The American Ritual Dance

Dear God,
With heavy hearts
We gather here
To say goodbye
To those who were taken away
At the prime of their lives;
(By our inaction but that’s another matter)
And send our condolences
To the grieving families,
May time heal their hurts,
(Sure time heals everything you know)
And make them whole again.

Phew, with that out of our hearts
It’s now time,
Let the barbeques begin,
And the donations roll in;
You know it’s not easy folks
To stand up for your rights
To bear arms
With empty pockets
Every two, four or six years;
Let the good times begin.

And while we are at it,
Don’t forget to remember those
Who gave up their lives
To protect your rights
To turn this land of
The free and the braves
Into killing fields,
With AR15s for one and all;
Don’t you fret,
We have judges who know
Which side to butter the bread;
Well, obviously they obfuscate
During the nomination process,
Lest they don’t get elevated.
(They are not politicians you know)

God willing we shall make this land
A prison soon,
With guns for one and all;
(Isn’t that what 2nd Amendment all about)
Let’s decree guns for the newborns,
Afterall we are the ones
Who stand up for their right to be born,
So that we have enough
For our target practices;
Remember, it’s not guns that kill,
People do,
So go and make merry as you like,
What did you say?
A knife?
It doesn’t kill that many,
AR15s that’s what you must have
To kill a deer unarmed;
We are a country of laws,
And we shall fight
With all our might
To preserve your right
To snuff out the light,
From young and old alike
With futures bright.

Ah, what you say,
Tears coming down our cheeks..?
(Must be the smoke from the barbeque)
Hey, don’t you blame the crocodiles,
They don’t come after their kids with guns,
You need a special breed for that,
We are Americans!
And you know for those who need
We have mental health,
(That we ourselves surely need)
But no, can’t deprive them also
Of their rights,
It’s a free country all right,
Except for the rights victims of rape and incest
To abort;
We are a great country,
Unique in the world
Remember that well on the Tuesday of November.
The list grows longer they say,
Well you know the more the merrier,
Gives us more opportunities
To come out and assure our constituents,
We stand with them dancing
The American ritual dance.

Just dormant

Not dead yet, just dormant. Visiting my birthplace, making new friends. Keeping busy. But all good things, actually all things must come to an end. Now it’s time to return in two days.

What is life if not a flowing river rushing to meet the ocean and merge. New banks, new course. Bone dry in summer heat, replenished and rejuvenated by the monsoon rains. What is carried in its bossom is for others to decipher. It just flows oblivious to the joy and pain it spreads. Not indifferent, it does not even know the meaning. Never returning to its source, it just explores.

photo of river Brahmaputra in Guwahati by author

River Islands

Brahmaputra with Urvashi on top right and Umananda (smallest inhabited river island) on top left in River Brahmaputra in Guwahati)

That nature bestowed in abundance, we destroy in our ignorance.

Present is all that matters to us, future is someone else’s business.

A Sojurn in Patience

The title may through you off. Please bear with me, have some patience. After all for last few months that’s what I had been assiduously cultivating.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an impatient person. Born in a country with few thousands years of history and blessed or burdened with the weight of the past and growing up in a big family, patience becomes your second nature without even realizing.

They say patience is a virtue. May be. For practitioners of patience time moves slow. Trust me, practice it and see for yourself.

Ah, but I am digressing. It’s been slightly more than six years that I started my blog in WordPress. When I joined WordPress it had been forty plus years that I had not taken up the pen to write. Not that I was not writing anything. Hundreds of examinations, thousands of job applications, passport application, visa applications, green card application, naturalization applications, all these must count for something. What I was not writing was words that were buried deep inside me. My subdued passion was bubbling to come out. WordPress gave me an outlet.

And that’s when it hit me. I realized that somewhere in that journey called life I had lost my patience. The words were rushing out in torrents but I didn’t have the wherewithal to sit down at one place and write. The exuberance of writing something and posting it on the blog took over my psyche. No editing, no doing once over, just write and post. I am sure all my posts were crying out for editing but I just didn’t have the patience for that.

