Monuments

Monuments

Build on you men, build on!

Build that which may stand tall and strong through quake and flood
Build that which may make you forget the price of your blood
Build that which may inspire a generation of scornful scions
Build that which may inspire a sacrifice of a thousand toothless lions

Build a monument - Oh men of misery!
Build with your hands and with your trickery
Build till your backs fork out of you
Build for you know what is true

Call in your experts and engineering technicians
Call in your lenders and your men of due diligence
Call in the number crunchers and the book keepers
Call in the three marketeers and let them seek the seekers

Build on you men, build a monument for me!

A monument where the river rerouted
A monument where the trees uprooted
A monument where the land was tough
A monument where the sea was rough

Is it not hope, that you cherished forever?
Is it not beautiful, the fruit of sweet labour?
Is it not love, all your prayers and cries?
Is it not just, that one small sacrifice?

A monument to your fists with hammers and sickles
A monument to your pens and swords and shields and fickles
A monument to the greed where you headfirst delve
A monument to the apathy of a father of twelve

Build on you men, build that someone may build one for thee!

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

A Boatman's Monologue

A Boatman's Monologue

I could have survived without the bridge. Like my fathers did for all those years. A man, after all, does not need bridges to survive. A man has to be self-sufficient. One does not need to go to the other side of the river for it. What new do they have there? The men there are the same. The villages are the same. It's the same country everywhere, is it not?!

And if anyone did want to cross over, they could use a boat. Like we friends had done when we were young. There was no bridge then. My father slapped me when I returned. He gave me no dinner too.

"Young boys have no business crossing the river; going to the other side. No business at all to leave their mothers worried.", he had scolded.

But then, that was no good reason to build a bridge, was it? Some people high up in those city offices wanted it built. They said that bridges connected people, brought in prosperity and growth. How? No one told us how.

These people are thieves, I tell you. Stealing a part of our livelihood this way! This fishing business does not earn a lot. Sure, it fills our stomach -  you should stop fishing if you can't catch that much and start begging - but what about the rest?! We have our house to mend, our women need their new clothes and stuff, our children have to go to school ... I too have a life now, don't I?

A truck from fisheries comes here every Tuesday and Saturday. Yes, from over the other side. We save a bit of it. But then I've got this sorry excuse of a boat. Needs mending every season.

Back in the days before the bridge, any person worthy of being called a man in these parts could make a decent living ferrying people across. Simple money for simple people. And fresh fish to go with it. Nothing much of it these days.

Don't be mistaken. I don't say anything bad of the river. She's been good to us. She's like my mother you know! Taken care of me and my people. Took care of my fathers too. But she's grown old now. Streaks of black and foam show up sometimes in the summers. Found some dead fish too. God knows what they do to her up in the city.

And she gets angry too. She flooded over two rains ago. Her water entered our houses and fields. Bad year it was. Lost two kids in the village. The third was saved by the hospital people. He was in bad shape by the time we got there. It was in the next village. Over the bridge, you know. The bridge saved him. You cant cross a flooded river, now can you?!

It's a tough life you know in these parts. Up in the river all day looking for fish. I don't even come home for lunch these days. I have it in the boat. Fix it to one of the bridge pillars under the shadow, eat, take a quick nap and then back to work.

Do stay here tonight if you boys have no rush. I will take you tomorrow on the other side on my boat. Just like the old days. I'll take you boys for free! Won't charge a paisa ... Promise!

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

Train Through A Tunnel

Train Through A Tunnel

Laid back, I sit by the open window
Resting my elbow on the frame
As the train rushes along, the fields
And rivers and trees, none ever the same

The subtleties of indifferent change
Brought of a steady foreign influencing
I sit through and watch it unfold
Over drifting pungent wafts of seasoning

The world, in essence, passes by
And is faster still the passing of day
The sun, exhausted on its own
Pulls out to its pale red parking bay

It's dark all of a sudden, a rushing dark
Not the sun, it still has a while to go
It's an ominous dark, a tunnel of smoke
For the light I then hold, inching slow

The subtleties of change, not indifferent
The now inward self influencing
I can no longer sit and watch unfold
Over the pungent wafts of self burning

The smoke thickens as old people join
The clouds left behind, for me to grow
The more the merrier, or contrary
For the light I then hold, inching slow

It's light, and sudden stops the smoke
The sun out west efforts on in my frame
As the train rushes along, the fields
And river and trees, none ever the same

