Lines under a street lamp

The shadows are long in unknown streets
the insects hovering over sick neon lights
like strangers from faraway lands,
they look beautiful under shadows
and die in the sun, each day.

A small boy sits in its jaundiced light,
sick and yellow with hunger?
Somewhere from a remote gali
Pakeeza comes alive-

I climb a rock and read a poem,
I scream I shout and enact,
at my nonexistent audience.
They clap in their busy songs,
in callousness strewn over each other.
A black moth approves-

People fill the roads like rats,
milling over-
careless, faceless,
hurry in every crease.
Lovers pause for life,
behind a lamp, a shrub?
Life lives for a while.

A phone rings,
my shadows come home-
On the road back,
in pieces I become my role
and play it.

 © 2013 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image from http://www.google.co.in/imgres?start=353&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=653&tbm=isch&tbnid=8L_NUUlUKQ9ctM:&imgrefurl=http://www.colourbox.com/image/medieval-deserted-alley-at-night-with-yellow-street-lamps-image-2226054&docid=1SfwfSpqpLGqgM&imgurl=http://www.colourbox.com/preview/2226054-706585-medieval-deserted-alley-at-night-with-yellow-street-lamps.jpg&w=417&h=480&ei=OwSBUrDUD4TBrAewgIGICw&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:71,s:300,i:217&iact=rc&page=19&tbnh=175&tbnw=145&ndsp=19&tx=78&ty=78 ) 

Moments

There have been times and moments when,
The urge to put every thing aside comes aloft my mind.
To be as free as the bird that sings,
It’s, swan- song from the skies above.

To move with total abandon, not to think,
No more secrets not even from one self.
To be as light as the wind,
To be like the soaring imaginations--------

Just to smile as I walk by
And count God’s blessings that,
I am free and free and alive.

To dance a jig on the crowded streets
That I am one of this huge congregation of humanity.
Big dreams do people dream,
But I have the urge,
For some such mundane pleasures,
That would fill my life, with joy unbound.

But things lie just as they are,
Still to be done, still to be felt,
Still to be experienced --------------------

© 2007 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury