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

The Punishment

Disclaimer:

No disrespect meant to any people and places. The world is a family.

Banupriya is real. She really calls me Roy. She is a scientist in a laboratory. Her laboratory is not in Lahore.

Also, she is not one to curse people lightly. Especially my sister and me. So if you are Banupriya, please don't curse me for casting you in my story.

I don't live in Beirut. I have no reason to be there.

I miss my sister, who is really at home.

Approximation

I’ve never seen better, I’ve never seen worse
In the splitting of an atom, I’ve seen the universe

But the world has no existence
Outside our point of view
Thus even as I stare at it
It shows up something new

Tired by the fruitlessness, of this most futile task
A whole new kind of persona, I wanted to unmask

All that could be visible
I did not wish to see
The tiny and the transparent
Were not a mystery

Alas the only cursed nook, unreachable by eye
Is the cursed eye itself, which I cannot spy

Thus dejected a nihilist
I was tempted to become
But something about nihilism
Did not seem wholesome

For everything the grace of God, makes possible to see
I owe Him some minimal trust, for what’s hidden from me

The issue I now realize
Is not of faith or doubt
It’s not about how well I see
But how well I figure out

The Ides of March Arrive

The entrails of Prometheus old

Are consumed even as he's alive

My entrails they likewise grow cold

As the ides of March arrive

The path of the old and the path of the new

Will from the very same source derive

Hark ye! These paths decided they will be

As the ides of March arrive

The trade of formal dope is due

To meet deadlines I strive

Alas I face such deadlines three

As the ides of March arrive

I set my house in order true

In an attempt to my spirit drive

Thank God! Some order I can see

As the ides of March arrive

The ides of March they came and went

As they come and go each year

But the ides of March make evident

Our guts in the face of fear

Inscription on the lit lamp

As a child, at the sky above
I often used to stare
But later times when I looked up
The stars just weren’t there
But their memory, it gives me strength
To belong with them I dare
If they welcome me, well and good
If they shun me, I don’t care