SUNIL SHARMA

Sunil Sharma

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION OF AN ODD MAN

Between the start and the end

Of a new year,

Lies a continent of

Hope and bleak struggle and grim despair,

A strange continent

That needs to be travelled,

By the tiny feet of the frail beings,

On a planet already going gray,

Visited by tsunamis and famines,

And terrorist violence and ethnic hatreds

To divide peoples,

A cursed lonely planet of rising temperatures,

And shrinking rain forests and bursting toxic mega cities,

With depleting water tables,

And ballooning prices and run-away recession.

Where Man is becoming

A used metro ticket---to be discarded after use and not to be retained,

Items becoming sexy

On the shelves of the

Gleaming plexes,

In the frozen tundra of spirit,

Let us celebrate and welcome then---

The eternal hope

For a new paradise on earth!

Our linked tiny hands can achieve

What the governments do not want to achieve!

Copenhagen or no Copenhagen,

We will work our patch of backyard green.

Amen!

HALL OF POLISHED MIRRORS

In a hall of polished mirrors,

There are many for only

One unitary self;

Multiple, identical copies,

staring from inside the gleaming mirrors---

At the original you.

The curious hand moves forward

to touch and feel the mirrored self,

The hand imprisoned in the glass

Moves, at the same instant, at you

And---

The reflected image and original you

Meet and lock

In that single but electrical moment,

And---

A  new lyric is

Born,

Out of the fused two.

You are the mirror

And the mirror is You!

CONVERSATIONS

Interesting long-distance conversations,

Mine: the longer ones,

Yours: short and precise,

Forming little Haikus of love,

Like broad lotus petals floating,

In the River of fast-flowing

Life.

Distances crumble,

Mindscapes get lit,

On dark stormy nights,

Dialogue is-------------

Like finding a bunch of fresh red roses,

In a deserted house,

Where Pablo Neruda

Lived once

And composed his immortal lines

That still haunt your aging mind.

Sunil Sharma