so many freedoms final(03.10.13) (1).pdf

SO MANY

FREEDOMS

SO MANY FREEDOMS

Karanam Rao

Notion Press

5 Muthu Kalathy Street, Triplicane,

Chennai - 600 005

First Published by Notion Press 2013

Copyright Karanam Rao 2013

All Right Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-83185-72-6

This book has been published in good faith that the work

of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to

make the material error-free. However, the author and

the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any

manner whatsoever without written permission from the

author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical articles and reviews.

Dedication

for my granddaughter,

Priya Darshini

who has brought in lots of pleasure & happiness.

Acknowledgements

Some of the poems appeared in my earlier collections,

and I thank the publishers for allowing me to reuse

them for the present anthology. I thank Prayer Books,

and the Writers Workshop, Calcutta, Lulu.com, USA.

I also thank Prof. Akella R who vetted the poems and

Dr. Venkateswarlu I who offered me many useful

suggestions and Mr. Suhas Kiran for proofreading

and helping me out to make the anthology error

free.

Contents

Alone 2

Anger 4

Another Country 6

Beyond Borders 8

Continuities 10

Dripping Down 12

Freedom 14

Gandhi & I 16

Get Well Message 18

Her Face 20

Home 22

In Chicago 24

India Against Corruption 26

Inwardly 28

Meeting a Long Lost Friend 30

Memories 32

Nostalgia 34

x ! Contents

Poem for my Granddaughter 36

Reassurances 38

Relationships 40

Seize the Day 42

Semantics 44

Sharing Intimacies 46

She Walks in Beauty 48

Silence 50

Sipping Coffee 52

Something 54

Springtime 56

The Last Page 58

The Sense of Life 60

Tomorrow 62

Tribute to a Friendly 64

Walking Down 66

Waylaid Since 68

Words Unspoken 70

SO MANY FREEDOMS

So Many Freedoms ! 3

Alone, in the dark,

seamless night,

like a sinner caught in

the act of sinning,

I writhed in sleeplessness.

What should I do now?

Send prayers to gods

of small things asking them

to restore me to streams

of light?

And when the day

did really break,

with a heavy thud,

I still carried my

private hell into it as a ritual

of purgatorial cleansing.


Angers something

thats unpredictable

like the post-prandial

hiccups of my fiance.

Its triggered

with each of my

abetments with her.

Like her flair to throw

my money on trifles

to satiate her vagabond

pleasures,

a perversion of hers

that leaves me cold

and confused to know the

difference between

prudent spending

and profligate pissing off.

Like her refusal

to fall in line to pander

to my deciduous desires.

Another Country


I love your cool environs,

the colour of your skin,

and eyes,

sylvan meadows,

and phallic skyscrapers.

Your buxom maidens,

and their midnight

sauntering in boutiques,

and discotheques.

But what I dont get at

is your predilection

for retroflex and long vowels.

and your bullshit

punctuality,

though you speak the same

language of love & oneness

even as we do.

Youre the shit of a country,

America ! youve erected walls,

Beyond Borders


There are no lucidly

drawn borders

for the free flow

of thoughts

since it races beyond

the syntax of a sentence

Like silences that can

reach up to heavens gates..

Like love that knows

no canonical stricture

of disorientation.

Like waves that ebb

and flow under no

warranty of obelisk order.

For the sea,

its only the roar that matters.

Continuities


The summa of all my

yester years has bumped

with my eidetic today,

like dark clouds colluding.

To speak the truth,

I was born under the same

roof even as my forebears

and washed up

by the same waters

of rickety river that

meanders my thoughts,

and at whose bend

three generations met.

I became an oddball

by choice and inclination.

My grandson calls me,

a lousy saint from St Louise.

Dripping Down


tinsel soft rain

dripping down

the green of leaves

like myths falling

into virgin soil

& when thunder

strikes the sky

into paroxysm

of symbols

a poem is said to be

on its wings

Freedom


armed with

an impressive array

of honed metaphors

i strutted

the freedom

streets of a poem

if only to know

that the much-

touted

freedom comes

at a high price

Gandhi & I


Were poles apart-

Gandhi & I.

Hes so tall and lofty

with ideals,

and Im so small,

and inconsequential

like a parenthesis in

a sentence.

But what has brought us

closer are our flair

for absolute minimalism,

and our rather long,

walking sticks

that prodded us into

the serendipity of

non -violent action.

Get Well Message


How comforting

would it be

to walk out of

cloistered confinement

of a well-lit hospital

room where wafer-thin

curtains divide life

between unbearable pain

& not an iota of relief.

The smell of tincture

and iodine,

and sounds of rattling

knives and battling

scissors ready to cut

a slender portion of flesh

now easing out,

youre set on the road

to recovery.

