This document contains 59 short poems or fragments on various themes including nature, life, death, memory, and the passage of time. The poems range from 3 to 6 lines and explore ideas through minimal yet vivid language and imagery. Overall, the collection provides a glimpse into the human experience and condition through concise and impactful poetic expressions.

1. Fragments

2. Fragments
Pieces of poetry

3. 1
Buddha in a selfie
You sure look cute in the selfie
Without underwhelming mane.
You reveal yourself in the body
Whose ears are smelling death.
You are a mere stone smelling
Our deaths ,a common destiny.
As you stretch hands for selfie
You are stone about our deaths.

4. 2
Retrospect
A lion turns head back for a moment
As it walks into the shadows of future.
The cowherds who live in forest there
Spot a calm understanding in its eyes
As it looks back each time it walks past.

5. 3
Making soul grow
( Kurt Vonnegut, calling himself an old geezer at 84 resembling an
iguana, advises five New York city high school students to make art
to make soul grow )
Soul lies in old geezer’s iguana body.
Life is perfect art ,while rhythm lasts.
And iguanas say no poems ,only lies.
But poet iguanas speak beautiful lies.
Soul is a thing to lie about, be lied to
As geezers do their iguana business.

6. 4
You fail and I fall
I fall on a face for your failure,
Steal the dust of your thunder .
If fallible, where have I failed?
It is you who failed (at) your job.
(I imagine Job saying this to God in the Book of Job)

7. 5
Noise
We are essential about inner stuff.
Our inside skirts outside moments
As fickle stuff born of noise snake.
Our inside comprehends outside
As a long crawl of the noise snake
Trying to make fury of moments.

8. 6
Semicolon;
But now poem stops at a stanza break
A wait at the tip of the tongue, a word
In making, a thought with semicolon.
Let it wear an iambic meter under belt,
Get up and go , wherever stanza takes.

9. 7
Litter
Midnight poses grave threat
With poems by the late hour.
You may sleep it off as if last.
Take no steps towards words.
They are broken angel wings
Found littering our midnight.

10. 8
Theory for everything
We may have to explain everything
Including ourselves, in deep throat
And funny flesh fails to work bones
Towards their theory of everything.
We need our theory to explain how
All our everything fits into nothing
And why time that began with bang
Always ends up in a sky’s pot holes.

11. 9
Wedding game
He plays a running away game
Under the bachelor’s umbrella
To river city where bodies flow.
But my brother will not let him.
I play at casting glances at him
With cross eyes of pure delight.

12. 10
Bird doubts
We had no doubts about the lovebirds
As they preened the feathers together.
Did birds have doubts as they cooed ?
With doubts in throat they can’t dance
Their joint feet on a hot awning sheet.
The mutual preening is now doubtful.

13. 11
Tape
Train’s sound went on like audio tape
That lay curled in passing paddy field
And bird up and down in phone wires.
Some time a mild journey would stop.
Songs would stop to play ,birds freeze.
Drizzle would pour like bodies of flies.

14. 12
Bears
Beyond the green of coconut trees
Were hills that held the possibility
Of bears descending nightly to eat,
Sugar cane crop ripe for harvesting.
Bears loved sugarcane in the plains.
The farmers slept in thin moonlight.
Farmers sleeping under new moon
Did not love bears in thin moonlight.

15. 13
Still
Airport is still until I shall carry it
In an overhead locker I may close,
So as not to cause hurt to others.
Airport will fly this and hereafter ,
As soon as I finish with the mirror
In restroom , its due comparison.

16. 14
Jessamines
Because she could not stop for death,
He stopped for her briefly in carriage.
Her hyphens are a stopping for death
Holding a breath to smell jessamines.
(remembering Emily Dickinson’s heavily hyphenated poems

17. 15
The narrative
The grand narrative shall go on
Briefly interrupted by an event.
You see the narrative resumes
Soon after the big event ends.
The wooden posts that enclose
The festivities are pulled down,
As temporary skies after event,
Leave earth maps of filled holes.

18. 16
In the ICU
In my mist are vague contours
Of people and shrouds of them
Walking towards me and away
Like wind that wanders in mist
Or a rain that comes in walking
On the road ,as gusts of a wind
As people and daughters about,
People and mine from a womb,
And white robed figures in long
Tails hanging from their necks.