There was another revelation to me. I am realizing that while poetry comes naturally to me, I struggle when I have to write prose. One of the reason for that simply is my lack of patience to sit at one place and cohesively put my thoughts to paper.

Then about a year and nine months back something happened. Though the world had been opened to me through WordPress, I was not able to connect with readers of my posts written in my mother tongue Axomiya (Assamese). I am sure there must be wonderful bloggers in Axomiya in blogosphere using WordPress or some other platform. It was just that I was unsuccessful in finding out. Enter Facebook and a whole new world opened out to me. Suffice it to say that my writing in my mother tongue just took off and flourished.

For nearly two years I juggled my time between my blog on WordPress and my posts on Facebook. It was a struggle but I was able to balance my time well between the two worlds. Alas, there is only twenty four hours in the day. Then a few months back I started writing a story on Facebook. I intended to complete it withing two or three parts but somehow the story took wings and continued.

Now after forty four episodes, nearly forty six thousand words, the story is still continuing without an end in sight. So what that has got to do with this posts? Well, the balancing act between WordPress and Facebook is in tatters. I am finding that I am not being able to give as much time to my blog as I wish and I am suffering. I love the world of WordPress, friends that I have made, the beautiful words that I read and the learning. Yes, learning. I have learnt so much from my friends here in blogosphere. The thought that I am not being able to be an active participant here any more is killing me.

I am a pro- choice person by choice but in this particular issue of the story that I am currently posting in Facebook, I am pro-life in the sense that I will like to see my baby come to life. They say a full term for a baby is nine months. I am not there yet but not sure if the baby will be born pre-matured or the baby will be delivered overdue. Only thing I am sure about is that till it is delivered my visits to WordPress will be fe and far between. How I wish I can extend the day to forty eight hours or get and extra set of hands.

Well, as all of our wishes never become reality I only ask from you, my friends here in WordPress and my readers, that please bear with me in my sojurn in patience till I complete my story on Facebook and be back here again. Just have some patience.

As usual rest assured no editing had been done and it is straight from my heart to you.

Pranabendra Sarma, March 2, 2022
San Jose, California

I can’t speak up for myself, will YOU

First wrote: January 7, 2016

Updated    :  September 22, 2020

Today is World Rhino Day. When I first wrote this poem nearly five years back, I had no idea such a day existed. I wrote this poem because rhinos are very dear to my heart, specially one horned rhinos. I grew up with their images etched in my heart. They are the symbol of my home state in India. Unfortunately, to satisfy the libido of certain Oriental people, these gentle giants are being poached mercilessly just for their horns. These misinformed people have a belief that rhino horns have aphrodisiac properties, as if the world need more of them. If possible, please visit Assam, India, the home of the one horned rhinos. With sanctuaries like Kaziranga National Park (first one to be established), Manas, Orang and Pabitora, one is assured a view of these magnificent animals from close quarters. Shoot them as you like, but please use your camera only. Your visits may help raise awareness for continued safety of these docile giants and stop the nefarious lust of the people who poach them to satisfy their urge.

I can’t speak up for myself, will YOU

In the dead of night

Came death

Came silently

But finished the work

With loud bangs

Took my mother

Away from me

She tried to save me

With all her might

She fought

But was no match

For their weapons

Her only weapon

Of defense

Mercilessly they cut

From her still warm body

What good it is for them

Mercy

They did not leave me alone

Before they left

The scene of

Their heinous crime

I was finished off

With a loud sound

We were peaceful

Docile

Just wanted to roam

In a little corner of the world

We called home

Their greed

Left us dead and mutilated

Now

I can’t speak up for myself

Will YOU?

Note:  All photos of dead rhinos from the

post http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2896446/Second-one-horned-rhino-space-month-butchered-poachers-Indian-national-park.html

Friday Babble

The internet medical sites have produced a group of self taught medical experts with little knowledge that is a dangerous thing for their spouses forced to bear the brunt of that faulty education creating a deep divide in society between the hypochondriacs and the others driven to near insanity by the well meant incomplete information.

