Lonely corners
crumble & become tiny
there is no space to call my own

Overwhelming noises
magnify & become unbearable
there is no silence to call my home

Known sea of faces
rotate & manipulate
there is no place for love

This is the exact moment
when I attempt at stopping to think...

Images - 1

the colorless sky
breathes
the scent left behind
of the sweaty black backs
filling water
from a dry well.

children
bare foot
unborn
learn from organisations
the ways of modern living.

parched lands
evoke hopelessness
in old hazy eyes
which stare far away for rains.

Amongst all this a dream
forgotten
crumbles & scatters
on a farmers crop less field.

I stare
& allow the pain of it all
settle somewhere deep...

Colors

plums all around
unicorns ride the sun
& the green asks the yellow for the moon.


embroidered pieces of heart
fly across the ocean
& the red sneaks a kiss from the blue.


patterns on the floor
swim over a sleepy face
& the white smirks at the black.


rosaries on thin fingers
turns & twists in cubes 
& the purple escapes the charade of the pink.


drums beat in a frenzy
legs across the verandah
& the ocre spills over the blue...

Old Poem

It’s not the birth
But the death 
Of a person
That creates ripples
And you are left alone
To clear all the mess your life
has created around others
Who are living
And who might not
Want the cob web
Of your memories,
Your dreams,
And your life.
Life then perhaps seems nothing
But an empty
Age-old room
Of an old mansion,
the oldest family
In your town left
As a gift
to a dying town.

Knots

Tied up
endlessly
entangled arms reaching out
become
short knots
that cannot breathe
that cannot be free.

Looping in
the universe
the lives
fading out
& yet the light.

Narrowing down
lanes & by-lanes
sway in your head
till they are blurred
but there is no way out.

Panic
sets in
sets out
in intervals
you choke in rhythms
disturbing music of air plays in your life...

Mera Shahar

नींद से कहीं दूर
मिलती थी वोह
अकेले, चुप-चाप.

इस बार का बादल पिला नहीं
लाल होगा
कहा था
रात के अँधेरे में.

मेरा शहर झलकता हर बार
उसकी अधखुली आँखों से
नींद में चौंधियाये
और भी अच्छे लगते
हलके भूरे.

सुनहली धूप चमचमाती
नदी की चादर
अक्सर ओढ़ती,
बुदबुदाती मंत्र.
और फिर गुम हो जाती
अनंत के सफ़र में.

मेरा शहर लौटता
दबे पाव, पिछले आंगन में.

शहर से बहुत दूर
होती शहर की बातचीत
उसमें बीतता बचपन और बुढापा
कभी माँ दीखती टहलती पहचाने रास्तों में
कभी सीमा अब अपने बच्चों को स्कूल भेजती.

इतने दूर से आवाज़
नहीं पहुचती थी
घर के काई लगे आँगन में.
माँ कैसे बुनेगी गीत सोहर के?
कैसे कहेगी किस्से?
गाएगी वोह सरे गीत जो भेजती हूँ
मैं इस सुदूर शहर से...

A plea,
a soft murmer
and a silence.
Your fingers tap
the rythm,
of my death
on a rosary
I panic
I cry
yet finally
I die-
I meet you in snow
and smile
a dying
yet so living a smile.

Smiles disappear

at times when I die

and reappear again with

a timeless birth.

Haunted pasts

flash

not like memories

but something more

alive and vivid.

Life told stories

and sang songs

when alive

now when dead

will it retell the same stories

of a yellow verandah

and chillies strewn

over the concrete tiled floor

Scribbles - 1

Images float

at the back of my hut

and I still dare not dream

of the nights and days

that could have been.

We never could finish sentences in rhymes

nor could we repeat lines and couplets

but we used strokes and splashes 

of colors and winter afternoons

like a tribal frenzy.

In the moonlit night

fire, stories, and songs

could anything else fit better in a story?

We never had answers or questions

like rocks

What we had

slipped

like sand

from our thin long fingers

and some got stuck

in the crevices

and Dahlia would clean them

with her soft and melancholic hands

There were so many of those

hands

rough, soft, a dark brown, a sickly yellow, shiny palms

but they all loved us and fed us

those summer nights

the same hands would ruffle our hair and make us sleep

My neighbour, 

in her tattered slippers

and me with none

would run across to the other house

the bluish-purple berries

staining our cotton frocks

Yellow and Green afternoons

extended like

ghosts

and Ended.