19. 17
Waterfall
Nothing about it is permanent except
Going over edge in a gondwana plain,
A ninety feet drop in an abyss of spray.
Go down its hellish depths, in its fog.
Look your eyesight up to a pure white
Streak from old sky, a permanent sky,
Holding no permanent water ,but fall
A fall dizzily impermanent, set in blue.

20. 18
Stream
It is a space and mine and yours,
As it flows outward into a silence
A light bulb percolates its silence
In a lonely room and its windows
Are some holes in light darkness
A cold before- morning darkness
That has just come out of a sleep
Its ink spilled on opposing trees,
Unfinished buildings in iron rods
That pierced a soft belly of dawn.

21. 19
Overstated
A bulb of ego can sprout in verse and sky
As water would hit India’s bottom of wind
Its hills shedding the tears of virgin’s loss.
The grass lily’s color hits you in the navel,
Just woke from sleep of temporary fugue.
In your camera view , it is unearthly color
Where the flowers are simply overstated.

22. 20
Hand on hand
Hand rests on a hand on a heart.
Colors flow away from the hand
And rest on a darkness of room.
Heart rises abruptly from dress.
Colors betray your everywhere.
There are over and in the room.
(thinking about Rembrandt’s painting The Jewish Bride)

23. 21
Open school
School had no brick-mortar walls
And gave us a holiday during rain.
A sky was many times pale white,
Floating with amoebas of clouds.
School had no walls ,only borders
Marked out by beginning of walls.
Between the plinth and a tin roof
Was the nagging infinity of a sky.

24. 22
The physiotherapist
My boy therapist took me down .
He is Apollo for my outgrowing.
My limbs outgrow my existence,
Thanks to an Apollo who grows.
My limbs flow from static gown,
The benchmark for outgrowing.
Apollo shall be a benchmark too
For the death I wear on my body.
(Please read Anne Sexton’s poem Sylvia’s death)

25. 23
Beauty dust
Ask no body for whom it tolls
Wasting breath upon a poem.
Tolls are generic for all DNAs.
Love and poetry are matters,
Intimate to bones and flesh,
A beauty dust mildly falling.

26. 24
History of dust
We are dust of tribe in religion,
Revenge wars and body killing,
Grinding a body to its fine dust.
We are dust of camel’s laughter,
Staring at the holes in a history.
We make fine dust of our holes.

27. 25
Calculating
Buddha stood over ruins of time
As toll we paid for atavistic folly.
We would then count our fingers
In garland as our proud treasury.
Buddha women hovered angels
On wings above Buddha smiles,
In stone leaves stirring wisdom.
We calculate what ruins we are.
(on a visit to the ruins of Buddhist stupa in Amaravati)

28. 26
Referent
Body is a referent , thing referred to
Or the one referring , ibid, page 451.
Referent is body about itself in minds
And other bodies in history of space.
Body is the thing referred to in space.
It is a thing referring or referred to.

29. 27
The Act
The zebras tend to smile after the act
And at times before , in anticipation.
Their camouflage acts fine normally
As smiles are taken for tree shadows.
After act ,no difference exists in smiles
Between a zebra’s and its predator’s.

30. 28
Not there
I have a notion that all this is not there
With the sun and the clouds and a sky,
Falling into the sea, in a fit of laughter,
The wind sporadic from the mountains.
Mountains are not there in the horizon.
The horizon is notion from our dreams,
Embedded in old mountains not there.
Notions are not there and these bodies.

31. 29
Stroke
This sort of a smile is just some ice,
Frozen Arctic waste on mom’s face,
Fixed for ever and there is no gold,
A worn sunset with no talk of dawn.

32. 30
Cotton suicides
The monsoon is treacherous
On cotton in a cracked land.
Minds get cracked like land
And bodies disappear in fans.
( Successive droughts in Maharashtra have led to a spate of
suicides by cotton farmers)

33. 31
Horse smiles
These are not made of effulgent light
That dissipates to the interior of west.
They are made of real earth to break.
Watch made- to- break horse smiles
As their faces break in a comic mirth
Of earth horses expected to fly a sky.
(Bankura in West Bengal is famed for beautiful terra cotta horses
made by traditional craftsmen)

34. 32
Lens error
It is lens error, dear, just like my life
Which I had chanced upon in error
On the bleak shores of fetal nothing.
All our pictures remain in our minds
Our river valleys and ancient stupas
Stay deep in gorges of brown history.

