Ashes scattered around
Of my burning joint
Or of burning society
A riot of smoke arising
Veiling the vague reality
Rain-beaten roads
Stare at me with rage
As I step into the engraving night
With a pen and a page
Grooving to the darkness
Fading into silent time
I heard those quiet steps
Of a thoughtless mind
I’ve walked through the darkness
I’ve searched for light
I keep on walking
Let the chaos be my guide
I turned off my mind, relaxed and flew downstream... I followed the White Rabbit… I saw a door… They said, “You might not like what’s behind the door”… I replied, “But I like the door-keeper”… I took the pill that makes me small… I walked through the door… I entered the Wonderland… I took the other pill that makes me lager… Then I went to a trip, Voyage 34… I took shelter in the Memory Motel … I stepped through the Ambivalence Avenue… I heard the Sound of Light when Dim… I experienced Ineffable Mysteries… On my way in trip I felt Safe in the Steep Cliffs… There I found the Stairway to Heaven… Climbing through the stairway I reached a highway, Highway to Hell… Suddenly I’d got a Bike… And the Echoes of the Rings of Division Bell made me Comfortably Numb… I Lost for Words to describe the beauty of Two Suns in the Sunset… I laid down all thoughts… Surrendered to the voids… As the night came I looked up at the sky… I saw a face of a lady, so serene… I was confused… Who was she? ... Alice… or Lucy??
ইচ্ছে হোলো নাম না জানা লালচে ফুল
খোলা হাওয়ায় উড়ছে তার খোলা চুল
ইচ্ছে হোলো শীতের শেষে প্রথম পাতা
যুদ্ধ করে নতুন করে বাঁচতে শেখা
ইচ্ছে হোলো তীস্তানদীর পাগলা জল
আজব নেশায় চলছে ছুটে টলমল
ইচ্ছে হোলো কাঁদতে কাঁদতে হাসতে শেখা
মনের ভেতর ইচ্ছেগুলো চাগিয়ে দেওয়া
ইচ্ছে হোলো ক্লাসের মাঝে ছোট্ট ঘুম
মাঝরাত্তিরে পিঙ ফ্লয়েড আর ধোঁয়াটে রুম
ইচ্ছে হোলো কচুপাতায় শিশির-ফোঁটা
ইচ্ছে-ঘোড়ার পাগলামি আর অবাধ ছোটা
ইচ্ছে হোলো রাত্রি শেষে নতুন ভোর
জীবনপথে খুঁজে পাওয়া অচীন মোড়
ইচ্ছে হোলো বব ডীলান বা জন লেননের একটা গান
অচীন পাড়ার গ্রাম্য চাষীর কাস্তে শান
ইচ্ছে হোলো অচীন মেয়েটার মুক্ত হাসি
মনের থেকে বলতে চাওয়া, ‘ভালোবাসি’
ইচ্ছে হোলো পুরোনো সেই রঙীন স্বপ্ন
সবাই মিলে গড়ব তুলে নতুন বিশ্ব
ইচ্ছে হোলো ...
“Those neon-lights just starting to glow.”
“Those people just started stepping out down on the road.”
“Those crowd are started gathering and soon it’d be a flood of moving legs flowing in a stream but going nowhere.”
“Still this wave rises. Everyday.”
“But why this happens everyday? Why this cycle keeps on rolling and rolling though it still stands in the same place where it began?”
“May be this is what they call life. Running and running but as a matter of fact not going. After all, you gotta keep rolling to keep yourself away from the moss. May be they come out everyday to know what’s going around, what’s out there, to face the reality.”
“But… is it true? They ride on the wave each neon-flooded night to face the reality? Really is it so? Or the reverse? Isn’t it that they want to escape from the reality by losing themselves each night amidst that huge surge.”
“But what’s the reality they’re escaping from?”
“Look at them yourself. What you see?”
“I look at all the lonely people.”
“That’s why they wander every single night out there right down these neon-lights. To forget that they’re lonely.”