American Political Football

Ya, ya, I know it is called soccer here. For the life of me, I do not know why. A game where the ball meets the foot just for a brief moment and stays ninety nine percent of the time in the hands of players, is called football? Then why the game where the ball is kicked around all the time by feet is not called handball? I am digressing. Not here to discuss about the origins of football, soccer or handball. 

Wednesday, sorry Write Anything Wednesday

It’s that day of the week again that I had signed up earlier, to “Write Anything”.As I said last week, I had written nothing and sometimes I had written something, but never anything. So last week I had to look for anything to write. I think I found anything at last. After looking far and wide, deep inside me and outside, I have finally decided on Anything. For next one year, starting February 3, 2016, every Wednesday, I will write a poem the first word of which will start with the letter “W”. Why? Oh, even why starts with a “W”. For the simple reason that Wednesday starts with the letter W, wonderful starts with the letter “W”, world starts with the letter “W”. Shall I go on with my ramblings? Even WordPress starts with the letter “W”. Is it a coincidence? I do not think so. I have the first word for the first and the last poem in mind but now I have to start my journey to look for the other fifty words starting with the “W” that I can write a poem with. I hope I am up to the challenge. One thing I can promise you, the poems may be wonderful, wise, wacky, whimsical or wicked but will not be boring. See, there is no “W” in boring.  I will try not to write anything political so that I don’t have to write about Dubya.  Oh, I am OK to write political because Dubya’s name does not start with a W.  Phew, that was a scare!

Enough of Anything for one Wednesday. Now it is time for me to wander in this wonderful wide world.

 

WRITERISH RAMBLINGS, Write Anything Wednesday,https://dailypost.wordpress.com/events/write-anything-wednesday/

” Write a poem on dogs…pleaseee!”

I had never written a poem to keep a request.  So when our blogmate nerdsakhi requested me in one of her comments to another of my poem ( I can’t speak up for myself, Will You?) to write a poem about dogs( “ Write a poem on dogs…pleaseee!“), I had to put my thinking cap on. When I start thinking, my writing does a vanishing trick.  I can not think and write. Ah, I know! I am not a great thinker. I just write. I write from my heart, with feelings and passion.  As you all well know, “when the heart is full, the words are few”.  My heart is full with love for my dog Skooby. We got him from the humane society when he was barely one year old, just a week away from being euthanized.  That’s another story for another rainy day.  Yes, it is raining here today, so I can not go out for my walk with Skooby. He is sleeping peacefully by my side, quite oblivious to what his crazy human is doing.  Writing this poem was a labor of love for me but every line I was writing filled my heart with a deep pain. I do not know what a dog thinks but I do not think any dog will like to be a stray.  Stories of inhumane treatment to any animals are painful to me.  So writing this poem was not easy. I hope the poem ( Tragedy of a Stray: Why can’t I have my own Human) will be able to make you think and act, if you can, about adopting a dog ( or for that matter any animal you love) from animal shelters or humane societies before they are euthanized instead of buying from the puppy mills.

Money

I was waiting for assignment 5 for Blogging 101 to arrive and then I suddenly realized, if Time is money, I am wasting my money.  I became sad and depressed.  A small voice inside me started chirping.  Must be the effect of wasting all those minutes looking at the beautiful blog post of the visiting birds by our fellow bloggmate, Randall Krzak.  The small voice was saying, time is money but money can’t buy you happiness.  Yes, happiness.  Immediately I became happy again.  Then I became thinking about money again.  What is about money that makes us slave to it?  I think money is the lubricant that keeps our life moving smoothly.  Like an automobile to run smoothly, we need oil (lubricant).  Without that the car engine will break down midway through the drive.  But where is the oil?  Out of sight and out of mind.  Most essential but not being flaunted outside.  Oil does not make the auto look beautiful.  There are many other components that must mesh well to produce the beauty that is a eye candy to behold and becomes the ultimate driving machine.  In life also, we need money to keep running our life smoothly.  But it can not be everything. We need other things in life to make us happy, including spending time with our bloggmates in cyberspace sometimes.

That does not mean winning the record powerball lotto on Saturday will not make me happy, the thought of winning itself is making me salivate.  If I win I will hire somebody to type for me.