35. 33
The pink palace of Jaipur
The soft pink of a wind palace
Does not jell with a poverty’s
Blazing red tie-and-dye saree,
Too kitschy for our proud art,
Too sentimental for our souls.
Let us have bright red bangles.
They contrast better with pink.
And there is poverty in them.

36. 34
Burying fruit
We live cozily under a thatch recalling
Cashew-fruit that lay temptation’s way,
A taste shriveled up on our sand bodies .
Knowledge is but sensation ,a sand fruit
That has cosied up to the beat of the sun.
We are waiting to bury fruit in the sand.

37. 35
Sine die
Kids are busy with the fingers
Upon costly gaming consoles.
No body now plays with toys
And the socks have big holes.
We have decided to postpone
Saint Nicholas’ visit sine die.

38. 36
Crybabies
Every time I feel alive
I smell like baby soap,
In silky toothless smile
From an excess crying .
I feel rich with smells
And I smell of riches.
Deaths are crybabies,
Permanent after dusk.
They do not smell rich
Nor smile as baby soft.

39. 37
Fragments
Being fragments we copy a way,
As a series of oil lamps seeking
An ephemeral existence by wind.
We do copies of deaths by wind,
Of trees of birds in broken sleep,
A moon fluttering on totem pole
A fragmentary moon of a dream
That is a figment from our sleep.
Copies are fragments of our lives.

40. 38
Joker mirrors
You may now indulge yourself
A bit of verse , a new universe.
Let words touch ears creating
Other worlds, new semantics,
Joker mirrors to break oneself
In weird ,implausible splinters.

41. 39
Demos for their kratos
We are demos, for their kratos
Our thumbs illiterate, fungible,
Eligible for a mutual exchange.
Our body is all – time fungible,
With no color to it like money.

42. 40
Fat pants, small pants
You have now grown into a fat pants.
Your eyes no longer flutter in the day
But only in the darkness behind sleep
Where dreams are staged in rapid eye.

43. 41
Keep laughing
Please keep laughing as letters fall,
I laughing at I-self, the leaf falling,
I from the upper case’s only letter.
Fall is only business lonely business.
The comings are all leaves together
But goings are only leaf, lonely leaf.
(referring to E.E. Cummings’ poem l(a” )

44. 42
They do it
In some hills bodies are not stamped
But carry grass proudly on their heads
As if they are hills under a fresh grass.
As we ask them to the facetious faces
Who does it , now and day and night .
They laugh their faces to say they do.

45. 43
Grief
We wanted to stop all world’s clocks
But neighbor has to catch early local.
Son stops world clocks, in distance.
He is cutting off all world’s phones.
He is packing up the sun and moon
From the other side of the Atlantic.
(Taking off on W. H. Auden’s poem “Stop all the clocks”)

46. 44
Icarus is falling
The farmer ploughs land with horse
And shepherd tends innocent sheep.
Sun shines brightly on falling bodies.
We open window to find him falling
And farmer’s horse still furloughing.
It is a fine spring day and a calm sea.
(“ The Fall of Icarus” A landscape painting by Pieter Brueghel)

47. 45
Drunk watchman
Someone had fucked you into being.
You were no less to blame for a liver
Now living in its state of drowsiness.
Gladly you liver ,now gladly you die.
( with echoes from R.L. Stevenson’s poem “Requiem” and Phillip
Larkin’s poem “This Be The Verse”

48. 46
My old books
Books are asleep behind the glass.
They are old with the Alzheimer’s.
The minds are yet Einstein- sharp .
They keep forgetting who they are.
We worry they may unbolt a door
And walk away from night’s sleep.

49. 47
Temporary meaning
Meaning is purely temporary like
When an army man in snow hills
Falls to a shell in anonymous war
In the white anonymity of snow
For a meaning that never was his
Or for that matter anybody else’s.

50. 48
Humdrum
You had sung the way to Registrar.
As you woke up to new white day,
Your clouds would go fluffy white.
And then a gray humdrum started.
The sparrows would flit in gutters.
Behind clothesline lay humdrum.
Now it’s humdrum of dark gowns.
It is a humdrum of sliding glasses.
It is a humdrum of the stale song.

