Monday, 30 May 2016

Seducer of the senses

Time delivered by speedpost
Future's melancholy signpost 

I ran out of stamps that day
And reposts took the beltway 

But the sweet seducer was gone
Before my words could press on

I hung the sign on my door frame
planted roses on dreams of fame

And moved in next door to reality
Where once Santa come down for tea

Phantom photons of those winter glows
Throw quantum tantrums of noon shadows

I wait for those letters written on wind
on music, memories, mind unconfined 

My poet, muse, seducer of my senses
Shatter my strings of silences, defenses

Lend me your pen so I may put into words
Bent fingers, burnt lips, raw burning chords


Sunday, 29 May 2016

Question

That magic which you brought along
And the town that you came from
Do they know of a cheery tragic song
of countess kisses of lust overcome

You came alone in search of light
And I aflame, unknown jumped in the flight
Together we draped a blanket of words
To weather curses shaped by yesterday’s frozen swords

But who powered your lamp of facts?
And holding objectivity, your infidel axe
You severed my forlorn unborn universe
Into cause, coincidence, forever diverse

The why of things I will never know
but ask I will of you this, though
You were whole of me in our blanket
when white winter froze my silver anklet

Your music moves part of me still
Does our magic obey your will?





Saturday, 28 May 2016

Yesterday

Your voice like cool waters on smooth pebbles
Engulfs our embrace in muted warbles
This silence of a gentle gurgling brook, 
Shapes stories in my mini-soul book

Eyes, fingers, lips in a trance perpetual
spread flowers on a sandalwood pyre
Stories of surrender to an unrembered ritual
Worshiped at the altar of fire, destiny's desire

I died last night in deep throes of nerves 
I was born at the dawn of whimsical swerves 
I write today a story of skin on my soul
And my book remains so full, so full!






Friday, 27 May 2016

Love

Love for love's sake alone
if exists, I will not bemoan

In my world it seems to fall apart
When the beloved does depart

And yet, those sweet scents that linger
Defy starstorms and death's forefinger

Perhaps love for my sake exists
and for you, another kind persists

You search for meaning in my love
I wish to fly in the skies above

Thursday, 26 May 2016

Criminal

In India,
His wife filed a case against him today
He who died two days ago
It is criminal to commit suicide indeed

In Peru,
A naked man jumped in the lion's den today
Two lions were killed by the zookeepers
It is criminal to commit suicide indeed

Somewhere on the equator
A wife and a husband wrote down ambition's farewell words
And bought a psychedelic flat of dead dreams
It is criminal to commit suicide indeed

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Who Is You?

 Born with her, your mother's siblings
Micro-universes in her unborn womb
Any of them you, in nature's scribblings
Before you, then, was it still you?

Your body's hues are ancient accidents 
He a huntsman of pleasure, and she born of the nymph, 
They took a chance at bypassing abstinence
If he took not her, would you still be you?

Your first breath, the doctor's knife,
Snatches of pride, sadness and laughter
That lady who dressed as your wife
If images disappear, will you still remain?

In the depths of dreams and shocks of wonder
In blurring of memories and nostalgia tender
Sadness, sweetness, sharpness shapes
You, but when all is still, is it still you?


Tuesday, 24 May 2016

Muddled thoughts

I dip my thoughts, one after another
Gently in shades of red, blue and ether
Bunching them all in my saree end
I carry them for your worship my friend
But alas, they are all muddled in grey
Can you hear me speak without them pray? 

I drench my thoughts in whirlpools of wanderlust 
Memories of sunsets, sweet sad thirst
Drawing half-lost maps of lingering trust
I send them to you in hazy fitful texts 
But alas, they are all addled, perplexed
Can you find your way without maps and texts?

Monday, 23 May 2016

Cotton Wool

Countless childhood days and years
Spent with cotton wool in my ears
I courted fuzziness of purpose 
And chased skies under the surface 
of fraternal planet-changing dreams
East winds curved those soft streams 
Into avenues of clear-cut crystal paths
Nearing each curve, I wondered if it lasts 
Sometimes the wind carried cotton wool
away from me and my heart felt full
Sometimes I wondered though if the east wind 
Would leave me alone on these curves, blind

Nakedness

Truth donned a translucent veil of lores
And lured immorality to milky shores 
I was the demi god who drank a half
of the limitless urge to sing and laugh
Gentle jealous moon spilled my cup
drenched in my laughter, he lives it up 
I wait at the milky shores on moonless nights 
With a new saree for her under broken lights 
My beloved came on stardust again
And danced with me in cloudless rain
stark naked she was, but her nebulous veil remained
Never truly naked even in a mirror she said

