What’s yours?

You vent your pride over a castle

Oblivious, you call it yours

The earth crumbles it with a slight tremble

Leaving you with wails and tears. 

Do I need to say the pace at which wealth dwindles

Or how long people last

It takes but a minute to lose them all

You believed you gained from an austere fast. 

So isn’t ‘possession’, quite deceptive

Or those classified under it are? 

Is there anything that  sticks around

Like to the night sky do moon and star? 

But at the threshold between solitude and loneliness

When I strain my throat to release notes tainted with melancholy

They sweetly hum back into my ears

Filling my void eventually. 

When I give colours to my chaotic thoughts

And splash them across the paper

They whittle stories on the sprawling sheet

For me to time and again savour. 

When I find my voice withering and curling

Despite volumes of words thronging my mind

Pages lay themselves bare

For me to pour the emotions undefined

And I have left miles behind

Have owned a lot and lost even more

Yet the fear of losing my art

Has not succeeded in touching my core. 

I’ve had my pocket swell and shrink

And people come and go

But what I create have clasped my hands

From mid-sea to shore, they did row. 

And so the old potter

Takes pride even in shards of his pot

For it’s broken yet loyal

Unlike those, who his efforts effortlessly forgot. 

And so do the sculptor, jeweler and painter

Revel under punctured, thatched roof

For they brew their wealth with love and sweat

To claim ownership they need no proof. 

In a world that cradles all in the lap of illusion

And each is burdened with the grief of loss one endures

Wealthy is the one adept at manifesting  abstractions

For it’s only your art that’ll always be yours.