THE LAST EXAM

In the last few minutes of life, he sees his sweetheart worried, sobbing, on the other side of the door of the operation theatre. As the lights are switched on, a tide of thoughts overcome his nearly lifeless body. As he takes his last exam he learns the greatest lesson of life...At first he tries and accepts the unavoidable but slowly he realises that he has unfinished tasks. Those tiny little details he overlooked branding them unimportant suddenly caught all his attention.  He tries to negotiate with death, alas, in vain. Following are the last of all the memories and thoughts:

THE LAST EXAM

Many a suns bright glare back at me.
They dont smile or nod. My chances are weak.
So understanding, complacent, they know what I want to say.
Lying like a log, I try but cannot speak!

People around me, they move in a frenzy so blurry.
This might as well be my last exam, what is the hurry!
I have known to party, now I'd know this.
From the first cry of life to death's wicked hiss.

"You have come too stealthily! I accuse you! Unfair!"
"But you had all your life, to care, to repair!"
"Yes, but I thought there is more I could then do"
"You cannot schedule eveything, can you?"

I stay silent, even in my mind now.
What has gone has gone, I "couldn't" reap what I had sown.
I see blurry faces, peeping hard from behind the door.
"You've been my life, its not you but me who's alone."

This is my last exam and for once I dont care
About what I fetch, about fair, unfair
For once, its not what I get that matters
But what I lost in my frenzy, my despair.

If only I could trade all I have "earned" for some time.
If I could write our daughter, a new little rhyme
If I could kiss you "you are my world" I'd fondly say
If not a 'goodbye', I'd like to hear a last 'hey!'

If only each time I had spoken, I had looked into your eyes!
If we had had dinner not over TV, but in candle light!
My brain is going numb, but I can suddenly count,
The many years of life I missed for some fake delight.

If only they'd let you in, I could atleast hear
If you blame me for abandonment, my dear?
Do you know I love you? Do you know my fear?
Will I be in your heart, or atleast somewhere near?

This is my last exam, right here, right now.
Lying like a log, I know I cannot prepare.
Trust me, I am upset, I am angry, I am sad
That the result would be for only you to bear.

-Mx

Sting

Have you ever been a rebel?

Do we disagree with our parents because they would not let us be the "cool" popular person peer pressure pushes us to be? Well if we dont like it why should it be enforced, we might debate. So why do parents not concur? Is it because they want that 'traditions' be kept alive or simply out of safety concerns?

---------------------------------
STING

A tender rose, I sway, not far
I smile a sunny smile
I dance in the wind, in rainy shower
Never go beyond 'the mile'.

Said they, I have a silly stem
Said they it holds me, cruel
They say I am bright, I could shine at night
unfurl and win a duel

Said they, my thorn is sharp and stings
They think its a heartless snake
But hey, no ground is ever clean
Until it meets the rake!

In you, my stem and beloved thorn
I trust with my eyes shut tight
No mighty sun can bring us one
for stars, we need the night

You hold me close, dear mother, my stem
safe, dear father, you keep me
lest, in a day single, I'd wither and fade
Alone a rose, no can be!

-Mx

Levitate

Often we look back and feel that life could have been different provided 'that one risk' was taken. Often our present becomes our comfort zone and slowly we get so used to being what we are that we become afraid to try anything unconventional.

Change is the only constant. This is the greatest truth that prevails universally.

That what does not change is inanimate and as far away from life as death itself.

So what is stopping us?

Destiny? Fate? Well, often unknowingly WE stop ourselves. Obscured by our day to day monotonous activities, often in our machine like existance, there is a fear of 'trying' or that of 'failing' which stops us from looking across what we see daily.

Come out from under the gray cloud and step into the sun. The choice is yours and yours alone. Choose to fly!

Levitate!

----------------------------------------
LEVITATE

Above my head a little cloud
around it is sunny bright
What silly sun! You have never won
For you spare my share of night!
What silly wind! You 'hop' not 'flow',
A poor shepherd you are,
You take them all to distant fields,
Yet left this one so far!