51. 49
Torso
In a torso that gazed at us facelessly.
It was light from the marbled inside.
Apollo lost a face but not dark center
Where procreation flared for beauty.
While love was in the center of body,
It has not a place that does not love.
( reading Rilke’s beautiful poem The Archaic Torso of Apollo)

52. 50
Drops
From out of impotent tranquility
The night drops into washbasin,
In a series of quick short sounds.
Plumber fellow drops on Monday
Like big banyan tree of the night
Slowly comprehending darkness.
Drops are like a body’s plumbing
Of our slowly comprehending life.

53. 51
Vapor
There is the sky in the trees,
That is a vapor of our vision
As we lift our eyes up to sky.
These trees are our sky roof,
Our vision reaches as vapor
Of eyes half-closed and shut.

54. 52
Dog and her old friend
They make joke of her seeming lying
In complete canine disinterest in flies,
Her lack of tail for flying wind of flies.
After her old friend stopped thinking
In an arm, she is such a dogged friend
Who brings the smile back to her eyes.

55. 53
The window sill
The sill is there to break abruptness
To make a landing soft and smooth.
It is there as transit point before fall.
It is there to host rain-moths that die
On the pane ,trying to embrace light.

56. 54
Particles
Body is the essence of night,
a falling of flowers
A few particles of the night,
on the way to dawn.
The red of their stems is
the feet up, faces down
Quietly buried in the earth
of the dust, leaf-swept
By women of organic garbage,
to a greater dusk.

57. 55
Children’s games
You are kids from our knees down
Looking on the world as blue hills
In a fuzzy grove of the far off trees.
You play games round wood pillars
Of eye’s dreams, also-have-beens.
You hide and we seek the very eyes.
Your rules change like life’s rules
With no notice, now this, now that.
From knees up, don’t grow to sky.

58. 56
Brakes
Silent rain and rainbows of grease
Trace on the road polygonal maps.
The grease maps drop from squeals
Of rained brakes in car undersides.

59. 57
Prices
The fish are mostly in a lake
Sometimes, found by the lake
Lumped with random friends
They do not set their prices.
Stomachs decide how much.
They are later buried in them.
Stomachs don’t set own prices.
They are later buried.

60. 58
My dead
My dead are holes in space, where they lived.
They are now words that will live in thoughts.
They remain in my mind, as images of reality
Till I become a hole in space, a picture, a word.

61. 59
Dementia
As our understanding vanishes, we stare,
In eyes of nothing, at the nothing of wall.
We then teeter on the edge of thought.
Our words will then sound as soft poem,
Like breeze from an understanding tree
Meaningless but high art in its bleakness.

62. 60
News waves
Body is what thinks on toilet seat,
Newspaper on lap, mind on a peg.
Let world worry inside newspaper.
I sit on fringe and let a news rage.
Body is what I own, fat and grown.
News waves toss corpses of others

63. 61
Passer- by
You passer-by, where are you now?
I forget when you last passed me by.
You did not say bye from teeth gap
Where you laughed out your wind ,
With a white mane shaking a wind,
You still laugh there, inside a walk?

64. 62
Ice cream
A divorce would seem the fitting finale.
Second wedding called ice cream from
Emperors of ice cream, three inch high.
Horny on ice cream or a whipped curd?
No one is emperor except on ice cream.
Wedding or divorce, he whips a dream.
(Emperor of ice cream is an echo from Wallace Stevens’ poem by
that title)

65. 63
Dancing their dances
In desert we are not our women but men.
But we dance their dances remembering
Their steps ,on desert sand, as they would
Back home, in kitchens and earth-stoves
Where fire dances its tongues on breads.

66. 64
The wooden pillar
The pillar is smoothly rounded by the girl
As she swirled with hands holding it tight.
She whirled around it holding it steadfast.
It is worn smooth with her love for years.

67. 65
Images
The banyans see their images break
As red fruits they drop touch a pond
To assess the circular extent of ripple.
Fruit by bloody fruit ,we drop bodies.
Their images break as mere routine.

68. 66
White tiger
We try to reason need for white,
A setting apart sense, idle king’s
Sylvan fancy or his wild life love
Or a color change for king’s eyes
Bored with a golden brown coat
Burning bright in a Blake poem.