Sunday, 22 May 2016

My Daughter

A star was born in the sea-bed
When you gently held my knees
I swung you high and the moon fled
When your gurgles pulled the seas

Distant dreams came undone
Love stretched its arms in degrees
At the nape of your neck, little one
concerns, care, karma; life frees 





Friday, 20 May 2016

Incomplete

Lever and fulcrum, wheel and axle 
Incomplete kernels of carnal quests
Casual asymmetries of cupid's lust
unwieldy jigsaws, our meeting of minds

We came to quench one urge at a time
In these sacred rituals of hoary rhyme
Desire's kernels sprout again afresh 
In imperfect knowledge of the Union of flesh 

But I lay drenched in a meteor shower of charms 
In our curled up arc, your complete arms 
Nooks and havens of a tender morning 
Speed gears of passion, worm gears of longing

We yearned to surge, we burned to merge 
but two makes not one despite upsurge 
Our cells know how to split up and die
Two lives from a death, you and I 








Quest

Which fount do you drink from?
You, who in raptures of skin and nerves
Quench your soul's thirst?
Do you seek that fallow mist in my eyes
Mutual knowledge of futility
And of your ever anxious quest
If your parched lips seek a drink from mine,
Know that the rain clouds gathered 
In my sky here too. Now


Thursday, 19 May 2016

Floyd

Dreams surge from my eyes as
A distant ocean floats on rivers 
Your presence I sense 
In a touch of hand, a reckless kiss
But you remain, unnamed, unseen
And when kisses ride on memory waves
Pain's seismic undercurrents stun 
my being into seeing, you 
Unnamed, untouched. 
How I wish you were here 





Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Secret games

Secret games known to none
Chess moves, sunday verses, what fun!

Will you though come someday
to my garden swing far away?

O sweet saga of wonder, linger please
I will open my little bundle of treats

Finger flutes, raindrop anklets, 
Straw bracelets in night blankets

Mystic moondrops at sunrise
Tight-locked arms, feet, eyes

Come share my treats and coffee 
Today will be wiped away softly

But secret games on the garden swing
Are engraved in our unwedded ring




Tuesday, 17 May 2016

Rama's Song

I had dreamt of your face 
Ever since I remember my dreams
Earth's finest treasure, you,
daughter of her wisest son

Your smile carried me across
dreams of aeons, universes, wombs
In the first dawn, we were but one  
But here I stand today at this shore

Slow-spreading colors of the day
Seeped you in red and led to earth
While I, deep blue, stayed afloat
in a nameless, etherless sky

Until the day arrived when 
Your greying mother craved for color
We merged again, you and I 
And all colors that made light

Fate wove many dreams together 
and left us alone in dense forests
of gay abandon, where magical
deers sprang on ascetic desires

And I lost you to the great skies,
to the oceans, the first color that held me 
your eyes, Shiva's poisoned throat
And here I stand today at this shore

I am your Rama, I am your Radha, 
My love, defeat death with desire 
and wait for me at that alcove 
of secret unmourned memories




Monday, 16 May 2016

Gratitude

I counted lifetimes of petty tiffs, 
hourglass sands of slippery words
lingering cups of lukewarm coffee 
Lazing without leisure to stretch out 
next to you. Wasted.

I measured seperation in feet
But distance smiled slowly
and lead me to your path
I wait for you here now
How many steps together will 
Cross this line between us?

I measured seperation in silences
But solitude hugged me gently
and replayed your voice 
in each melody I hear now
How many deleted messages will
hush this screaming stillness?

I measured seperation in aeons 
But nostalgia kissed my lips
and delivered sweet mists
of moments frozen in time now
How many years of yearning will
tear you and me aside? 

Wasted words, hours and measures
Breathe in gratitude. Still





Sunday, 15 May 2016

Your lips

I drank deeply from the fount of your lips
To quench an unnamed ageless thirst  
Desire's drumbeats ran faster than sound
And thunder showers drenched my soul 
But the drought remained untouched 
Then one day at midnight you wrote
Forgotten letters of my childhood name
And hope brought its timorous sprouts
Again and again to the fount of your lips 




Time

I thought she sways on hallowed rope swings
Forward, backward she clings and flings 

But when I arrived in her perfumed space 
Time stood still, held me in embrace

Clouds played hide and seek with stars
And faraway shadows doned friendly avatars
 
Her ancient voice sang of longings past
Dark grey oceans, her eyes overcast  

I was born before you and with you
She said, and knit me a new blue deja vu 

I wore it last winter on my new rope swing
And wondered if she stills wears my nose-ring 


Saturday, 14 May 2016

My Verse

In your gentle fist, my little one
I hope to fill memory's diamond dust. 
One day when the page is full 
Perhaps he will trace those 
gilded lines along your palm

