A.J.Rao's photopoems

2006-11-09T18:50:00.000-08:00

A photographer’s “doggereal”

A breeze blows on the fallen leaves,
Soft- crunching under footfalls
Then thoughts flow in a pageant
Their slowly crawling centipede
Is so much like a human chain
Their poetry exists in fine words,
Their rhythms beating as in life
Their symmetry really pretty.
Beauty-words gently fall like
December mist dripping from leaves.
Our own transience feels like birds
In the blueness above the treetops.
In the summer sky’s blue torpor
We keep stretching our vision
Until tiny luminous worms swim
In pools of tears in raised eyes.
Here ,a dog becomes a mere image
On the rock where it belongs,
In joyful photo-luminescence.

2006-04-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

The schizophrenic

My splintered consciousness
Is a medley of broken images
Shards of shattered tough-glass
Pierce through forced attempts at order
Dark and threatening circles
Close in on my eyes, concentrically.
My muscular male arms
Negate my underlying femininity
Sometimes I am male, sometimes female
Sometimes I am me, then somebody else.

I attempt to gather broken glass
For a multi-hued kaleidoscope
The kaleidoscope remains a dream
I only collect bleeding injuries.
My soul lies inert, in a glass jar
In the amniotic fluid of primordial confusion
As research material for neuro-scientists
Cushioned in chaos, there I lay
Afraid the jar would break one day.

Fake Bitch Bipolar

2006-03-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

Fake Bitch Bipolar
Originally uploaded by loveless_blues.

Loveless

Then was different
Of different hue
And music.
The eyes spoke
Of liquid love
The leathery skin
A graveyard of memories.
There are holes
Where were pools.
Eyelashes flutter
Like bat's wings
Embers of selfness
Still smoulder
Unreturned love
Yet another cover
For bruised ego.

(The poem is mine; the picture has originally been uploaded by loveless blues on Flickr

The ramblings of a dysaphic

2006-03-14T21:19:00.000-08:00

i´m feel
Originally uploaded by loveless_blues.

The ramblings of a dysaphic

(The picture has originally been uploaded by loveless blues on Flickr)

I have lost the tactile sense
The last time you met me
I could smell your hug
The fragrance has endured.
I keep raising my arms
Towards the rain-laden sky
But cannot feel the raindrops
On my outstretched tongue.
In the dewy winter mornings
My feet do not feel anything.
I try feeling the tenderness
Of the just opened lotus petals
With my senseless fingers.
I can sense the tingle of your fingers
On the shadowy curve of my back
Through their after-fragrance
You ran your fingers on my belly
I could almost hear their music.
I could hear your carbon smell
As the midday burnt your crackling back
When we lay, on the beach, oblivious
Of the crustaceans crawling around us.

2006-02-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

Mother and sea

(The picture has been taken from the poetry workshop of Boloji.com; the poem is mine )

Mother and sea

On the shore, an image of her
Shimmered, in frothy laughter.
The sea has now risen
Like her own body’s upheaval,
Then, in pure, purple pain.
The sea will calm down
When the night is born.

2006-01-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

The call never came

(This photograph is not by me :it is photo of an old photograph of what life was like a hundred years ago in Bhopal. A very evocative picture )

Thinking nights cannot easily sleep
Full of dark secrets in the belly
That rise as smoky-eyed dreams,
When awareness takes an abrupt turn.
The tree stood mute by the temple
A man cogitated on the verandah
Another, on his knees, stared at the river
An old man squatted, his head bent,
Among turbaned men of another time,
Awaiting the call from across the river.
Actually the call has never come
It never comes in dreams and art.

2006-01-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

Ashes

Then the drama continued
The words were spoken
From the guttural depths
Of a middleman’s throat
And washed by drops
Of sanctified water
The pursuit of silver
Went on in the waters
With sonorous words
Chasing life-death shadows
The waters flowed silently
Over the rocks nurturing life
And its golden-brown ashes.

2006-01-17T23:46:00.000-08:00

Sleep

As the temple bells ring
The earth burns slowly
And goes up in swirls of smoke
These lights hurt him
But the smoke does not.
It is just like then
Of comforting mother-softness
Of all-around emerald aqua.
His limbs do not move.
Nor do his eyes see.
At the tunnel’s beginning
It is like what it was
When it all began.

2006-01-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

Buddha smiling in the ruins

Leaves

Here, the man went inward and wise,
Reluctant teacher, about to enter light
The leaves about him had a faint aura
Not a pall of dust but of wisdom’s light,
The why of all including our nothing-
We who had liquid origins and trauma.
He had an answer to all our questions
But no questions to our lucent answers
His ears were long and unhearing
As were his eyes small and crinkly.
It was not he who patted his tummy
And laughed to the vulgar crowds loud
Just a yellow figurine on dusty shelves.
Did you say he had frozen in bronze
With an enormous stomach side-splitting?
Actually our fears froze behind his ears
I can hear their crunch in these leaves.