“Among this crowd they feel they’re a part of it. They keep themselves this assurance that they ain’t lonely.”
“That’s what I think. This crowd is hollow. Out there in this crowd, everybody is nobody.”
“But if nobody’s everybody then someone can be anybody. Right?”
“You mean like the Walrus?”
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.”
“Interesting.”
“I mean if they’re all lonely don’t you think somehow they’re actually together.”
“Huh… may be…”
Time passes by. Days keep on moving. Hours running on. Every second keep on its walk with slow but steady ticking on my wrist-watch like a thriller movie as if the killer strolling through the dark narrow alley.
And we all are afraid of the killer. We don’t want to face him. We want to run away from him. And more we run more the fear grows inside our heart. Once when I was a child someone told me, “The thing you fear has no power, it’s the fear which has the power.”
So I wanted to overcome the fear. So I decided not to run away from the killer. And I opened the door. And I found myself,
“Lost in a romance
Wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain…”
Being obscured in the summer rain I lighted my fire. And then I ride the seven miles long snake to the ancient lake. In the road I met strange people. I walked with them. I looked at their face and they looked at mine. They all are looked similar and familiar also. But I didn’t recognize where I saw them. Suddenly a storm came. Sky turned black. I looked above. I heard some whisper. And they blew me with them. They were riders on the storm. While flying away with them, I remembered where I saw those strange people, in the mirror.
The riders left me in a vast open valley with a straight road leading to the horizon. I lied down the field. And I found those strange people again with me. We all looked bluntly to each other with no meaning on the vision. We all were like hypnotized. Then suddenly the blue bus calling us, we asked the driver where you taking us.
So we set out on the blue bus to meet the killer. “C’mon baby, take a chance with us, and meet me at the back of the blue bus… doing blue rock on a blue bus…”
I don’t know if you’ll join me to meet the killer and embrace him. But remember if you’ll try to escape him, he’ll get you by any means. So be different. Go out and meet him with a smile.
To some I might be a poet so trapped between heaven and hell, to others I might be just another person who’d crushed and burnt. But this much is true you cannot burn out if you’re not on fire.
It’s my life. Only me has the right to control it. It’s me who’ll decide which way to go, where to go, when to go, how to go. Then isn’t it me who to decide when to put a full-stop in it?
The only color they had before their eyes was red. The only sound that was penetrating through their ear was clanking of swords. The sky was brushed into dark scarlet with the color of the setting crimson sun. The soft green grasses of the vast valley grew heavy as thick layer of blood were flowing like a stream over the field.
Concentration. All one needed was minute concentration in every step. Else there might be no chance to breathe again. Ignoring sound of one step might cost a sword stab your life. And he was concentrated. Every step, every clinking, every sound he was analyzing. Blocking every strike of sword by his shield and swift his sword minutely he was moving and moving. Finally he became the only person standing on the ground. He had a deep cut in his left part of chest, severely injured leg. Yet the joy of being the winner mitigated all those pains. Pointing his blood-drowned sword towards the red sky he screamed the winning roar.
He was tired after such a tiresome battle. He was thirsty, looking for a drop of water. But couldn’t find any. The only fluid that was flowing was warm blood. But he kept on searching. And instead he discovered something else, something he never knew existed before.
As he crawled down to every inches of the meadow for water he saw dump of numb, dead figures very closely. He found injured, cripple faces crying to breathe just for one more moment. More his saw those frozen wounded bodies more he became thirsty, and he searched more intensively and became more eager to quench his thrust.
All on a sudden his soul asked him a question, a simple question, “Do you think you are really a winner?” he was perplexed. Stopped for a moment. Looked at the darken sky. And replied to his soul, “No… I ain’t a winner, I win nothing. I just lose less than others.” Standing amidst the vast necropolis he first time discovered the feeling of pain, feeling of love. And finally he sipped a drop of salty warm water that was born from his eye.
