Non je regrette rien

I woke up this morning unadorned,

Shorn of the vestments of fret and care,

I woke up to a lovely winter morning,

The fire in the hearth still ablaze.

My eyes gummed in sleep, breath misty,

Untangling my legs from the sheets and dreams,

I hopped down from my feathery bed,

To meet the cold stone floor of reality.

Brazen

In thy lofty snow-covered abode,

O Parents of the Universe,

You reside in domestic harmony,

Playing your lofty games of chance.

You have made the gaming GUI,

The NPC's and the storyline,

And have descended into it,

As a thousand googol Avatars.

Even as you roll the dice,

The players walk their diverse roads,

With choice and chance and strategy,

They build their own realities.

O Parents of the world, thou art

The moderators of all realities,

Although you have made us many rules,

Only one of them rules them all.

For reality is but a game,

Its sole object is blameless fun,

Amusement is its constitution,

And all its laws subordinate.

O Parents of the world, tell me,

How can I progress in this game?

I have level-grinded for an eternity,

Yet am devoid of quests or fun.

Tell me am I destined to be,

An Ekaterina or a Shankari,

Will I be an expression of your third eye?

Or the gentle glance of your serenity?

Verity

Alas, dear sun, your light is lost,

In the fog of wintry revelation,

O lowly earthen lamp you are,

The one true hope of salvation.

Alas I was distracted by,

The glory of your glare and glow,

And I ignored my faithful lamp,

Which burns but softly, steady and slow.

Perhaps my hatred was but a dream,

And my love eclipsed by pride,

For the chilly winds of the truth have blown,

My misconceptions aside.

The Company

The confluence of human needs,

With that of human charity,

Creates a plankton breeding ground,

Of hard work and hilarity.

Some desperate, some talented,

Ambitious some, some plain relieved,

All have arrived, post diligence,

Complacent some, some still on heat.

Years of toil have brought forth spoils,

Yet spoiled their prospects elsewhere,

Avast! For this might still repair,

Their previous drought of humanity.

The Road to Paradise

In the spire of dreams I dwell

Ketaki is my name,

From my lofty perch I spy

My maker's lofty game

My maker does make many worlds

Filled with peaks and vales,

And peoples of a myriad kind   

Starring in myriad tales               

They live in vain it seems to me

And die in equal vain,              

They live in hope of paradise

But all they get is pain

Grieved by all their futile ways

My maker, I advise

Please build them a road, my Lord

A road to the paradise

The road is always there, my child

It shines by the light of my eyes

'Tis visible even from thy abode

My road to paradise

Atop the spire of dreams I spy

And sure as day it lies

Gleaming 'neath the moonlit sky

The road to paradise

Go then to the golden end

And set the standard gold

Lead then thou my children on

The road to Paradise

I descend therefore, I take the path

But the sheer length exhausts me

I crawl and walk and run toward 

The road to paradise

Somewhere along that lonely trail

I perceive some company

Delighted thus I journey on

The road to paradise

Presently our merry mob

Ceases to be One

And before we know it, we've left

The road to paradise

Distracted by our many-ness

Branded as kin or foe

We play our silly games around

The road to paradise

And in this semi-ignorance

We're born and we live and die

Never free yet never bound to  

The road to paradise

Like a poem stumbles on metric feet

From abstraction to verse

Some of our numbers recall            

The road to paradise

They scratch their heads and search their hearts       

And trace their tracks and roots

And remember My descent into

The road to paradise

For I was neither born nor dead

Not of this world was I

I was a lonely treader of

The road to paradise

And from my sheer single-ness

I constructed the throng

And therefore dug a pothole in

The road to paradise

Through this game of lost and found

My Maker did admonish

Know thyself and know thee thus

The road IS paradise