69. 67
Velvet
Old poet is himself paltry thing.
His poetry is just a hole , a tatter
That admits much light and heat.
At the foot of comic stick hosting
His coat ,crawl red velvet coated
Creatures just out of a wet earth.

70. 68
Curtain edges
Man here recalls a night of dreams
He had made, for daughter’s jewel.
Her wedding is far off for the jewel.
Meantime liquid dreams are made.
If only fucking curtain edges do not
Grow light , in such frightful hurry.

71. 69
Cotton ball
We like to be anonymous
So we are not questioned
For what should not have
Occurred in the first place,
The beginning of our story
As if we had engineered it.
We like to remain faceless
With tiny holes for breath
And a standby cotton ball
To prevent forays of ants.
They seem to know names.

72. 70
Write to make world a consistent whole
The words flow like ant lines
connecting space
Filling crevices with homes,
with tiny presences
Building bridges on tiny
cross-country streams .
They write to make world
a consistent whole.

73. 71
Mutual acknowledgement
You feel a jerk in bird’s puny body
As sudden eyes fall on its existence.
Mutual is bird’s acknowledgement
Of your existence, your being there.

74. 72
Nobody to ordain
Here no leaf stirs without his ordaining.
The process of ordaining is big thought
And big thoughts remain where they are,
In your time and in other people’s space.

75. 73
Glistenings
The old lady sits on the river bank
With stainless steel bowl to collect
A few glistenings at a shiny bottom
So stomach will have a glistening
At the bottom of a growling night.

76. 74
Stranger
On river’s other side is shirtless girl
Waiting for morsel, first of the day.
She awaits morsel that side of river.
She is a stranger ,this side of river.

77. 75
The military
You are now one up with your best smirk
And you are military-stiff and high in air,
On other shoulders that will be later stiff.
And the military will go on uninterrupted.
You are rigid and stiff on other shoulders
And with funny movement up and down
While the shoulders breath up and down.

78. 76
Catching sense
Catch sense at two removes from a reality
Leap-frogging words to get at your truth.
At the top of the winding stair is the blue
That promises sense in its vast emptiness.
(referring to George Herbert’s poem Jordan)

79. 77
Gorgeous nothings
Some poetesses write their gorgeous poetries
On the back of origami style postal envelopes
Busy making their envelope poems they avoid
High chairs and shaking hands over envelopes.
In gorgeous nothings,you avoid men and law
And fold your envelopes neat in origami style.

80. 78
Star insurance
Old man poet is sleeping benignly
Under his jasmines smelling stars .
Thank stars he is sleeping benignly.
He is fine by astrologist’s report.
Star insurance is the name in sky,
Looks down benignly on old poets.

81. 79
Not so polite
It is awkward to look away from eyes
Birds have old school polite manners.
Tree was too polite to admit its death.
When it comes to death everybody
Pretends and everyone is too polite.
But a wood-cutter’s ax is not polite.

82. 80
Vintage
Thumbing through old photographs
I think of an old woman by the river.
Wonder if a vintage is still unbroken.
I re-live a moment from the context
When we existed in joint river space
But every context is broke sometime.

83. 81
Stretching and biting
In that bone house it would appear
The lower mandibles are stretching
And stretching to produce scream
Fated to fail to reach down the ears.
They tried to bite a clever sarcasm,
Surely a futile endeavor, especially
They do not have tongue in cheeks.

84. 82
No one in particular
Baby cried to let no one know in particular.
Rain fell on no particular balcony’s awning.
Midnight poems had no theme in particular
And a dark night fell on no particular trees.

85. 83
Laburnum ,dogs and I
The laburnum is in yellow bloom.
Street dogs are sleeping under it.
Dogs have under a score of years.
I have four or more to a Bible life,
My springs less for more blooms.

86. 84
Memento mori
It was a memento mori , a dusty word,
We learnt in someone’s effort to know
How to be dust ,in church monument.
As the dust of cow hoofs returns home
Some basil leaves turn dust in mouth.
(Reference is to George Herbert’s poem Church monuments)

87. 85
Descartes
Adam’s apple goes down my sigh.
I ask who was Descartes and why.
I ask why I am not and have a fly
In my flowers and why sky is high.