Stumped By Samyu #1

Amma: "Who do you love the most Valli?"

Nana: "Ofcourse I love bujji budo the most"

Amma: 😒 "Sure, its all about blood. My mother, my sister, my daughter, yada"

Samyu: "No, that's not correct. If it's about blood, then nana should half love me"

Amma: " How can that be?"

Samyu: "Because I am a mix between amma and nana, nana should half love me then. But he loves me the most"

#Stumped by Samyu 

An Afternoon's Dream

Some moments were born to define millennia, beyond your life and mine 

Some hide unheeded in relentless corners of a restless mind 

And last night I wove some dreams for a much younger me and someone like you

Into Jasmine gardlands for our wedding night, thresholds of marigolds for the twilight 

Some moments sweeten our passage to the moon, darkening everything beyond and before

And yet twirl giddiness into life as do glitzy plastic spin-tops

When the spinning stops, some moments remain bruised onto memories' heavy breasts

Some dreams melt into tomorrow's snowfall on 

distant, silent, sacred crests 

And as monsoons bleed into words, sprouting multi-colored pangs

Two Birds

Under cotton-cloud-shadows would fly two birds

Free from the drivel of daytime's long words

Twig by twig, a tiny nest off steep mountain cliffs 

They built with dark-hued dreams of sheer what-ifs 

Monsoons, meteors, moonlight, murals, myth  

myrrh, music and almost all of magic dealt with 

Limitless sky of limited wings, boundless world  

Streets, sights, flight paths and all of earth's whirl

Mirror to death's first moment, life's very last

Made-up walls, sky roof from bruises of the past

Ambition's nearly-burnt earthern lamp flickers

But those mirror walls, they flash golden pictures

Of two birds who built their love nest, twig by twig 

In words, glimpses and feathered sweet kisses 

The Lost Pearl

I dropped a pearl once in a faraway path on an uphill dusk 

As we ran up counting crashing waves and rustling branches 

Venus sprayed that playful night with her dark-toned musk

On lustful breasts you had but written of a sacred bond

Setting aflame promises of an age to come and of bustling chances 

Soft cotton kisses, sweet whispers, voices from within and beyond

And all at once the world sank and turned time's runaway hand

The night sky too filled with a zillion unbeleiving  glances 

We cleared time's debt then with my lost pearl and a fistful of sand 

Silence (V2)

Silence is a warm blanket on a sultry summer noon

Raising faint memories of a red-faced autumn moon

But at dawn when summer slips to her maiden home

On gushing jasmine wind and on oceans' night foam

I worship her in temple domes, trembling forest nooks

Chocolate twirls in coffee cups; yellowed pages of beloved books

Straddling bitter-sweet bridges of a random rendezvous, 

Silence is a busy old friend out on errands with you

Other days, her devious pits fall deeper than beyond 

Thunderstorms, crocodile farms, vestigial pricked bond 

Dark skinned despair, deep valleys, vampire-inn secrets 

Treacherous murderer of light, keeper of weakness 

And at times, a needle to darn old tears in lengthy evening shadows

Holding up daily deaths of a distant sun to see how that yarn flows

No forlorn maiden this silence, that kisses your perfumed breasts 

In her do all memories live, all wounds fill and all life rests  

Silence

Silence is a warm blanket on a sultry summer noon

Raising faint memories of a red-faced autumn moon

But at dawn when summer slips to her maiden home

On gushing jasmine wind and an oceans' night foam

I worship her in temple domes, trembling forest nooks

Chocolate twirls in coffee cups; yellowed pages of beloved books

Straddling bitter-sweet bridges of a random rendezvous, 

Silence is a busy old friend out on errands with you

A needle to darn old tears in lengthy evening shadows

Holding up daily deaths of a distant sun to see how that yarn flows

No forlorn maiden this silence, that kisses your perfumed breasts 

In her do all memories live, all wounds fill and all life rests  

Sands of time

I dropped a pearl once in a faraway uphill dusk 

Venus sprayed our playful night with a dark-toned musk

On lustful breasts you had but written of a sacred bond

Soft cotton kisses, sweet whispers, voices from beyond

And all at once the world sank and we stopped time's runaway hand

Alongside my pearl we cleared his debt with five shells and some sand 

Who Has Time For The Stars

We came clenching our unformed fists into fatelines

I held up my palm against yours wishing it entwines

Drum rolls, shivers in the spine, golden autumn rays

Scars on your skin, all sing in unheard tuneless ways 

But what about those dark spaces in our music? 

At a distance I crave for a two-syllabled sweet moon

Raindrop pitched murmurs on a long-lost parched tune 

Your skin that erupts in a million smiles at my touch

dark oval moles spewing perfumes of earth and such

But would you look up from your mirror? 