The river sang Songs,

and we played Hopscotch,

we believed we entertained.

Golden Sqaures where people

scratched their old and wrinkled knees

Did they watch

Others wishing to live lives of the 

Kings & Queens in a pack of cards

Or Did they await death?

So much and many more

beautiful things of our childhood could perhaps 

go 

and write itself beautifully on our graves...

Is it too late or early?

Is it too late my luv?

to write...

to write all that I lived for

27

the count never stops

am I late for the only thing

that was supposed to be me?

A new life,

with all its new ways

beckons.

Yet I stay 

the very same way.

Still & silent.

The empty road

leads back to my house

just the way the other crowded one.

Is it a game?

I play to pass my time?

or is it nothing at all?

No longer 

I pretend

to be happy

and young.

I wish 

I live 

and love

till I die.

A Jealous Snake

I sit on my window sill
and see the children
laughing and playing
I see their smiling faces,
their merry lives,
and I writhe in pain...

Why could I not be
Happy
Alive
and More...


But Instead,
I crawl slow,
very slow.
Like a jealous snake
on a window sill...

Is it Time Yet?

Is it time yet
to play mind games?

It never is perhaps
but yet we do it
incessantly...
I forget all that was Me
And start the game
yet again. This time
I want to learn to cheat lives...
Friends offer generously
So much that I forget it is a game
Perhaps it is...
It is time to go back to what I was
to start and never go back to where it all began...

...Life, Death and Pain

It's not the right time
It's not the time in which one lives
but fear does
Fear about life, death and pain

I do not fear, says the little girl
perhaps she does not know
what life can teach you
just like death teaches you to be brave

It's not heaven that I am hopeful for
the moments spent in tears and prayers
are not for any one god
they just are moments of silence
where I think about well being
of a self, a family and the universe

Perhaps prayers about the universe
fades and is feeble
and so bodies die in pain
souls splatter
like grains on a marble floor

I do not fear says, the little girl
perhaps she knows about life deep within
she is ready to splatter her soul
into infinite pieces
at-least if it answers the prayers of one

The frozen masses join the dance
frenzy
a wild frenzy of splattered souls
plastered in red
sometimes, I lose the color
and the vision gets blurred
anyways its going to be heads, toes and faces
I know, so I let the focus go
blurred visions of the dead, the living
the brave and the unknown
a brother reckons the loss
a mother is broken
a sister listlessly consoles her own grief
a father prepares for the rituals
a pyre is formed
of life, death and pain...

About Nothingness

hmm...sigh...

It is funny when you want to write but have no clue at all about what to write. On second thoughts I feel like scrubbing off the whole plan of writing. But then writing something is always better than nothing. A poem is always an easy and elusive way out. That ways I write something for the satisfaction of the half a reader audience that I have for my blog and always escape the torturous guilt of not writing something for long.

That being an explanation for a shitty post, I think now I can get away with anything worthless.

the only moon that shines
chisels its silhouette with the darkest coal
beneath I stand happy yet sad
to be alone
I do not sigh for the summer night
and try to feel
the crescent that evades
the balmy cool breeze
or perhaps not
yet childhood summer smells
all that is gone by
friends long forgotten
faces never drawn
call me by my kittens name
the mewing grows
and rekindles a spark
I let it smother away painlessly
yet the choking noise suffocates
the summer breeze
I try to think of my favorite river
and remember
it's been long I visited my mothers grave
the grass must have taken her in its lap
sung lullabies till she is asleep
and the moon must be shining as bright over her
as it is over me...

so it is a poem again :(

Shamuka...the only kid I relate to as a daughter

My Girl,
the world you live in
will not be as bad as mine

You will not've to
scream your lungs out
to let people know
pains, a lot of them
and fights, your mother fought
just to give you the Life
you deserve.

By then, I would have lost my voice
making them learn to listen.

You would not've to
beg and plead in delirium
to make people understand
you as a woman
who suffers at every crossroad.

By then, I would have trained
a mile of people who understand a woman.

