The Nowhere Man
Starved of sleep, he lets phantom words
Dance in the dark deep
Of his mind; kindling a holy unrest.
Neither here nor there;
ownsome and lonesome; The Nowhere Man
is everywhere and yet nowhere;
Celebrating nada, nothingness;
Of all that was, is, and is yet to come.
Surfeited with words;
He hungers for silence
But a chattering carnival desire
Won’t let him sleep; this man
with a taste for the abyss.
Calypso dancers slip
Into his room unbidden; finds his lips
Parted, speaking the unspeakable.
A Prayer
Say a prayer
for The Nowhere Man.
Be a secret sharer
In His soul’s bewitched, dark mystery.
A prayer
On his wine-dark lips
Those parched lips
That scatter droplets of unashamed lust;
An athirst earth waiting for first flowers.
Bread and wine,
Body and dust,
A sacrament most divine.
In the howling desolation of bourgeoisie bazaars
Abuzz with hustlers, jugglers
and cheap versifiers selling masked desires;
he keeps his solitary pain aglow.
Resists rage and rant; go slow
Shop in silence, meditate in malls.
Healing will flow from her mystic stare;
Stripping you of pretences, naked and bare.
A New Dawn
Flung by indifferent Gods
Onto his dancing tumult;
Abandoned into the dark night,
He looks within, finds a light;
Fireflies flitting in a deep, dark void.
Bewitched with buxom fantasies,
He scorns salvation.
This night will not end,
Alone and unaided,
He must trace aureoles
Of a new dawn.
Birds fly, rivers flow;
He got to be the song he sings.
Author Profile
- Manish Chand is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) and India and World, a pioneering magazine focused on international affairs. He is CEO, Centre for Global India Insights, an India-based think tank focused on global affairs.
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