In silence I watch the moon drape a saree of light

Which her stealthy sun sent through his secret sprite

She danced with twenty-seven stars, each night anew

And here and now waits for a lone glimpse of you

But who has time for the stars?

Blackbeads

Sixteen full beads from thirty two lives

A few among them perhaps half burnt

In a passion for deathly desire to be alive 

And just as few maybe shriveled in boredom

Should I seek to find each of those blackbeads 

Which were lost at my wedding under the stars?

Must I draw out secrets from half-smiling sighs

cascading down their hidden, heaving hearts?

I did wander on silent-movie lanes of slick memories

And came upon a red pair of perfect anger circles 

But no thread passed through their loneliness 

Did they paint blood on themselves soon after they left

Their brethren, those fourteen witnesses of marriage?

Who fought, and begged; laughed and hugged 

played in perfect morsels of a six-month old's palm

And on insolent evenings, played jasmine string songs 

But all through one night, our black beads hummed 

My full breasts could bear no more, blue-black hues

Until all at once you broke that thread that bound us

I walk around now, with emptiness clasping my neck 

Lost Blackbeads

Sixteen full beads from thirty two lives

Perhaps among them were those that burnt

In passion fueled by a deathly desire to live

And just as few may have shriveled in boredom

Should I seek to find each of those blackbeads 

Which were lost at my wedding under the stars?

And draw out secrets from those deep sighs

cascading down their hidden, heaving hearts

Wandering down silent-movie lanes of slick memories

I came upon a red pair of perfect anger circles 

No thread passed through their loneliness 

They had painted themselves soon after they left

Their brethren; those fourteen witnesses of marriage;

Who fought, cried and begged; laughed and hugged 

played in perfect morsels of a six-month old's palm

And on insolent evenings, played jasmine string songs 

But all through the night, my black beads hummed 

Until all at once you broke that thread that bound us 

My full breasts could bear no more, blue-black hues

I walk around now, with emptiness clasping my neck 

Fairies

Love came laughing at the stars,

drunk on those tumbling stairs
Sucking life from flower tips
Seeking nectar droplets on lips
And I said to her, is this true
That he was with you here too?
And that naughty, nicotine night-laden
Lad smiled as though she were a maiden
I lit a lamp then in the silent full sky
And went on my way to watch fairies fly

Ganga' s Lover

Ganga flows as though she were time

Rushing to meet her lover for the era, 

He of the blue throat dancing his mirthful destruction 

But alone, at unknown bends, she crashes into blind terrains, unlit forests and unforgiving cities 

I met you on her bank, a whole life time ago

Those crickets like gentle thrusts of anklets 

Strummed season fingers on naked hormones

I spoke then of want, of need, of voids and valleys While your deep full river flood of a kiss 

Crashed and tore, bent and danced on unlit 

Corners of my soul; Where you and I, 

Were born as a singularity;And then willfully 

Flowed.

Until we meet yet again on the 

Far shores of the ocean of dissolution,

The Ganga flows as though she were time 

Ganga' s Lover

Ganga flows like it had a purpose, like it were time

Waiting to meet her lover for the era, he of the blue throat

But alone, at unknown bends, she crashes into blind terrains, unlit forests and unforgiving cities 

I meet you too at times on her banks like I had a purpose

As if I were time waiting to meet you those space-time curves, black holes of singularity, where you and I too

Exist as nothing 

And then I wait, like she does

Until I meet the ocean of dissolution 

After the flood

You stood there blowing clouds of could-have-beens into that night

While I tried to weave us a ladder to the stars and back

That night when the sky thundered her angst

But blessed us with white puffs of cotton dreams

You hugged me then into life and I stood in awe

Of  sprouts clambering up to joy, after the flood 

Harlot

Butterfly wishes rise up to the skies

A naked dream floats, soars and flies 

But alas, sweet harlot, don't you see?

Colored wings don't make for flight

Heaven, like reality, pours pessimistic rain

And wet dreams last no longer than a night

Doubt & Hope

Twin peaks of infinite thirst 

moulded by ancient, forgotten gods;

Doubt and hope, keep watch on life

And like dawn and dusk,  

Relate neither to time nor space 

Millions of gods have been crushed 

When heavens churned and roads

leading up to those peaks perished 

Uncounted pennies have been minted 

One day's loot, just enough for the next

Treasures, pleasures, lives; gained

In the inner sanctum of one or the other 

At times one is lost in cloud shadows 

Of past lives and an unrepentant present

Or in mystic mountain sunsets. But always 

Doubt and hope, like thought and word

Remain as heavy paperweights do

Keeping together the unwritten pages of 

Life's pointless lengthy short tales 

Your story and mine, together or alone

Loss

In the beginning was the word, they said

But was there a silence that shattered

When words poured out of lonely spaces?

