It has been said
Pix or it didn’t happen
All too true
In a literal sense
As the mind grows older
And my memory weaker
Tag: postaday
Reflections on Faith and Icons
The common image of me and my faith
Is naught but a reflection in a rippled pond
An inverted, distorted misconception
Of institutional icons
Revealing nothing of me or my heart
Cacophony
I exit Jama Masjid’s exquisite tranquil beauty
Take a moment outside on the steps
To put on my shoes
Before stepping down
Into the cacophony of civilization
I was told, by many people
India would be a game-changer
Would alter my understanding of everything
In ways that could not be described
Only experienced
But I’d already spent 6 months
Bicycling across China
How much more
Could my understanding
Be altered?
More than I can describe
To those who have not shared
The experience of India
More than I can even describe
To myself
Distorted Beauty
Lines and curves
Simply and exquisitely executed
Create a harmony in form
Unparalleled
While the prisms and lenses of my culture
Cut and polished from fear and ignorance
Distort the culture that created this beauty
Into twisted paroxysms of ugliness
Contrast in Wan Light
Sol yet plays coy with leaden horizon
But there is enough magic
In dawn’s wan light
To illumine the contrast
Of ancient glory
Astride modern poverty
While camera and I
Find beauty in both
Half a World Away
You with those sad eyes
In the sallow light
Backdropped by electric blue
And me with the glass eye
Recorder of moments
Context only by supposition
I could not ask you then
What countenanced such sorrow
Or was it just an unguarded moment
Emotion apparent in an unintended gesture
I am left only with guesses
While you cannot even know
Someone reflects on this moment
From half a world away
Existential Parade
This parade of life
This hubbub of trade
Of needs
Of desires
This chaos of order
And community
And here am I
Amid the throng
In the moments between
Want and have
In the choices between
Necessity and pleasure
This is existential quandary
Alone in my thoughts
In a sea of solitary moments
Each a universe
Borne from a solitary mind
Known only to itself
These in parallel all
With the essentials
Of desire
And necessity
A flurry of universes
Sharing a single dimension
While in my universe
The bodies of a thousand strangers
Dance in cadence
With the flow of trade
A performance at once
Exquisitely mundane and beautiful
Light Hearts and Heavy Loads
Market day patience
Soft light for light-hearted friends
Heavy load their throne
Strength ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #359
Rishikesh to Delhi
World in flight
Through a bus window
At 80 kph
A flurry of images
In unknown tongues
Gone too quickly to understand
Collected in 1/680th time
A moment stopped for further consideration
On a later date, today
Bold art, like old propaganda…
To announce a new hydroelectric dam?
Drag the photo into translate
“Great Compressive Strength”
Ah, just an ad for concrete
I wonder again
At how unfathomable
The wide world could be
Before Google
…and yet, remains still
Pix to Words 