You are free

to walk into sprawling

freedom of home

where children await

to receive you with

littlum hugs & iridescent

bouquets of smiles.

Her Face


With a face as luminous

as full moons,

and eyes as lustrous

as the stars,

her unkempt hair

moved playfully

on her tensile face,

like dark clouds hovering.

While her hands

stretched out into the open

as if to nail the thrusts

of a wind

Her face has inhering

power of thunder

to burn a thousands

ships apace.


Now that Ive a home,

though not a big one

with sprawling windows

with Venetian blinds

and serendipitous doors

to allow light to stream in,

but just a small one,

as white in the eye

of a black brunette.

Why should I live in

rented rooms of

my poems,

and hold on to the

crutches of febrile

metaphors?

Now at least I have a place

where I can hide

my bones and breathe

under the shade of

an incandescent truth.

In Chicago


In Chicago,

the suns never

intensely bright.

Its, at best, a pallid

glimmer of languishing

light at horizons edge.

Its as though

the land and the

atmospherics

conspired to morph

the city into white heap

of surrealistic rubble.

The only lovely sight

was the flight of the seagulls

screaming in circles

that can be heard even

in dreams.

India Against Corruption


I never thought that

money was such

an appealing appetiser

for so many.

Even a dead man

seemed to wake up

at the smell of lucre.

Where was that cynically

starving and morally

inebriated old guy

when my fifteen thousand

rupees were fucked up

by our own hells agents

to get my papers

leapfrogged from table

to table?

Can we ever stop

this quid pro quo prop?

Tell me,

could ever a slut

change her colours

& return into chastity net?

Inwardly


Fix and unfix,

an idea with an image,

and a metaphor with an

enveloping silence,

that are now paired and

configured into many

-hued silhouettes.

All that I need to do

is to search for the many

layered meaning thats

already in there-

to find an earth, a sky,

a fistful of moonshine,

a hand that blesseth,

and a smile thats all-

encompassing.

And again, there is the same

sundown that shapes

and re-shapes itself

into tunnelled darkness.

Meeting a Long Lost Friend


I met an old friend

of mine after ages,

as it were.

Its like two continents

merging,

and two climes meeting.

We strayed into memory

lanes and sub-lanes,

and recalled where

we first met,

and became friends,

though we operated from

different stratospheres.

Compared our ideas,

and ideologies,

shared the substance

of our dreams,

and dysfunctional

disillusionments.

We delved into our

silences, too.-

his from the hinterland

of memory, and mine from the

crucifix of experience.

Memories


Memories are never

finished,

like the sea of anecdotes

that link up each to each

with the innards of

moral innuendoes,

& move beyond configured

time and space.

Nor could memories

be erased like hieroglyphics

on sand.

They stick like moles

on the face of my woman

Ive read a million times,

like sacred text,

for remembrances sake.

Nostalgia


Its like rolling back

in time,

into green meadows,

and ashen hills

& deep valleys.

Like cruising on crystalline

waters of the rivers,

and re-entering

the splintered dreams

of lost innocence.

Like gazing at tortuous

& unfixed directions

when memory becomes

a ritual of exorcism,

& nostalgia a gluey

nightmare.

Poem for my Granddaughter


I tell my beautiful,

and yet innocent

granddaughter not to

stand on edgy silence

but break into a riotous

song & float like a leaf,

and fly like a bird

with gay abandon.

I ask her not to look

too deep into water,

for the fear of losing

her out for an image

or a symbol,

And often reassure her

not to be grumpy & lost

but to dart out into the

freedom of the open skies.

Reassurances


I see in your eyes

the glitter of

flaming desires,

legends tattooed on

your lissom body

& I heard all those

hungers un-assuaged

lingering like gentle

breeze of desires.

The beauty of your

face is so tenuously

wired in my memory

that all my reassurances

rather seemed tired

preface to the book

of your love and of

your readiness

to giving in.

Relationships


Relationships are

encrypted promises

of love made in times

extreme excesses,

fair or unfair,

elegant or inelegant.

The gossamer web of

romance gets blown off

if it is not to be reassured

with renewed promise of love

that blends past, present

and future relationships

into an assignation

of permanence,

Seize the Day


Seize the day before

its stale

and unprofitable,

like dysfunctional

metaphors in a poem

Keep off the hovering

clouds of decisions

and indecisions,

and sweep them off

to the edge of

a horizon.

And make a heady brew

of desire and passion,

like Gin and Vodka,

before the days done.

Semantics


When words lose their

sheen and fatidic meaning,

and all the windows are shut,

what remains is insolent

silence that hisses back

at you for the outrage

youve caused them,

and for the needless

posturing of chaos from

where no consonance

emerges and no meaning

gets distilled.

i

Sharing Intimacies


There must be some

space out there,

beyond those vertical,

skyscrapers,

& needle -straight

Manhattan streets

where women meet

to discuss pregnancy

& contraceptives.