First came darkness and then streams of light

But without you in my mangled thoughts 

Where was light and its need for dark spaces?

Beaten or lonesome, the path precedes a traveler 

But when well-travelled roads are lost in doubt

How did you find a home in unmapped wilderness?

At first there was an imagined you, then came you

But when the "you" disappeared into dream-vapors

Which blackhole devoured every atom of my world? 

Temple tunes left fragrant scars on moonless nights 

But at dawn when rituals lie abandoned and forgotten 

Who was it that smeared colors of loss on this sky?

 

Laughter

Laugh if you must, dear friend,

At this mist-filled, musky season 

You have ushered in; herein

Darkness crumbles nakedness,

Finger crush each whim of the soul

And eyes flood memories with light 

To lay them all to dry on the 

Banks of tomorrow's hope

While laughing, perhaps you will see

A new writing on lonely walls

Fresh flowers, waterfalls, silent nights 

Fragrant, stolen kisses and a lifetime's 

Bliss blistering his mark on my head 

You and I

You and I had written a note to life

And threw that bottle deep down the sea

That message, you and I, remained forgotten

One night, a new moon brought his lust-ridden waves

Loneliness fueled a million star- lantern wicks to light up 

Those discarded sands, buried lifetimes, a time-smoothened glass shard

Suddenly  a sweet miracle smiled right into my eyes 

And I said to her, somethings are only found 

When they are lost. She said it's true

For memory is just lost time; love, lost self

While truth, loss of everything untrue 

And life, a lost message in a broken bottle 

Dream

On wings of yesterday's dream

O traveler, you have come this far

It is time for dreams to melt into dawn 

When the dusk descends again, 

Who knows if we will meet again? 

Fistful of sand

Blow gently over these sands today

I laid these out carefully, one palm

to another, hours poured out in imperfect 

Synch, a few grains more, a few less

I shaped these stories right here today

Embellished in could-have-been-pearls

Broken figments bound to wet sands

Your story and mine with so many others

Powdered moonlight swells wavelets

of unabashed desire today. Dear moon, 

stay back and curve gently over the clouds

Time is only measured out by the sun, after all

On ancient shores of an ageless thirst, I ask of you 

A will to seek, beyond hours, years and ages

Secret deaths and silent resurrections,

One hundred moons in a fistfull of sand

Loss, Gain and all in between

One passing moon said to another

I have been missed, and so were you 

And then all those valiant silent night stars

laughed their contempt out for life, 

Because all is still without you,

I stood in peace meant for eternity 

But death made a mockery of gain

For what was lost, remained elusive

And all that's gained was unpossessed

Because loss is infinite without you 

One tender finger lingered on another 

I have been touched, and so were you

And then all those salient, nightly kisses 

Cried oceans' worth their tears of salt

Because loss is worthless, with you within 

Born to be Free

My crushed heart yields sweet cranberry blood

Have a taste and let me know if you like it warm

My breath still burns its winter passion flames

Drenched as it were by tempests of gloom

Do not worry dear friend, my madness touches those touched at the brow by the burning ashes of life

Who shed daily driblets of tears and laughter and fill 

Pots of time with plastic trinkets of nostalgia

Their moods mingle with seasons and light, with 

Rain clouds and summer winds, sultry afternoon sands

They search for the source in sunsets and tsunamis 

Dramas, other people's traumas, in pride and the self

In losing and giving oneself, they seek to find you,

Who have never lost yourself. You, my prince.

My peerless friend, you, who needs neither 

ashes nor sands. You, who have been 

Born blind to pain. You will be free. 

You will be Free

My crushed heart yields sweet cranberry blood

Have a taste and let me know if you like it warm

My breath still burns its winter passion flames

Drenched as it may by tempests of unknown gloom

Do not worry dear friend, my madness touches only

Those who were touched by the burning ashes of life

Their tears and laughter mingle with seasons, light 

Rain clouds, summer winds, sultry afternoon sands

You, my priceless friend have been born blind to pain

You will be free. 

Darkness

Down under on the sea bed, does it

Feel as it does up on the mountain?

Breathless quest for life 

beyond a singular reality, 

And it's search for eternity

Up beyond those mountains, would you 

Hear dark clouds sing, cry or laugh?

Their songless journey transcending 

heavens, rivers and all in between

Into the very ocean's depth

How many voids will you consume

In all of those lives you enter?

