Love Musings 3

Love is the most misused word on earth. To what length will one go to be loved and to feel needed?  Life is too short to live only for others. I seriously feel that if we devote a little time everyday to explore oneself in order to love the self, the world would be a better place. Ego and prejudice are what makes us see life with jaundiced eyes! 

Photo Credit

XI

“Love thy neighbour

As you love yourself, 

Hate not what he loves

Love not what he hates.”

I think…?

It’s time I changed-

My neighbourhood! 

XII

Love in a manner

Acceptable to society, 

It sets the rules, 

The path and the ways.

Hey! I thought LOVE was

Mysterious and Divine? 

XIII

As love is that entity

That no language can define

And no mind can fathom- 

So I can’t describe

The love I feel for you-

And hide behind “I Love You”

XIV

Minds meet and souls bond
Beauty seen even in its dearth, 

Minds and souls foreign mate

If bodies meet for body’s sake.

XV

Reflective life of a man in love

Starts with him and ends with him, 

Reflected in his every action

Reflections of his pursuit

Of righteousness and justice. 

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog 

Love Musings 2

The facets of love that we understand and those we don't...

A flower (gay) too has the right to love and so do the lovers who die for lost love...love comes in so many shades that it never ceases to amaze us.

Every heart/mind finds love. If all of us were alike, there would be no special person who can make the heart flutter or the knees go weak! We can thank genes for this.

Read on to try decipher the meaning of love.

VI

Panoply of love

In the annals of life,

Why boil it down

To the heat of the loins?

VII

If love is divine

And if for love

Death is praised,

Why stone to death

A flower that loves a flower?

VIII

If all minds saw alike

We would like lumber

Line up before the saw,

Thank genes for variety-

Finds minds to love.

IX

Love too demands

Harmony sculptured,

Like a garden pruned,

Weeded and bordered.

X

Love for oneself

Casts a shadow on love,

Hate oneself

And become the shadow.

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog 

Love Musings 1

Love has more to it than meets the eye. I wonder, in my most blue moments, if what we feel is love at all. Do we not love the 'I' in the I love you a little too much?
In these 5 short poems, you will find me in awe as well as cynical about love. That's the reality of the human species. Is not your image, your reputation, your Dharma, your comfort, your life, your children that defines your love?...you take 'you' out of the equation and find that selfless love is a just myth. Or is it? 
Just like flawless snowflakes come in so many intricately beautiful designs, love too is a complex mishmash of complicated emotions, that pull one way on a given day and the other the next. 

Photo Credit


I

If I say that my universe

Has shrunk into a human fettle, 

Does it say that I love you? 

Or I love that I love? 

II

Love is that magic

That packs the universe

To make it shine 

From a heart in love.

III

Love has no language

But the language of action.

Of Karma and Dharma 

To all in our scope.

IV

Love has a history

Been a subject of study

It has taught man

The ‘how is and how to’

That when hearty-

I ask, “Is this IT? ”

V

Like snowflakes

Comes forth love

Nonpareil in design, 

Ornery it would be to say

“He has not loved”

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog 

Love at First Smell

Pheromones are the reason for love at first sight...or is it love at first smell?

Photo Credit

Across the hall the eyes meet

Locked as if frozen stuck

The view blurs all around

And time flees in freefall

As the focus zooms in

To the appearance, voice,

The gestures and smell.

They move forward prod

As if by an unseen hand

Till there they stood

Lost in the sea of humanity

With a cyclone rising in them

That threatened to drown

Them in the whirlpool

Of a swirling universe.

“He smells divine,

As divine as he looks”

As disorder hits a nerve,

“Why do I believe

I will cease to be

If not with him?”

Is he the faceless stranger

Who waits around the corner

In her lonely dreams?

 “It is he!” she whispered with

Her heart now in her throat,

Is she in control of herself

As her heart beats fast

And her thoughts gallop?

Asudden they started talking

Words blurted out in animation

Incomplete sentences

That made no sense at all

And came the giggles

And then the candid laughter

As the rising warmth

Broke the ice and the distance.

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog 

Careened

To a romantic, his heart is where all answers lie. But is the heart really involved in anything other than pumping blood to all parts of the body? What makes us flip and what brings the guard up? What makes us take the middle path?

 Photo Credit

Balanced in the ways of the world

What keeps us grounded yet so bold?

Heart beats on relentless and kind

Day in and day out, no break to find.

Is this where all emotions live?

Passion, pity that make us give?

Heart in anger and panic bolts

As would wide-eyed thunderstruck colts

Heart just an organ that reacts

On minds cold commands does its acts

Misses a beat in love’s flutter

Dies moaning without a mutter

Instinct streams from mind as rivers

Creates smiles, also the shivers

At the crossroad of mind’s retreat

Reason and emotion thence meet

Clipped are the wings of fantasy

Trimmed excesses of ecstasy

Moderated are extreme ones

Hot-cold reactions to warm ones.

This poem is written to tetrameter (8 syllables/line) and is trochaic (rise and fall of stressed and unstressed syllables). It has a rhyme scheme of aa, bb, cc.... .

First line:  Ba/lanced/ in/ the/ ways/of/the/world

Second line: What/keeps/us/groun/ded/yet/so/ bold?

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog 

A Drop of Love

A drop of love into a waiting heart

And you see the flower blossom,

Opening into the loving world

As if born with brand new eyes,

Seeing a world quite altered,

From the dark insides of a bud.

A drop of hate into the waiting heart

And you see the flower droop and die,

Closing itself from the onslaught

Cringing away from the source,

And may never open ever again

Even if doused over with love.

So spread the love you find in your heart

And be assured it will find a waiting heart,

That can bloom like the flower once again

Healing itself and many another,

Spread not hate, that shrivels the heart

That makes it yearn for a drop of love.

(10th May, 2006, Nellore)

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog .

Amore

Photo Credit

Dive from a springboard,

into the whirlpool of love.

A sudden spasm of the heart,

and sharp draw of the breath,

ripple in fingers atingling,

and the knees weakly folding,

That groovy heady feeling, 

and the misty veiled eyes.

Far away faint voices,

and a visit to heaven.

First look into strange eyes,

that sudden flutter in the heart.

Look again and you find eyes, 

fixed intently on you.

You feel the waves reach out,

for the waves from you.

Searching as if for meadows,

on which to graze together.

One step toward you closer,

and you are ready to swoon.

First look into baby eyes,

for the first time that opens.

The sweet smell of milk,

that lingers on tender lips.

The curling of tiny fingers,

in the hair gently tugging. 

The first step, the first word,

that cry for help paralyzing.

A phantasm-loving bond,

of trust and sharing.

Love with age, bonds  fiercer,

till there is left no you and I.

Thoughts emerge now similar,

as if onebeing together think.

Mysteriously in walk and in talk, 

growing day after day alike.

The heart still beats swifter,

one look of that special glance.

The day never seems longer,

comfortable in warm silence.

Living together a live boxing match,

as if in a long bout live two boxers, 

Moving sideways and backward,

unfretted by daily knocks and punches,

And when the fight gets hardnosed,

suddenly holding in tight embrace.

and all differences smoothed,

with forgiveness and patience.

Such the feeling of long bonds.

(July, 2006, Nellore)

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

Take a leap into my PhotoBlog