DATURA STRAMONIUM

December 2020

Poetry

DATURA STRAMONIUM

Datura is born out of Shiva’s heart;

this moonlit night I drink from the bosom of
angel’s trumpet;

my mind is blithe and brain wired;
panacea of sort; I thrive in apparition;
I weave music for my cosmic dance with
Shiva
Angel of God plays his tune in Angel’s trumpet.
Sun rises; it’s a beautiful morning;
dissolute, I hear my wraith talking to me,
his tongue cryptic, and voice intense.

Datura is born out of Shiva’s heart –
HE, who drank the lethal poison and saved
Brahma’s lovely creation.

HIBISCUS ROSA SINENSIS

I come to you, hibiscus rosa-sinensis,
you – who choose to consort with Kali;

the goddess who wears skull necklace,
and corset braided with torn human arms;

tongue darting out; lapping up every drop of
demonic blood – that’s the story; story, that is not:

Let she be her namesake, force of time –
outside the constraints of space-time;

primordial, amorphic; nurturing and in turn devouring;
essence of all that was, and is …

Dark she is – thus before the birth of light
and after the end of all that will be… ROSA

Temperature is high, pressure is up and the pot cracking;
I come to you, hibiscus; take me into the bosom of your

infinite consort; and into the beyond.

BLIGHT

Cities crumble and monuments hang upside down
like an abandoned ship in an empty arena;
dreams whisper and then wither like a tangy apple
passing through harrowing winter;
and yet after every night, however stygian,
the sun rises and blue-eyed gazelles graze
on the pavements of cavernous avenues.

GEORGE FLOYD

Earth spills its molten core.
Mountains are made
and islands rise.
George Floyd is an Island Mountain
Made of black igneous rock.

DYSTOPIC

Let my worries settle like a bird on a tender twig
of the cotton-silk tree, tall and lone in yonder nook
of childhood memories – music from my mother’s
golden bangles;
I am tired of this pandemonium,
of this vacuity of daily vagaries; life is nothing but a walking shadow;
isn’t it?
But how do I calm my torpid mind? life’s shelves are empty;
so are the shelves of my neighborhood store.
They are bugs, they have come to gnaw
the core of our crumbling tower,
we cringe in fear and dismay!
Weren’t we the wise one
and burning with an affirming flame?

HOPE

This strange time of existence,
precarious, balanced like an ancient erratic;
my little brother is unwell,
so is my best friend counting his
lonely instants in the jaded eyes of a caring nurse,
and the sweet cacophony NYC-ICU.
Discordant and filled with promise of a better tomorrow;
time to ponder the lofty;
eternity’s cold and lonely certitude.
Last night I was with waning moon;
it didn’t refuse to lend lanky rays to the April-tulips
still to bloom for springtime festivity;
and birds still dove to pick kernels
off my open hands.

GIBBOUS MOON

Evening sky was diffuse and blazing red; California burning;
night was clear with few high flying cirrus clouds;
the Milky Way was spectacularly living;
gibbous moon – not sure of its phase, was hesitant to come out
and peep into my window pane;
I have planted a purple pansy on the sill,
my time shrinking and my heart yodeling to the fancy of altered imagery;
life’s undulations, and screaming memes;
I know it’s a waning moon in an inexorable march
to nonexistence.

DATURA STRAMONIUM