With each bed, a new hunger; 

And each tear a shattering cyclone

A twisted corner, that shaded nook

Imagined mango groves,

Flowered mountain paths

Soundless wind chimes, 

Music on a loop, heard once,

Unheard at once, and then never

Is darkness always deeper 

Around you more than where 

You stand? 

And you, the void to

Suck in all of those dark, 

soulless cyclones?

That Death

Spirits rage, swell and seek what kisses quell

Bodies tangle to untangle tight knots within 

Our nerves split into a hundred moons and 

Blood spills out to quench each other's thirst 

One moment sings of an ancient paradise 

While another of wilderness, untamed, bespoke 

I worship the memory of your scars, your moles

And you build a shrine to an unspelt past, lust, love

Sweetness, sadness and togetherness mingle into one

Desire outweighs our will to live, ah for that death!

Nothing

Those stars that draw lines on our hands 

Pull people together into random virtual spaces 

And then laugh and say, go figure 

Ever wondered about all those stars in our universe?

I drew them out in your laughter nets 

Counted them in your garbled teeth 

The biggest of them is bigger than the sun

They say, but the smallest draws us all in 

Worm hole of endless possibilities, infinities

Mutiltitudes, potentials, unborn fecund wombs

Of imagination dancing face to face with reason 

Ever wondered which star is me, in your galaxy?

Spiraling its way into another, bigger multiverse

While you and I remain caught in a black hole

Of memories that draw every atom of us in

Ever wondered who traces those outlines of  

black holes, 

Is it the hand of guilt or regret, that measures out loneliness 

Mother

Your warm lap thawed my ice cold world, just a little 

And your tuneless hums molded my days, just a little 

Your anger, longing, those lengthy years of loneliness 

Amma, did they give birth to me too, just a little? 

Here comes another moment of thwarted desire, another loss, yet another thorn in hidden heart's flesh 

Gathering pebbles in the sand, we played, just a little 

Amma, where does one learn to play with people?

I emerged from your womb as he did from another 

Into this ocean of fathomless need for the other 

In each other's boats we glimpsed dry land, just a little 

Amma, how many boats lie buried in an ocean's womb? 

Is it love again?

Who decides which of those seeds sprout this season

Perhaps he, whose quiet presence pervades all dreams

Laughter and tears at once drenched my sleep today

A blush of color spread across my field as sinless stain

Moonshots of Lust

I knew when I was born into this longing 

That my lord was made of a thousand eyes

Sands of time pass through his relentless seive 

What remains then of all these moonshots?

I knew when I roamed the world with him

No eye sees another's star be it a thousand, or two

My planet turns at its own pace, that moment's 

crystal held in our invisible ring will fade too

I knew my hand will be held again on misty nights

And time's dark child will slip out of his cell 

He will cross the Yamuna again and Radha will   

Ask, what remained then of all those moon shots? 

My wordy paradise

These words I write are mere bubbles, butterflies,

Shape-shifters, dream-catchers,  hot air balloons 

To blow me away from dreary drab disdain of today

In delicious twirls of could-have-beens, the moon, your fingers, those jumbled letters, open skies,

But they are dumb, my garbled words, 

neither sense, nor sound, neither rain nor rhyme

Lonely, empty white sheets of unbearable nights 

Painless ache for unnamed desert sands, mountains, soft swells of warm skin melting into sweet sweat 

And yet some days, the skies align

Your clouds meet mine in my wordy paradise

And rainbows emerge from crumbling starlight

Murakami's Anger

From whose killing fields should you rebel

Always to the side of the correct, never the right?

In which foreign tongues must you think and write

How many words does it take, did you wonder

To earn gushing praise and love?All hail theNobel

They sang a song for it, they took the bullets for it

And came to the podium, they know it all, the how

Why and when of the universe. 

Neat speeches to tie up life, practiced ceremonies 

A prize for the country, after all 

For the entire human race, but Murakami, 

How many words does it take then

to lose something one has never won? 

Radha's Blue God

A piece of the blue sky rumbled somewhere within 

As your eyes pierced tattooes into my tomorrows

I held up your smile to the ocean's swell moon 

And counted those pearls that welled up inside 

In footsteps and moans, sweet tears and sweat

Your tight embrace, once and for all, just mine 

For a moment; as was the whole of blue god, Radha's 

As He danced sixteen hundred steps ahead and beyond

Tracing my ancient past in forlorn songs of the dusk

Each mole on your skin, added up to those seven steps

We had taken together, on a sharad full moon night 

Of another planet in another time 

Wounds

If words could tug, pull and tear open

Would they have ripped these masks

And weave brand new ones to hide tears

We pulled so hard, perhaps the fabric tore 

And each stich of shame fails to cover

The nakedness of our needless anger

I run towards and against you each time I fall

You pull away and towards me with an apology 

Later when night lights up the sleepless soul

I weave new fabric that will never be mine again

Healing

You came gently as the first flush of summer rain

And I poured into you all of my needless pain 

Silently you asked what it is, where does it live

Who causes it to fade like water through a sieve 

I knew then, how time contrives to heal 

New Page

They say our fate is written in stars, palm lines 

I write again and again to wipe those designs

When I held you in my arms, did our lines meet

And did stars bend down to kiss our angels' feet?

