Iron Fist

You exult, amidst tumult
Anticipating a gory result
Your random utterings are law
Your captive audience a cult

You connive, cheerfully thrive
In the chaos you craft and drive
Your ego dominates reason
And dampens the will to strive

You pillage, you encage
You force people to wear beige
Sniveling brat or stunted adult
Your disposition hard to gauge

You are idolized, canonized
Your follies are minimized
You fret, fume, manufacture gloom
Your opposers are lobotomized

Championing minions, decreeing opinion
Freedom of speech you pinion
You suffer fools quite gladly
Who bloodily sustain your dominion

You resist, you persist
You rule with an iron fist
Keep applying undue pressure
Expect carpal tunnel in your wrist

You are wrong, you don’t belong
You can decry facts for only so long
You demand respect but command none
One day you will be ambushed by a throng

You are droll, you self-extoll
Your glib tongue ensnares all
But logic demands a change of season
The oppressed will Spring, and you will Fall!

What Floats Your Boat?

You sit in a boat. It is filled with a bunch of positive items that are undeniably yours - happy memories, wondrous moments, encouraging words from teachers and mentors, appreciation from people around you, the quiet, firm, and objective support of your family and friends, and the unconditional love of your child. These keep your boat buoyant.

There is a hydrofoil attached to your boat. It is made up of numerous sources of inspiration, accomplishments, aspirations, creative achievements, learnings, structured thought, and crystal clear perspective. On certain days, the hydrofoil activates and your boat rises above water, speedily headed towards a bright horizon.

You also have a container of fresh water, which has hope, optimism, and determination.

Your boat sits in the ocean. The ocean is made of negative elements – your fears, insecurities, self-doubts, stresses of daily life, betrayal by people you trusted whole-heartedly, unhappy memories, moments you would never want to recall, callous words spoken by close ones, expressions of disapproval from people you look up to, pain caused by the ones you loved because they did not return the kindness you extended them, the hurt you caused your loved ones due to your own insensitive actions, and the shock of dealing with bad outcomes resulting from your good intent. But that’s the ocean. You are in your boat, relaxed and comfortable, and you have fresh water. What’s to worry?

Well, there is a hole in your boat. Every day some water seeps into your boat. You spot it, scoop it up, and throw it out. And everything is fine again. You do this on a daily basis. If you don’t, there’s more water to clear out than you would like. Plus it’s salty water – you cannot drink it. Unfortunately, some people mistake that for fresh water, get used to drinking it, and forget the taste of fresh water.

Occasionally the sun goes behind clouds, and your boat gets hit with storms. The storm scatters your positive items, and it requires some effort gathering them and getting back to your boat. Sometimes the storm is severe, and the boat flips over. But you have the strength to flip it over and the foresight to perform some repairs and expansions so that the boat is more stable go forward.

In your journey, you notice many overturned boats, with people in the process of flipping them over. You also see people who are underwater - some in their boats, others absent their boats. The ones with boats are occasionally able to get back to their boat and make it buoyant again. Some of the ones without boats appear to enjoy being underwater and show no interest in searching for their vessel; some occasionally climb onto your boat and start throwing your positive items out, resulting in your sinking boat and their unavoidable departure; and some appear to be in agony yet weighed down heavily by an invisible force that prevents them from responding to offered assistance, let alone trying to reach for the surface.

And then there are boats that are not even touching water. They are most rare, and something to aspire to.

Negativity appears to be hardwired in the human psyche – it is the emotional equivalent of entropy. Happiness requires conscious effort and housekeeping on a very regular basis, but is totally worth it.

--------------------------------------------------------
Positivity is an effort, negativity a breeze
Integrity a burden, disingenuousness a tease
No matter how hard life appears to squeeze
The engine of happiness must never ever seize
--------------------------------------------------------

So what floats your boat?