But we would go

beyond those hills

and valleys,

and explore those cool,

proliferating meadows,

and share other intimacies,

to be a part of those

conventions of despair.

She Walks in Beauty


She could be your

doting mother,

a sharing wife,

a loving sister near

Or a caring daughter

a distant relative

or a next-door neighbour,

or a retentive power.

She walks in beauty

like an angel on duty

with the temper

and the thrust of a wind,

and passion of

the sea in command.

Dude! Why dont you

treat her with love

and dignity she deserves

for shes divinity en core.

Silence


I want such silence

that prevailed

before autumnal leaves

dropped on

the moist ground,

like myths falling.

The silence

thats caught betwixt

the sunset and whorls of

darkness thats about

to settle down

on the plains.

The silence thats stuck

in the mid-air before

I mounted upon the steps

of her marbled flesh.

Sipping Coffee


sipping coffee

at the airport longue

of Chicago

is like entering a neatly-

packaged world

of endless freedoms,

with the black coffee

churning out memories

of the nimble-footed

American blondes,

the rustle of

their bare hands,

the glint in their eyes

the giggle in their voices,

and their endless au revoir

Something


Something is to be done

to achieve clandestine

peace within

that just slipped

through my fingers,

like a chance meeting

with my fiance.

Maybe, it isnt

as important as restoring

earths gravity

or synchronising

suns perorations.

But it must be done,

to live down

this shame of living.

Springtime


Springs in the air

as a repossession

of seasons best.

Its perhaps natures way

of expressing savoir faire.

Theres commotion

every where-in the wind,

in the sea and in the sky

when colours pour in,

like torrents,

into burgeoning roses,

& blooming cherries,

and chrysanthemums,

and into ever-present

lilies and enveloping trellis

in the courtyard,

& ready to descend

into the life of

a honed metaphor.

The Last Page


I wonder why I never

looked back

at the creeping shadows,

and delved the mix of mire

and blood that textured.

my body & formed into

my soul stuff.

I knew, I was fated

to carry the burden

of the Alps upon

my crumbling shoulders.

Now that ages telling

upon me,

my feet are cracking from

inside and my eyes are

straining for adjustment.

Ive lost have the sprawling

shade of a tree

thats once my home

where I stacked my memories.

I never knew that old age

was the last page of a tome

until I reached it,

imperceptibly, though...

The Sense of Life


A mere feeling

that youre alive

and breathing,

like winnowing

winds breaking,

is enough to drive off

mortal fear of

the absence of

form and syntax

that makes content

succulent.

Disease may pass

muster &

so is discomfort.

But life must be lived

on its own terms

with no strings of angst

attached to it and no death-

throttle any more.

Tomorrow


Tomorrows still

an uncharted territory

whose frontiers arent

yet defined,

and whose crystalline

pools of light arent explored.

Who knows of vintage

its gonna be?

Or whose sibling it really is?

Will it be another season

of epiphanies lying in wait?

Or a mere repetition of

harrowing nightmares?

I must keep my windows

open to allow hope

to stream in.

Maybe tomorrow

will be another day

of unhurried surmises

Tribute to a Friendly


You taught me how

to be simple in

language & symbol.

How to make friends

& humble & hurl them

into abysms of mortal fear

How to parade lies

as unblemished truths

& truths as paradigms

of forbidden fruits..

But, moron,

you never taught me

how to park

my unaccounted money

in the Swiss banks.

Walking Down


Walking down the shores

of the Atlantic ocean,

when the suns ready

to shut down,

wave after wave

of the dark waters of

the ocean

cleansed all my sins

of concupiscence.

I felt relieved as though

I walked into tufts of

unfolding epiphanies

that restored me

to a fugue of realities..

Back home,

I found the stars emitting

more light than expected

against the dark, entombing sky.

Waylaid Since


I felt as though

I was pushed onto

the edge of a horizon

when all my connexions

sundered with my past

triumphal song.

Where are those days

when I was buoyant

with spirit,

and felt to be young

was to be blessed?

But when my spirits sunk,

I felt, Ive bungled again,

to limn a metaphor

on the surface of a stream

i

Words Unspoken


Words unspoken

are often benign,

like the gentle touch

of morning breeze.

Buried under civility,

theyre never frozen

into blocks of cynicism.

& formatted with finessed

perfection, theyre never hard-

hitting like wind-thrust.

They are smoother

than the innocent

laughter of a child,

but sharper than

the edge of a sword.

so many freedoms final(03.10.13) (1).pdf

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