Breath, blood, bruises waited at the door

Desire unrobed ageless thirst once more 

Hands crushed each other's secret rage

But life smiled and turned a new page

Time

Where there is neither yesterday nor today

Neither you nor me, to that place shall we go

And watch the fireworks in the sky

The beginning of the end, 

or maybe just the end

Time flows and curves around space 

I will follow you through those curves

Bring your scooter, let's go there again 

How?

I crave to etch into these pages, your image

But sweet friend, how does one write of a smile? 

All of the oil lamps in abandoned ancient temples

And crashing waves of an agonized angry ocean

Can they speak of the earth's silent molten truth?

Or of your voice that cascades into my being as hymns

From a hoary past in an alien, intimate tongue 

All these mythical secret rhythms of a waterfall

Can they speak of the water's deepest wish to melt?

The sky was born muted in its desire for the earth

And split into a thousand stars the day I was born 

And I crave to hold your warmth in my memory

But sweet friend, how does one kiss desire's dreamy song?

Past the sell-by date

Your shadow falls on my parched soul

All dreams freeze and reason fails 

But there is no time to become whole

Right under those blue mountain trails 

He has flown across that cotton field

And your wrist watch remains concealed

Unsealed

Each day's vetiver-woody paen to the night

Deepens memories of an unshared sweet delight

And yet, 

Not all smooth silken skins melt into each other

Nor do all names stamp a mole for the tither

But still 

Plates, knifes, edges, corners, clouds without fetters,

Scars linger longer than wounds in my unsealed letters

You see

Stars crush their dust on my dreamy lashes 

And songs pour out of life's grey ashes 

They are

Coffee mugs, chocolate cookies and sweet adieu 

Tiny mustard sprouts, those hours stolen for you 

With them

I will buy a pound full of television-life again

And sleep in the arms of endless ache, sweet pain

Who knows

When clouds pour out their heart in a cold white land

You will open my unwritten letters, dear friend

Churning of the Ocean

All my dreams are signed and sealed today

In the murals your bookish thoughts drew

On my unbelieving lashes 

The ocean churned sans a snake-wrapped mountain

And I flew along the coast of that earliest dawn 

To gulp the poison in your throat

No sound emerged, just the crescent of pain

And the gorgeous damsel of hope 

Carried your voice in her celestial pot

If only, I could have it all!

You and I

My blue jasmine blooms under the silent full moon light

Draping vettiver-velvet smells of the dark balmy night

Dense woods sway with gentle winds of the half-lost 

And stars compose lengthy love letters to the past 

You held my eyes in a shimmering soft-focus space 

Daylight dims my vision, you and I, where is that place? 

Unsaid Moonlight Musings

I gave something away on a silent balmy night

When the breeze stood still under moonlight 

Can you hear those words unheard, unsaid?

As when stars cross, they remain unsung, unwed?

A Short Story

A short story 

"Please I need your help"

He is all alone and the rain clouds have gathered

All the darkness of space will enter him again

It's been fifteen years and yet, darkened skies 

Pour all of the world's emptiness into his being

There is too much of "all" in what you are saying 

Nothing is as dramatic as you seem to imagine 

He has it all - kids, paid workshops, the works

If you want emptiness, welcome to my lonely flat 

Emptiness seeks its own, perhaps that's why I am here?

There is music left in life, as much for you as for him 

Hold his hand, I will splash blue water colors all over

He writes books full of empty lines, you dream in rhyme

And when he leaves, dear stranger, will you seek me again?

But in you, he will find me, his lost agony and pain

Words will flutter around his spirit like holy butterflies 

Hold his hand, fragrant forests will bloom in beauty

Sweet tingles, goosebumps, endless wait, all will live 

Why would he leave?

Sweetest muse, words trace edges of angst, of loss, 

As does the truest music and all is lost, if pain leaves

So leave he will, to find his muse 

For it is loss that creates, not possession 

And what of your empty rhymes, then?