Spectrum Eyes

In supreme nothingness, before time and space
Where concepts and constructs struggled for a place
Lit a spark that spread at a blistering pace
Spawning a cosmic dance of vicious grace

The subatomic froth tingled in anticipation
Of coagulating into building blocks of creation
Energy became matter and matter became batter
That spattered and splattered in an unruly summation

Time and space became entangled
While the electron and photon dangled
Wave and particle distinctions got mangled
As Newtonian and Einsteinian physics wrangled

Stars wielded absolute control over the dusty collection
That clustered and clumped into a planetary selection
Life emerged and crawled, struggled and evolved
Survival was difficult, but a natural predilection

Sentient beings burgeoned from a single cell
Equipped with curiosity and the urge to excel
Unraveled mysteries that were hidden well
By the cosmos, quietly watching their ego swell

Femto-seconds to eons, femto-meters to light years
Unimaginable ranges, unscalable frontiers
Given mankind's limited faculties and lifespan
This vast spectrum is not meant for us, it appears

We are a blip, an off-key note in the cosmic symphony
Possessing a sliver of understanding and oodles of disharmony
Wandering in this celestial labyrinth, inanimate yet alive
Contemplating the result of an infinite mind's epiphany

An anomaly jarringly coarse yet amazingly sublime
A speck of dust in the ever flowing sands of time
Marred by crime on the journey to spiritual prime
Is life on earth a flash of brilliance, or just washable grime?

=========================================
Note - The title of this poem comes from a very unlikely source - the lyrics of a shockingly awful song by he-who-shall-not-be-named, who can apparently see with his spectrum eyes.

Suspended Animation - A Short Story

A piercing scream cuts through the dense, foggy, moonless night with such ferocity that Charac almost falls off his bed. He wakes up, gasping for breath, utterly disoriented by his surroundings which appear drastically different from the previous day.

“What is this? How did I get here? What’s happening to me?”

He decides to survey his surroundings - a magnificent room, resplendent with art, wall ornaments, tapestries, a clear sign of wealth bordering on opulence. Two lanterns cast labyrinthine shadows, on opposing walls, of the crystal chandelier in the middle of the room. Charac finds a black uniform that looks strikingly similar to a Ninja’s. Without thinking too much, he puts on that uniform and unconsciously starts looking for his sword. Then he stops himself with a start.

“I am looking for my sword? Why am I looking for my sword? I have never held a sword before? What am I, a Ninja warrior? Why?”

He doesn’t find the sword but instead finds a device which, when activated, resembles a light sabre. He decides that will do, without pausing to debate the anachronistic situation. He gets ready to venture out in the dark of the night, his protective instincts at high alert. He decides to use his light sabre to light up the way and also cut through the dense forest that stands in front of him. As he starts walking through the forest, he is filled with a vague nostalgia. No matter how hard he tries, he is unable to pinpoint the source and gives up soon enough. He is shocked by what he finds when he comes to a clearing.

There is a giant balloon, glowing with an otherworldly iridescence. It is held down by a rope, and in the basket below the balloon, there is a person in a ninja uniform being pulled by a boy as he tries to cut the rope. The boy is screaming, but it appears to be fading in and out for no apparent reason. Charac darts towards the balloon, activates his light sabre, and strikes the other ninja warrior with such force that he appears to dissolve into thin air. He asks the boy, who is shaking uncontrollably, as to what happened.

“I am about to miss my train!”

“What?”

“I am about to miss my train. If I miss the train, I will not be able to get to school.”

“Why do you need a train to go to school?”, Charac asks, and immediately realizes that the more important question was about the boy’s safety, not his mode of transport to school.

“I have an exam today, I woke up late, and found that I missed the school bus. So I decided to take the train. However, my legs wouldn’t move fast enough and I am about to miss my train”

“What train?”, Charac asks, as he suddenly finds a train whipping past them at full speed. He immediately pulls the boy away from the train, to avoid getting sucked into the vacuum created by such speed.

“That train!”, the boy says triumphantly, but his glee rapidly turns to a grimace when he realizes he has missed the train.

“What about the Ninja warrior who was trying to take you away in the balloon?”

“Oh, he was going to punish me for missing my train”

“This is not making sense. What is your name?”

“I am Eamer”

“Hello, Eamer. Can I take you home?”

“I don’t know where exactly my home is, but you can try”. At that point, Charac suddenly collapses, as if the dark of the night (exacerbated by the sudden disappearance of the glowing balloon) seeped into his mind with amazing speed and shut it off.

