Dreams & Reality

If I could choose my dreams,
Dreams dreamt with open eyes,
I would dream of vast green fields,
Of turquoise seas and clear blue skies.

A dream of bliss and gaiety,
With a smile for every face,
Each new day of happiness,
Each night, in the lap of grace.

The fields turn to dead desert as I see,
The skies rent with moans and wail,
Pain and anguish stretch to the horizons
The devastation is on an unimagined scale.

The world is down with illness,
The symptoms visible far and wide,
The sand castles of hopes and wishes
Leveled away by the bellowing tide.

As the world is hidden in Shadow,
And Torment smoothly takes its toll,
As my dreams turns to a nightmare,
I wish never to have dreamt at all.

The dream was broken, I was awake,
The frightful scenes still in my eyes,
My hopes that is was just a dream
Dashed by relentless screams and cries.

I closed my eyes with a deep fear,
Afraid of what I would see,
My dream was a dream no more,
It was cold cruel reality.

Curiosity, yet, is stronger still,
And I did open my eyes,
Only to find a still stranger sight,
Under those gloomy skies.

An old man lost in the passage of days
His back bent with years of burden,
Yet with his dim sight and frail hands
He was tending a beautiful garden.

Smile on his lips, twinkle in his eyes,
He merrily toiled away,
In his hands he held a lily,
He said, “It bloomed this very day!”

“I keep up this garden,” he said
“Be it rain or shine.
To fill the world with flowers
Is the dream of mine.”

“Does not this appear to be a folly,
To strive for such impossibility?
There is only so much we can do,
For we are all bound by our ability.”

He smiled at me and replied,
“Your concerns are very kind,
As long as  there is one more bloom
I surely would never mind.”

His words meant more to me
more than he meant them to be.
For if we put our mind to it
Our dreams too can be a reality.

Unfair

My life is made of dreams,
Woven with open eyes,
With feet tied in chains,
In days of pain and sighs.

The hand wipes the tears,
The mind stifles the cries;
While my heart spreads its wings,
To conquer the vast open skies.

Each new day is different,
Yet they all feel the same;
A rat race, an endless struggle,
For money, fortune and fame.

The perpetrator's pit-less hunger,
The victim's hidden shame;
Each one but dumb pawns,
In Fate's tyrannical game.

Smiles, laughter 'n merriment,
True; they come by and by,
Keep 'em I can't, a moment more,
No matter how hard I try.

The tears stay on with me,
Oft hidden from you;
When you hear that life's unfair,
Just know it to be true.

Lost

How many times has it happened,
That we lost all hope at trifles?
How many times have we given up,
Just when things began going haywire?

We accept defeat too easily,
We surrender at first war call,
We no longer take up arms to say,
"Beware; I do not go down easy!"

Life now is so much easier for us,
Yet we refuse to face its terms,
We despair at every turn of events,
We halter at every bend the road takes.

We have lost the power to face obstacles,
We have lost the faith that we can overcome them,
We no longer look at them as challenges,
We believe them to be eternal roadblocks.

We have forgotten that we fail for sure,
Whenever we refuse to take a chance that comes by,
Until we decide to get up, take note and make a difference
We have lost the war, we count among losers!

Life

I was living a life of arrogant experience,
Knowledgeable of every move on the mat,
Each new turn of event felt all the same,
I was of the notion, "Been there, done that!"

Lady Luck never seemed to be on my side,
She had strewn my path with numerous trials,
Not many could have boasted surviving them all,
Yet I had come through completely unscathed.

I looked up at the skies and taunted,
"Is that all you have for me to go through?
I still have it in me to face them all over.
You don't give up that effortlessly, do you?"

It is then that I saw those deep watery eyes.
Eyes longing for understanding and care,
Longing for a little word of strength,
Hoping for the love that was never there.

I felt the urge to be by her side,
To make her know I was always there;
To rid those rosy cheeks of tears,
To soothe her heart with words of care.

I tried to tell her how vital she was to me
But somehow my voice choked and I failed;
All I could do was to just stand dumbfounded,
And deep within my heart copiously wailed.

I had lost my most prized possession,
Words failed me for the first time.
I no longer held the enigmatic presence,
I felt like a loser, worth less than a dime.

And then she put her hands into mine,
The smile on her lips showed she knew.
I had been able to bare my heart to her,
Though words used were scantily few.

A strange sense of tranquillity filed my heart,
Life seemed to make sense to me completely anew,
All my previous achievements didn't matter any more,
For it was only now I found the reason to excel.

Life had challenged me to a deadly duel,
And I was the one, who drew first blood,
Life found a whole new meaning for me,
From now on, Triumph was to be my companion.

Compassion

I was travelling alone in a packed train,
Surprising how lonely crowds can make u feel,
Only yesterday I was surrounded by friends,
And today, left alone to hold on to the keel.

A shrill cry broke the chain of my thoughts,
An old lady in rags was begging for money,
She was an epitome of misery and gloom,
Yet some sneered, don'’t know what seemed funny.

I put a hand into my pocket and pulled out the change
A five rupee coin was all I could stumble on there,
A quick snack fought for it with a smile of gratification
The smile triumphed hands down without another care.

Slowly she crawled up to my feet, trembling with hope
I put the money in her hand; she held it up to her eyes,
She realized it was a fiver and not the usual fifty paisa
She was speechless; happiness carried her to the skies.

All the people turned around at once and looked at me
As she showered me with heartfelt blessings of gratitude,
For most of them it was not a generous deed of good,
All they found were colossal faults with my attitude.

I heard one of them speak, "look at these kids of today,
Squandering hard earned money without wee bit shame."
The one next snapped smiling, "Why do you bother,
If their parents can afford to be part of the game."

I was shocked to hear that conversation
Were they really that heartless or ...
Or was it that we are made to think so
Was it the society that was to account for?

We no longer feel compassion in our hearts,
People who do are contemptuously vouched,
Sympathy and Affection are now strangers to us,
Pennies earned are valued more that lives touched.

How is it that we lost this gift of ours?
Love had all along been our speciality.
And look to what we have degraded now
Fighting for trifles with all brutality.

We no longer notice how love can change lives,
We no longer feel its great power of healing,
The magical touch, the countless soft smiles,
The words of wonder, the surreal feeling.

Love means more than we could ever imagine,
Yet we refuse to love the feeling of love
We are more engrossed in what we can get
Than the gifts of love showered from above.

We were not like this in the past,
We must not be like this in future,
We will learn to love all over again,
In a world where we all are together.