Fine, will text him again 

Goodbye

And so here comes goodbye, sweetest dream, just so;
Far away from rain clouds, hearts and wombs, you go
Such a long journey, alone we must set on now
Here, take along, my sweet Sudama bundle, love
Parched grains of star dust sprinkled on our kiss,
Crusted rock candy memories of swirling bliss
For every palace that your destiny draws you into
There is in my bundle an all-forgetting-embrace,
I fear you will some lonely day find amiss
Until the dawn meets its dusk and asks for its due,
So long, farewell, goodbye, adieu

And yet

This world is not for us to win
And yet our stories beg to begin

Alas we hang not neatly on weeping walls 
Nor stay silent at Mountain dew falls 

Envy, ego, ecstasy churn alike in the basket of tin
And drench our souls in the neatness of sin

I know as well as you do that somewhere within
This world surely, is not for us to win

And yet

Chicken Soup for the Vegetarian

So many things to do: do your best,

Do that, do it so, not so fast, do not rest 

Smile, hide, pretend, confidence is a dress
Invest, buy a drink, flowers, bear-hug card- fuss

Read a book on the hoary ways of making out 
With a manual, why boats? Fly a plane, dig a moat

Books to win friends, books for the soul
Papers greased with greed for control

A leader negotiates, learn how to bargain,
And thou shalt be a leader too, learn the jargon,

Another sunrise, rain cloud, moonlit night to the mountain's south?
Lazy wind blown dandelions, full kisses on the mouth?

Join the dots in the reverse but keep running along,
Hard work pays off, grasshopper is plain wrong

To run is to arrive, stones can stand and stare, 
So many things to do, ease your through fare

Karma's Capricious Land

Hang on, hold on to hope's longhand

Smile your way into karma's capricious land 

Macaronic moral fables, these maddening mortal lies:

They claim you were born, once, mountains and oceans too

The universe they say was never here, who knew?

You live a day, you live a night, but seasons, years –

imperfect circles those-drawn in invisible tears

Of a blue planet counting it's aeons to null

Spinning to death, no moment too dull 

So I say, hold on to hope's longhand

Smile your way into karma's capricious land 

The heavens hold today secrets of your tomorrows and yesterdays

An arrowhead of crushed iron dispersed the blue god's haze

This hunter and his hunted is all but one, time;

He sang of love, death, rebirth and all within 

One tiny moment, your eyes held mine and therein 

I said, hold on to hope's longhand 

Smile your way into karma's capricious land 

The Ganges descending from your lips, these heavens,

Ah, such death I sought from nowhere but you

Tangerine layered in nectar, your embrace

My words swaying to your pulse, this dance

Ah, such life I craved from no one but you

Tiny tributes to eternity, our tumbled kisses

In them, I hold on to hope's longhand 

And smile my way into karma's capricious land 

Sullen Days

Clothes we throw with gay abandon 

Unabashed we stand in sweet tandem 

In the naked confines of an open sky

Two flames merge as you and I 

But when we text in our separate ways

"Please and thank you", what sullen days!

Cinque Terre

Each nerve, every cell, drops of unshed blood,
Eyes sinewed lips in an unformed tear flood

Soaked in wine, born afresh, these sacred mystic sites
Or colored bubbles? our Cinque Terre nights

We built laughter-fences around each other's hearts
And drove creepy love from saturnine fantasy arts

But I crawl yet again into your Cinque Terre loft
And ask for bubbles to be blown and to be lost

When sultry shadows of fresh rain clouds
splintered those Cinque Terre night shrouds

Promises never made, lessons never learnt
the ending of that which never began was burnt

Oh for all those leached colors, my Cinque Terre bubbles!

Calendars

Up there in the dark rain clouds

You laid nostalgia mattresses for us

We lay there speaking of dreams,

Dressed in silk, drenched in sweat

Clinging to dear life in each other's breath

Open skies laughed and poured

Cozy sheets, cushioned tantrums

All of me in all of you, and more

And yet we asked for just a little more

There are those that collect flowers,

dry them in treasured books

and on such a day laden with dreamy clouds, 

Run their fingertips along the contours

of solidified time, each other's arms;

And then there are those

who use their calenders

Miracles are not Magic, ask the White Angels

Faith creates miracles but who said anything about magic?
Is a poor woman's flight to Rome truly so tragic?

Gas leaks and great escapes, I forgive it all, that's love
I take in the dying and if they heal, it's the one above

But have you watched people die? So beautiful! Just try  
And all that's wrong in you, will heal thereby 

It's the end that truly matters, not means,
green papers have no sins, no dreams

Come guns or crime, love doesn't cease 
But abortions stand in between you and world peace

White angels have come, don't run
Poverty is god's love for you, my son

As for me, this Satan's cursed golden throne  
I bear the brunt of your sins, all alone

Again

A family on a sunlit shore

drenched golden in picture-perfect light

Peers out from a yellowed frame

full of needs, hopes and delight

Chivying out trails of angst and fright

I need your wings, need your flight, 

need those first rays of day light 

To go beyond blue mountain skies

silent strawberry fields

portraits of a crumbling church

and snitch from time's haggard palm

this needless holocaust, this untold remorse

I was alive. I lived. 