Above my head a little cloud
gray gloomy inglorious sad
upset uncessantly anxious to cease
so lingers, a habbit bad.

In gray I see in snow my marks
tread them all the same
If sun would dry or shine too bright
Clueless would I die in shame?

My companion for all these many years
Now I am old and just as gray
Hobble over those very steps in fear
What if you go away!

They came and away they went
Their footprints they left as marks
A silly little bird held onto earth
Could have been leading the larks!

-Mx

END OF THE RAINBOW

END OF THE RAINBOW

We yearn.
Yes, this I write for us all. Each day a sun rises and each night it hides away, the same cycle continues unaltered, uneventful. We wake up. We sleep.
Yet there is something that imparts some meaning to 'not dying' we call life. Yes, we yearn.

So desire is the fuel that keeps us interested. We dream... we imagine...we desire... and thus, we try and stretch our arms to grab that one thing we want.

So we travel far and wide, in daydreaming and in person, searching frantically for that little crystal of sugar we know is just one step farther from our anthill. We set standards, really high standards. We keep deadlines so difficult to meet. We work, frantically.

"I see the rainbow! There it is" says a little girl, fascinated by the lovely stroke of colour pastel on a lively blue canvas. "Its so real, so tangible! If only I could get a little closer!"
"Hop on along with me" says the little rabbit in her head."we will see what lay at its end"
She looked around the playground. The children seem to have not noticed the profound beauty that lay within what seemed an arms reach to her.
"I will get there first" she tells herself...

And thus begins a chase. The beauty in the simplicity of 'desire' lost by the blinding hurry. "The world is a rat race..." remembered the little girl as she paced towards the rainbow. She could see it. She knew it existed. "Just a few more steps" she tells herself.
In her chase, the poor girl missed the wonders that lay sprawled across the lovely garden-the trees, the bugs, the flowers, the pond-she missed it all, chasing the rainbow. Her desire and the chase together forming a demonic combination much more real than the sky and the rainbow. The rainbow is but a fallacy, just like the sky that is unreal. In our journey we should not overlook that what is really important, that what really exists, that what really matters.

The world is a rat race, yes, but when a part if it,  we only make rats out of ourselves! What may seem the ultimate joy might be the the most irrelevant of all things. Real joy is within us. Our happiness is in what lay around us, not in what we are made to believe in. Our own little bag of grain...

------------

This poem talks about the places we travel to (a metaphor for experiences we have) in our life time and how joy is not anywhere but within us!
It asks the reader to stop looking for imaginary pots of gold and start soul searching instead! Introspection is a powerful tool!
The title 'end of a rainbow' also signifies the same thing- end of virtual reality... and discovery of the real truth. Afterall, a rainbow is virtual, like the sky, and can never be reached or touched!

---------------------------

END OF THE RAINBOW
Vast seas I travelled, their depths unseen,
long routes I trod with a mind so free,
unto sky I dived  but the sky is fake
-a sheet of fallacy spread by a rake-
To trees whose roots go beyond belief,
To waters who beget life and relief,
to winds , the high lords of this earth,
I walked and walked to unearth,
What joy lay at the rainbows end,
what, for me, the heavens would send.
Far across the streets so narrow,
across the woods and puddles shallow,
across the arms of the mountain soil,
And across the earth we toil,
to places distant and people new,
to grasses less green, with lesser dew,
to shades not traversed by rays of sun,
to rivers that form the ocean one,
far and near I go and back,
On roads I travel and on my tracks,
my shoes are wrinkled, the stick now bends,
No pot of gold at no rainbows ends,
but a bag of grains within me I found,
within myself my joy profound.
The heavens havent sent, but ourselves,
We are atleast, our own lucky elves,
Vast seas within, we must travel,
find our own gold and our own gravel.

-Mx