1. It is the day after…the Supreme Court Ruling
It’s the day after
Exhaled terrors compete
with butterflies escaping from chrysalis ruins
The weight of Heartbreak today
appears mismatched with Disappointment tomorrow
Yet, measure for measure, there’s no difference!
2. The Glazed, Dazed Gaze
The glazed, dazed gaze:
lip-curled and glee-burdened,
What is it? Can you guess?
No, your senses are deadened!
Animated by momentary agency
Emersed in multivalences, we easily forget
We assume the power to bask in potency
Has neither limit nor an expiry date
Oh, to claim superior intelligence
To strut about like an overfed antelope
And yet fail to grasp a simple essence:
The lone acacia in the savannah makes a jungle
3. Shakespeare said it best in Measure for Measure
“But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured;
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.” Shakespeare
4. The Space between Pain and Gain: The Struggles of a Government
Between the pain of reform and the resultant gain,
There is a contested space,
a place of pounding impatience
a place of irredeemable ignorance
a place of angst, fear and incense
a place of hatreds that defy sense
a place where a vision stands trembling in the rain
a place where the drums of dreams begin to fade
a place of tired ears, new tears and rising outrage
a place of toad-size egos demanding constant massage
a place of intermittent communication splutter
a place where senseless sounds bounce off walls
a place of interests where the personal always wins
a place where confusion and heartbreak resist the gutter
This contested space between pain and gain needs to be …
a place where minds rule over hearts
a place where errant egos are forced to flee
a place of disciplined thought, action and results
a place where humility and patience stand bravely
5. The days of RAGE are here!
The heart has won the battle, easily
The lungs have given voice to this triumph
A narcotic called adrenaline flows freely
Behold the passion and the energy of youth!
Reason rests dejected at the corner,
It is how it is – joys conjoined with pains
Joy and pain play ping pong with honour
Today laughter rings; tomorrow sorrow reins
6. It simply IS – again
Chaos – shapeless, irregular, random
Behold: it struts and prances
It grabs pain and together
they twirl and whirl and dance
into savage storms
Oh, my teardrop, what became of you?
You were once a happy, escaped orphan
Now you’re an army, surging to burst
the banks of my lacrimal lake
What became of my levees?
Oh, well, this too is something
And, yes, this, too, is nothing
Neither bad nor good; It simply IS
Fleeting. Forming. Unforming. Formless. Endless
Therefore. Reach out. Grab. Chaos. Dance
7. We exist because we didn’t and won’t – maybe
We blink
into existence
And un-blink
out of existence
We did not exist – for an eternity
Then we exist – briefly
We shall not exist – for an eternity
Yes, after we cease to exist
We may exist exactly as we are
So says infinite probability –
Or we may cease to exist in infinity
This – the marriage of thing and nothing,
blink and un-blink – is the real heaven
8. What if…
What if, being quantum beings, we are married to randomness?
What if our knowledge and skills cannot outrun the monsters we create?
What if the monsters hidden in chance events outrun our knowledge and skills?
What if, in our stupidity and cupidity, we believe in our own invincibility?
What if the known and unknown universe is indifferent to our conscious conceit?
What if, in our arrogance and carelessness, we trigger our own extinction?
What if this Corona portents many such, but hotter than the Sun’s Corona?
9. It is true …but what if?
Formed from the clash of stars …
Born in a furnace hotter than the hottest…
Forged in and out of a crucible of intense violence …
Human-to-human violence seems disproportionate to love
But …
What if we grab this impulse to violence
at its stem and, using STEM, breach its inner defenses…
What if we tease out the disparate strands of this violence…
What if we then tame it from its source, and render it less senseless
But…
What then if this internal command to violence…
This urge, to dominate, to destroy, to crush…
What if it is an essential survival imperative …
Will the killing of violence lead to the death of life?
10. 2023: New Hopes, New Fears
A fiery ball of burning helium and hydrogen
has been burning continuously for 4.5 billion years
and will continue to burn for another 4.5 billion years,
so says our brain-mind quantum dance.
Our little ball – the Earth – 109 times smaller than the bigger ball (Sun),
has been rotating on its axis as it revolves around for the last 4.5 billion years
Within our ‘neighbourhood’ (galaxy), 200 billion stars burn
In distant, seemingly infinite space, 200 billion galaxies,
each with billions of burning stars, the human mind-brain quantum dance slows;
Slows down and pauses long enough to consider its own worries and hopes
Worries about mortality here, and hopes of immortality thereafter
Worries about heartbreaks and hopes of heart rapture
Worries about the blessings of the digital revolution.
11. Prediction
Listening to Nouriel Roubini (“Dr Doom”)
He is talking about his book Mega Threats…
It is sobering; much food for thought
Massive calamities that threaten our survival; they have happened before.
But humans will survive – even as small, isolated populations
This will largely be the result of human resilience,
enabled partly by technology, and luck.
12. Conversation with an 82-year-old German-Kenyan scientist: A recollection
We are too young – as a human species
We are the surprised face
of the morning dew on a green leaf
Not sure if the sunrise ray is friend or foe
So we drink, dance, dazzle and celebrate heat
We are too young and innocent
We are hunger in a child’s mouth
crying for food but not knowing why
Not aware of the instinct to survive
So we fight, compete, and violate at will