I was born again. I lived

And on a hundred sunlit shores,

chased those trails of angst and fright

But no photographs ever brought back

your wings for that one last flight

nor will there ever be another first light

Blank

Blank paper, an empty pen, blue screen

Fingers type what eyes have never seen

At first they plan to kill, flesh and soul

They think words revive, make you whole

And grey clouds fill emptiness with words 

Smearing bird-less skies with thunder chords 

Foolish fingers seek to entwine: your hand and mine, 

Blank sheets of paper fill but when voids combine

Grey skies empty into blankness 

 

Childhood

Dear childhood with your cotton candy pleasures

Memory snowflakes add to the haze and sand grains melt in summer days 

Who shrouded you in forgotten sandy measures?

Dear parenthood with your textual hugs, visual kisses

Who will bury these moments, and plant these blisses?

Love

Love, beyond-lifetimes love,
Tiny-little-sweet-childhood love,
Kitchen-heat-sweat ruined-meal love
menial love, transactional love,
a lonely night's-lustful love, 
ritual-filial-brotherly love, 
tea-time-tenderness-love
tracking flight-path-nervous love,
saree-end-clumping-touchy love, 
hand-shake-is-enough-too love, 
White-sheet-wrapped-up-nude-love
Here hold my hand and stand up to love

What if life slipped its tangled mess on our feet and got ahead?
Maybe then, skip the race, don't catch up, clean up, just be?
Cushioned by the delicious mess, 
here hold my hand and dwell here a while

Broken-bitter love, pupil-dilating, 
heart-rate-pumping love, 
Dazzling firework-love, oil-mud-lamp-love
Burning, shining, crazy, flaming love
Whichever way you find love, 
Here hold my hand and stand up to love
Pointless love

Under purple skies behind the horizon
Dawn met the dusk in moments lapsing before their birth: you met me,
They told me that our space is a deep, dark, noiseless ocean 
and the blue God is cushioned by a coiled snake 
And love, little love, the pointless torch.

Emptiness

Voices of vice, musical mane

Musky madness of muted pain

One God split his form of none 

A million heavens, a million hells

And all of his emptiness, in between

You

The ancient one who wrote our fate, 

lost his script when he held your palm

He gave you his hand to hold

And write in your own script 

But wisdom and passion, both his wives, old hags, they fought and he let you go

He let you go with empty lines,

to tweak and write a story he can't

The lines he drew, remained untouched 

Fate took his wives'side and you flirted 

With blue butterflies, Nectar names

Lustrous longings and abstemious arms

Yesterday's memories, you offer to wisdom

And carry tomorrow's dreams into passion's temple

Indu, Don't be afraid (after Frank O Hara)

Indu, don't be afraid

Roads do not end where doors close

Your named changed during your lifetime

Edges softened, anger sharpened

Sweet whispers honeyed that golden orb

Today, no one knows you meant 

the moon;  you do

a full name brings emptiness

And Indu, be not afraid 

Don't worry, your mother forgot

all about the hanger, the cane, even 

the starched cotton saree 

to mop tears off your bruises

Bruises no longer break hearts

No, not twenty two years ago

But if your heart breaks now, 

Indu do not be afraid 

It has been shattered before, 

and knows to wait, to draw strange mouth- glues

to itself and become whole again

Indu don't be afraid

To hold hands that have already parted

Or lie still on another's heaving chest

Sadness has many names yet love is not 

a synonym

Emptiness is not always loneliness 

Or vice versa

So what if he whispered your full moon name,

Only because you insisted he do

All things short aren't always sweet

But a childhood name re-lived in him,

Is a door opened at the end of the road

Indu, do not be afraid of open doors 

My Greed

Mighty mockers, powerful posers, 

Splendid sycophants, this oyster is yours 

I came bearing my rucksack of need

Moonbeam moorings, passion pockets

Siamese- sameness, my lonesome prophets

Empty rucksack mocks my daily greed 

Lost

Awkard silent dismissal, heard no plea

I remained on the dry land that was breifly you and me

But your country is a faraway land on clouds without a sea

Splintered cracks appear from nowhere 

On windows to my world here and there

Vanishing into dry wounds unhealed, sore

Unheard pleas, those salty seas

Burn my soul down and wait for more

Gone

When the sky falls on you on a fine morning

And without warning, roads tear themselves apart, did you hear the silence?