But, still I cannot promise you
My Girl,
that I 'll be able to reduce your woman-pain,
Yet I promise you this much sweet love
YOU, would not've to
bare your body stark naked
up for a public display,
to satisfy them of the age-old scars
that only this body has suffered.

Till then, I bleed
every drop in me,
like drops of dew from the early winter morning
and I will try to make the world
a much better place for you to live in...

P.S. - I know this poem isn't aesthetically good, rather it can't be called a poem perhaps, still it serves some of my purpose.

About to crash…

Hold the waking up

Let it not announce

A new day

A new way

I live like a pale leaf

And I want to die the same way

Silent

Lonely

And withered

I repeat the images

I repeat my words

I repeat my life

To live it from the beginning

This time promising

To love you better

Love you more

I make a clean start

Fresh like the red wound

And as I start to heel ahead

I fall into a pattern

I think for this hundredth time

The pattern is new

At least the colors

And I believe in the difference

I try to tenderly cultivate it

But I never was like you

And so I forget the beginning

And get lost in the whirlpool

Of thoughts, lives, and loves

I discover towards the end

That I have unwontedly

Lived the very same life

With the very same lies

So I sleep never to wake up

Into a new beginning

Into a new rehearsal

And try to keep company

The remembrances that

I left on the lonely sea shore

And a red rose dipped in acid…

Killing and Dying are the same at times...

Nights

No more have stories

That you do not know

And so

Nothing in me I have

That interests you

And I cannot hold you back.

Will you smile if I got back the river, that

Flew away from our steps

Or will the stories already told

keep you at bay?

I ask

Will you stay?

The morning is so empty

No rustling bed sheets

No early morning dew on the glass window

Nothing only reasons for me

Get consumed in your absence

I wish

You would be back

With all that is so full of you

And as you lay your head

On the nights cold pillow

I would remember this time

To put winter under your sleep

So that it covers your body

And consumes you

You will then be a

Cold dead body

With nothing so life like about you

And I who has suffered long

Will mock at your purple cadaver

I wish

You come back…

This is just beautiful...

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

P.S. - This poem is written by emily Dickinson. I posted it here, cause (i might sound like praising myself) I just could not ignore the striking resemblance between this poem of hers and the way I write always. The imagery, the way she has chosen the words, the shape and structure of the poem and so much more, reminded me of how I write, not as good ofcourse. Perhaps resemblances like these to great poets makes me still stick to the dream of writing well someday...I wish I could. Amen!

and suddenly it dies...

evenings and winter chapel bells
long lost dusty feet
return home
on a foggy blue noon
the silly dance and celebrations
choke them to death
no footsteps to traceback the homecoming
no shattered glasses and
the smell of cheap liquor
no beaten backs with rashes
no moaning
no gathering
not even the usual flies
what do we call them
the mourning flies?
I guess let them be the yellow butterflies
not even them to show her lost presence
what could he hold on to afterall?
he rushed back with the mad dance
and took with him the mad, celebrating loneliness
this time
careful to leave back a few tiered footsteps
atleast she if she comes back,
Marichiko could trace him back...
but suddenly the wish dies
and withers in the dusty corners
silent, ages
and pales
and dies again
he looks back for it
and asks
did you keep it safe?

Of Death and its Demons...

mad disgust
crazy awakenings
the cruel cycle bell
and another man
discharges his lust
rape
rape
rape
hushed, muffled voices
and then
finally a scream
men with moustaches
and women with lathis
debate and hate
over the pain-painted body
writhing like a snake on the ground
before the conclusion
the woman-heart stops beating
silence for a while
men lower their moustaches
women their lathis
they silently discuss
who won, and who lost
between a young boy
let us call him the Son
quietly lowers the body in
a filthy garbage bag
hauls it to the dead end
of the shadowless basti
burns it amidst nilgiri leaves
breathes in the fumes and the last ugliness
of an announced death...

It's a real, real, real Bad Poem and i choose to write it in RED!

i
am
a girl
who wears a pearl
who-
imagines her life to be in a swirl.

my
mother
is a woman
she is not a demon
yet-
she insists on guarding my hymen.

my
father
is a man
who eats from the pan
and-
helps my mother execute the ban.


now is it not baaaaaaaaaaad?

sorry UG couldn't resist posting it, and with you pestering me for new posts :(