Blogging from A-Z Challenge: V for Virtue--a poem

Being virtuous is like being in love

you never know if the moonlit path 

you think you’re traveling will lead you anywhere.

You are dazed in pursuit of a flame

of desire unheeded or forcefully dulled,

and destination is forever hidden under heaps of garbage.

Maybe we are never sane in life and 

never virtuous too,

May be it’s all an insincere battered act 

we put on to close the chamber that lead

us to air and water and laughter.

Maybe all we aim is an arranged communiqué

with the citadel of philosophy,

and knowledge of that dead art of pontificating 

practiced by grotesque agelasts long departed.

Enclosed in the cloistered shyness of virtues

lost and never to be regained  is the unconditional,

unenclosed sea of mortal wishes.

The heaving waves hammering on dust and sand

act as impediment to my pursuit of moral cries

for nonviolence and sleepy righteousness,

but like a king’s fool aiming at a jest I it can never  perfect,

I know the ideal is inaccurate, 

that virtue is a slow-dead comic art that never entertains. 

Blogging from A-Z Challenge: U for USA

Like every day, this evening too as I sat prior to giving form to few inchoate thoughts that crowd the cranium, I spent a few moments ruminating. The few vacant moments before the inception of the mental activity of mothering words and sentences on a black sheet of virtual paper, prove particularly efficacious for me. It gives me a chance to concentrate and connect with that little voice in the head that often chirrups away and then often is balefully silent. about something. Especially after an enervating day when the exhausted body-mind craves for a communiqué with a pillow over a few dreamless hours, I find it extremely difficult to establish contact with the meta-voice. On such days, I often find myself haunted by thoughts of a creative block, or wonder if I am inflicted by some malicious ailment that would prevent me from writing any further. But all intimidations vanish when that little voice in the head start talking once again to self. Today it has been more than busy thinking aloud and reiterating to self the fond memories of my stay in the USA.

For nearly six years after I got married I lived in the USA. It was in that country that I grew up, learned how to take care of self and family, learned how to cook, clean and keep a house. Moreover, it was in the vacant hours at home in the country that I realized the joy of reading and composing write-ups. I believe in many ways the country has matured me and made me the woman I am today. Over the fun and the frolic of experimenting with chores and housekeeping, over the trips we took to different states, over the experiences gathered and the people met, I fell in love with the country. It is often said that you cannot love another country the way you love your own, that your patriotism is limited to the land that bore you in its womb; nevertheless, on the five 4^th of Julys’ I spent in USA, I found myself singing the patriotic paean to the country the same way like my neighbor. We know that the idea of nation is a fictional contract, that in reality boundaries that separate countries are illegible pencil marks on paper removed with an eraser, and I felt that the bouts of patriotic love for the country I experienced satisfied my doubt that you are capable of loving two countries, two motherlands.

I remember those long days when I would sit at the library at Vanderbilt University and read my fiction books and dream about getting back to school myself. Certain circumstances prevented me from attending school in USA; but my love for academics, my stern promise to self that come what may I will get back to school and finish my degree was begotten in that country. I often tell to myself that I did need the hiatus of a few years in my academic career to realize how fabulously cool studying for a subject you love is. Now that I am doing exactly that, despite all the difficulties I experience in life, I feel fantastic.

I know the idea of American dream is perhaps more relevant in bygone novels penned by creative writers than in real life. Nevertheless, to me, USA, my fond pied-à-terre will always be the land that taught me to dream, to persevere in the pursuit of that dream and prove all negative voices wrong by catching the blinking dreamy star in your gowpen.

I see the picture of the Statue of Liberty, the tall, ventripotent lady standing with one upraised arm holding the torch of enlightenment pointed in the direction of the firmament and feel what a beautiful it was seeing her only a month before we left the country. As I stood on the deck of the boat that took me near to lady liberty, I felt my eyes cloud with unseen dreams, unheard ambitions that I now spend my time chasing. It was a beautiful experience seeing her and the rest of the beautiful places in USA; and when I won’t say my stay in the US was totally devoid of negative experiences, I surely prefer to disregard those dregs and concentrate on the delicious mouthfuls I enjoyed during my stay in that country.