"I love you" whispered in your ear 

heard it too  

Continents drifted away from the landmass that they once were

Without saying, in breaking up, 

I am gone too

 

Miss You

Synchronized words, lips, limbs, silences

Your dark deep pools lighting up my inner islands

Those wild swings into flash togetherness

These perfumed nights, sweet taunts of tenderness

When I bid you goodbye, I will take along these precious feathers

And on lonely evenings, weave wings of lost treasures

To fly at tomorrow's first light into yesterday's glass loft

To seek in your embrace, a new life, sweet and soft

Another Dream

On lonely roads, I yearn for untainted moments, desire unquelled 

Sitting face to face with an unexpressed wish to be held

Pink umbrella, bitter coffee, passion fruit macaroons

Monsoon clouds, loneliness and unfulfilled boons

Such a short story this tale of your life and mine, together

Hands held but briefly, skin to nerves, an affair of the weather

I hold up muddled monsoon mirrors to my soul and ask

If skin makes love to the heart or does it wear a mask?

I douse my skin every night and dawn, in jasmine, neroli and rose

What's washed still lingers and your scent on my soul flows

Oh to draw short stories into a multi layered tome 

Resting my skin on your soul's sweet home!

Yet Again

Sometimes my silence spills into words

And paints her orchre dreams on your night's crest 

She then turns blue and sings skywards

Her shimmering song of the glitter fest

When it rained on an afternoon yonder, I saw her run 

Headlong into hope's gushing soft sun 

Other days, my silence waits for you

Suppressing heartbeat symphonies too

You drenched her once in your embrace

Now she stands naked in her easy grace 

My silence wants to melt into your voice again

She craves those dark spaces between the soul and heart yet again

Untouched

Blue butterflies fluttered around that 

Lonely green staircase to nowhere 

Where once I had tasted honey 

Seated on those stony wet steps, your sweet lips

I carry my hopeful pilgrimage each day

And leave bundles of love notes on its  side 

Seasons change and summer blooms

Sometimes those butterflies come too 

But my love notes remain untouched 

The day after

At the first dawn, I painted barnacle textures 

into silken sands on the lonesome shore

And waited for the tides to rise and fall

and tune my heartbeat to the planet's life

I saw death as it came to you then, swift and smiling

Each knotted nerve released of its could-have-beens

Warm wet soft sand dropped from my hands like rice balls

Onto stones that have waited at that beach forever, like long departed souls

I knew then that on tomorrow's barnacled sands,  

The sun will rise and the moon will pull his tides yet again 

The path that lay forgotten, buried, drowned 

Will flower yet again, the day after, if not tomorrow 

Come Again, First Rain

Where are those first raindrops that fell

on our coupled, drunken lips; neat spell?

Dreams flutter on today's foolish whims

But let them breathe in all of tomorrow's sins

Before lying them on yesterday's ghostly altar

And in sacred ceremonies of hoary slaughter

Pour drop by drop that liquor of the first rain

To quell for just a moment, rebirth of my pain 

Because  someday the universe will melt in gloom

and Andromeda will fold into the milky way's womb

The moon and a myriad stars and that charted planet path

Will drown in those first rain drops of love's needless wrath

Dead Dream Bubbles

On somedays, I am a four year old, blowing

countless bubbles of moments trapped in eternity 

Peering into colourful kaleidoscopes of the entire human history 

I see that I am more ancient than earth

Ruined rubbles of memory littering all spaces

Between concern and reality, truth and perception 

What magical spheres are these bubbles?

Here, children crushed by trucks speak through their purple plastic dolls

of indestructible loss and pain 

And adults believe that truth is all white on a black background

Here, killing your sister returns honor 

And walking in shrouds is modesty

Because yesterday, we had algebra and astronomy

And tomorrow we shall have heaven and its peace,

Today is just another day to blow

Bubbles of yet another score of dead dreams

Blue God, For You, Again

Blue God, your flute shattered space

And I exploded in a million atoms, stars,

Dawn's tribute to lonely nights, your face

But you dreamt of men's strife, land-wars

And then you went your way singing

songs of conquest, thrill and capture 

I ran after you, silent tears stinging

All our sweet hours spent in rapture

Some music is just wrong, just lust

And  earthern idols crumble to dust

Our heartbeat synched just right today 

But does all that is past blur into passé?

Sweet Wine

You came again on the wings of glow 

of the lustful crescent's summer-flow

We bathed then in thorn-strewn roses 

Wounded silences, scarred discloses 

Then your hand wrapped round mine

grouses drowned in night's sweet wine