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

The Resignation Of The Resigned

The Resignation Of The Resigned

The path of you, your resignation
And the roads looking forward
Their summary asymptotic union
All encompassing, closing inward

The precession of omnivore hope
And the unfocused discretes
The faces that deny a stillness
In contrasts of unlighted streets

The promises, long laundered
Amid reassuring attempts
The self-help, the self-battles
The self-love and contempts

This resignation has been adrift
A paper boat in choppy waters
An ablution from the relatives
In absolutes of uneasy saunters

The railing on a loosened bolt
The last unsevered connect
To the unraveling of the reality
Where asymptotes intersect

Who has prepared for this?
Not your twisted flicker smile
This path of you, your resignation
Your trudge to the farthest mile

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

A Drive In the Mountains

A Drive In the Mountains

The reds, the greens and the in-betweens
The vestiges of a thousand strife
But there runs a course to judgement
That race veiled by a stubborn life

The chaos calls and beckons once more
The day calls back to the old grind
But if I run a while back to the start
That sweet, sweet spot I may find

The tempered ashes burn here all day
The life here hides behind bends
But memories linger and beacons shine
That balance off regrets and amends

"Get out my lad, get out!"
There screams a voice in my head
"Get out when you still can
You're better not alive than dead!"

The drive out along this mountain road
The heavy darkness descended thick
But me and my ride burn as one
Her motors by my blood run quick

The escape runs a sharp, tight road
The ascents, the falls, the hypnosis
But shattered it be by the blinding blinkers
That rush along the median amiss

"Exhilarate me, my lad, exhilarate!
Lower down your lamps there
Prepared you are to fly me off
But I aint not going anywhere!"

The summit cold at the dead end
The first dew throws its weight
But the road has ended and here I am
That sudden dawn and shimmering gate

"That's it my lad, enter, enter!
Enter that you may never live"
The key is my hand is warm still
I turn around, I have more to give

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

The Driftwood Gamble

The Driftwood Gamble

It's a gamble one takes

To be unstuck from his world

Lose semblance of reality, past

A tree, if one may consider

That frees from the soil

And unto a river has itself cast

And a tree it is called no more

Driftwood it is now, afloat

This river guided by the earth

In whose currents the tree sheds

Every last leaf that may later rot

Or feed many a fish in mirth

And then onto the ocean deep

Casts the river its pile

To toss and turn and shimmer and burn

Forever floating amid flotsam

On the blue-green vortex of tides

Under the eyes of the moon and the sun

That is a gamble one takes

To be unstuck from his world

Against hope of a glorious day

When this driftwood may touch

A foreign soil and take root

Birth a new life, a new way

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

The Eucalyptan Rustle

The Eucalyptan Rustle

The sunset breeze brings in tales
From the far lands out west
The mountains that raise my horizon
And the sea far beyond

I sit here listening amidst the leaves
This sweet-pungent carpet, ever growing
As the tales rise in louder fervour
And ebb away after dark

The tales are distant, of the unknown
Not all complete, or rational
Like day-dreams of a distant cousin
And I'm the unsuspecting privy 

I listen, for it is better
It reminds me of books
These, the tales of the breeze
Tales, in the eucalyptan rustle

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

The Principled Man

The Principled Man

"That's the way I do it"
Says our principled man
Exceptions are his rules
And then describes in essence
All that he refrains, if he can

Persistence is personified
In our principled man
He's always out of tools
And his ramblings are forever
Astride a cranky ol' motor van

Give a soft couch of comfort
To our principled man
Think often of the mules
And he calls you a foolish splurge
'cause all foam deserves a ban

Its always a silent battle
For our principled man
Shrapnel are for fools
And the stakes are always high
So to the flanks is where he ran

Never look straight in the eye
Of our principled man
Glares of shimmering pools
And the flares may seem blinding
The wasted fire of a burning man

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain

An Anomaly In Ownership

An Anomaly In Ownership

To have and to have not
To hand and to hand not
The edges blur away
Was it mine to say?
Where it starts and where it ends
Defined by roads with sharp bends
In a finite space and an infinite void
A zero sum of sorrows and moments joyed
Of checks and balances that slowly wither
Of serpents and arrows and veiled slither
A sinking feeling of my own undoing
In moments that hearken an up-going
Where does it stop, where does it end?
Where do I start and where do I mend?
Is it not mine to say?
No, the edges blur away

-x-x-x-

© Parched For Rain