The Lights Were Blinking

Some giant behemoths of green

Stood tall and dark—

Some eyes peeked out from

Blurred windshields,

And stones seemed like plants.

I imagined myself standing

Before the vast sea in the

Dead of the night

When the lights were blinking;

Then the lights were dim,

Then the lights were no more.

Hot trodden melted grass

Was masked by the smell of rats—

Trampled by oblivious feet,

Hypocrisy was on the high.

Green reflected green light.

I was trapped by some fear of the unknown,

When the lights were blinking,

When the lights were dim,

And when the lights were no more.

Some lonely hearts cried out

The name of their long-lost love,

And some were reading Drayton

With saline eyes.

At midnight amid pitch darkness,

The ghostly lights blinked again,

They were dim,

And were no more.

The lights have been a part of this

‘Happily-lived’ life;

The lights have shown me the track

When the world was sleeping,

Thinking of its own troubles.

I recall strolling in a lonely evening years back:

Colored beams and shops and people,

All turned into haze,

Only did I see the flickering street lights.

It cast a shadow,

And I believed.

The lights seem like a dream sometimes;

When watching me with queer eyes

From a very close distance,

I feel uneasy.

When thoughts and thoughts came again,

The lights blinked again;

Were becoming dim and were no more.

A few years from that night,

I haven’t seen those lights another time,

And I don’t know when I shall see them again.