainted brick red.

At last, my destiny...

The smudges on my 

favoured letters, and words strung,

act as its coloured reminder.

— Leslie

(I type words not to fill blank pages, but to redden the pattern of smudges on my laptop keys)

Ode to Cortisol

If you shudder,
without further ado,
at the first sight of dew,
the premise is set.

I did…
This morning at 3.

I kept aside those
good morning sensibilities,
murmured to the wall,
while in angst, the words flowed.

They flowed…
This morning at 3.

This is the flawed poem
that was born when I,
tired and droopy,
tried to mop up the dew.

I mopped…
This morning at 3.

With insolence, I wiped
the drops off the petals of a
weary, two-day-old flower,
and dared to call it editing!

I dared…
This morning at 3.

-- Leslie

(Poem: I am but a janitor at 3 am, and with my mop, I wipe dew and scribble poetry.)

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