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

A piercing scream cuts through the moonlit night with such intensity that Charac falls off his bed, gasping for breath. He finds himself in an utterly white room, with no black curtains. It is well-lit, but there are no windows, nor is there a door. He finds a uniform resembling a space-suit.

“What is this? Why do I keep having these blackouts and wake up in totally strange places? When will this end?”

Sensing no answer coming from the walls or the ceiling, he gives up and puts on the space-suit. Then he starts probing the walls to find a niche or a button that could open the hidden door. He finds something that resembles a switch. He presses it, and a door opens with a swish. Outside is the utter blankness of space, with stars not twinkling in the distance. He wonders how he is going to move around in space in his space-suit. He finds a button that activates a mini-rocket in his boots and with some practice and after a few bumps, he is able to navigate himself without much difficulty.

“Here goes!”

He shoots out the door, and finds a giant man-made satellite in the distance. As he gets closer, he finds a guy in a space-suit pulling a boy towards the satellite.

“Oh! That’s Eamer!”

He shouts Eamer’s name a few times, then slowly realizes that in space, no one can hear you scream. But then how did he hear the boy’s screams, and why is he still hearing them? He does not wait to ponder upon these questions, since some quick action is needed to save the boy. He uses the booster rockets in his boots to move speedily towards the satellite. When he gets very close, he engages in hand-to-hand combat with the other guy in the spacesuit – that is a funny sight because every shove translates into both parties moving away from each other. After a short tussle, the other guy just decides to go away.

“Who was that?”, he asks Eamer.

“That was my teacher”

“Teacher??”

“Yes – he teaches Astronomy”

“Your teacher is an astronaut?”, he asks, without realizing the absurdity of the situation.

“Yes, and he was going to punish me because I forgot how many planets are there in the solar system.”

“9?”, “No wait, Pluto has been demoted, so there’s 8”, “Oh my god, we are discussing the solar system while we are drifting around in space!!”

“Let me take you home, Eamer”

“Ok, it’s on Alpha Centauri, which is 4.5 light years away”

“Ha ha ha, you live on earth”

“No, I am the Alpha Centaur. This body is just a disguise. On no, I am going to miss my plane!”

“What is happening to me? This cannot be real…”, Charac says, as he feels slumber taking over his body with amazing speed.

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

Eamer wakes up with a start.

“What’s the matter? Are you ok? Were you having a nightmare?”, his wife asks.

“No, but I have been having a recurring dream over the past few days. There is this guy called Charac who turns up every night, trying to save me from absurd, amplified situations from my past, but he is only half successful because he gets confused after saving me and does not take me home. Instead, he faints. I have to then build a different room for him every night and place him there…”

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

A piercing scream cuts through the warm, rainy night with such potency that Charac almost falls off his bed…

Extinct Instincts

The dodo led an idyllic lifestyle
Free of flight, devoid of guile
Proved easy fodder, was not agile
Extinction was swift, execution style

Blissfully unaware of the looming invasion
Dodo was smug, survival instincts in abrasion
Nature could offer no strong persuasion
Ended up in a forever unbalanced equation

Survival of the fittest, an interesting notion
Did nature force creatures to crawl out the ocean
Snipping, cutting, revising without emotion
Till its creatures learn to deal with the commotion

Mankind reached the pinnacle of evolution
With advent of the industrial revolution
It mistook ecology for an economic solution
And mal-adapted environment to its pollution

Survival instinct tapers with every invention
GPS looks at sense of direction with condescension
Smartphones have become memory’s extension
Dollars and pounds maintained in cyber suspension

Today we specialize in banalities
And flirt with sinister dualities
Questionable traits have become qualities
We provide lip service to equalities

If electricity disappears we are sitting ducks
Money will be lost in dead binary bucks
Petroleum depletion will cause stopped trucks
And nature will go about with cheerful plucks

Technology paves way to all we crave
Survival instincts are what we waive
Looming tsunami wave, world is at a rave
Darwin keeps tossing and turning in his grave

Nature doesn't nurture survival instinct
It's take on existence is simple and succinct
Take away stimuli threatening and distinct
Come next disaster and you are extinct!