In your tender wrists, my little one
I hope to fill day-dream's glass bangles 
One night when his world is silent
Perhaps he will listen to those 
Longing chimes on your flirty wrist

In your warm arms, my little one
I hope to fill life's sagacious solace 
In moments of loneliness and despair 
Perhaps he will wrap himself in you 
And find his soul where he left it

Circles

Wheels like zeros with no ends
Carry the chariot of time in his
Relentless relay races
forward, onward, no end.
Open air ruins he leaves behind
Odeons, temples, dead tongues
Perhaps he'd laid here my heart
In a hoary human ritual of sacrifice

Wormholes like zeros with no end
Shaped in the blue ink of his hand
sometimes they pinch and curve space
Replay, reverse, no end.
And time retouches his sepia prints
Finger curls, base voice, ageless ache
Perhaps he'd found here the font
Of language reviving broken love

Thursday, 12 May 2016

Escaped Yesterday

At times, it is those cruel Jasmines
And on other days, bright cotton Sarees
They drag my escaped yesterdays to
Warm cemeted rooftops laden
with silk-cotton mattresses

Those jasmine heart-tugs then
print bold amaryllis on bedspreads
And smear ochre evenings with kohl
Dissolving into a meteor strewn night

Cotton Sarees drench raw mangoes
in a chilli brush, draw dusk's grandiose paintings on hot rice canvasses
cooking up ethereal feasts for unreal gods

Imagination locks memory's room
But my yesterdays escape
as sapid smells do from time's
ancient kitchens: hungry, unheeded.

Until he returns, I will wait
In this star-jasmine alcove
With his mango pickle stains
on my cool cotton Saree








A Beginning and an End

You and I as us
Did not have a beginning.

But who, when I was burning, 
Promised to end all beginnings
that ever have been?

Dreams, desire, destiny
He burnt them too
and with them all endings
which began afresh

Smearing those sacred ashes,
and smoky scents of longings
Was that you who went past me today

When I searched for him
In the crowded streets of despair?

You and I as us
Did not have an ending

But who, when I was drowning,
Promised to erase all endings
That hover menacingly?

Sadness, shock, separation,
He drowned them too
and with them all beginnings
which end without a cause

Washing the sky afresh, painting
Ochre dawns on a new cloud
Was that you who went past me today

When I searched for him
In the desolate tempests of hope?



Wednesday, 11 May 2016

Concentric Circles

I was born without you, into you
Like the moon from earth, without
Waxes and wanes, pulling along
Her tides of hope and despair

You, worship at a cold temple of fusion
Like earth, your whirling circumambulation,
Draws out solar flares of passion,
Looped prominences of reasoned thwart

Phantom suns, you and I on either side of imagined perfect blue noons
Concentric circles, you and I, meeting nowhere
But for perfect empty spaces at the core

You were whole, before me
And I,
Nothing 

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

It's a Good Life

It is a good life I think and sigh
For what's freedom when nigh and high
Dawn to dusk, this search for seed or fly

Those wings were not clipped on the sly
Dreams and wings feed neither you nor I

But trapped birds need not fly
And those dreams of blue sky

They bade a gleeful goodbye
When dark storms pour out heaven's eye

I wonder if freedom is all about the why
Of a choice freed or made to die

But, trapped birds, they needn't chose

Monday, 9 May 2016

Fictional Graves at Noonlight

Last night's stars are strewn along
Rolling into that sandy wave song

Across the water bridges they hope
To build a giant peeping telescope

And through pictures and radiowaves
Teleport out of their soundless graves

I trace circles of my noonlight shadow
And gather handfuls of stars to burrow

All shadows, pictures, sound bridges
Into watery graves of smooth rough edges

The Hay-ropes of Childhood

Matchsticks hidden in mounds of warm sand
Sweet-jealous tweaks of buried fingers found

Dragon fly kites on straw ropes held lengthwise
Imagined flightpaths on never-to-seen again idle skies

Sticky mounds of happiness treats
Stolen, sugary, shared, sapid sweets 

Dusky tales of ancient gods alive
Ecstasy shivers when replayed, revive 

I worship today those days of sinless sunshine
When hayropes were woven in childhood shrine 

Saturday, 7 May 2016

Encounters

Daily encounters with emptiness
Cats, cars, credit ratings and Trump
In each moment I meet but pettiness
questions of existence, crucifying a thump

But in me they wage a war of words
But why, but why, these silver cords?

Karmic puzzles these encounters
Kindness delivered in prescribed packets
Oh those lives passed in ordered hours
And now these petty emptiness rackets

In me, they rage a relentless song
But why, but why does no one belong?

Tender tinder encounters of passion
Together now, a mission, this minute
Incest-tinted stains of sapiosex fashion
Breed dust storms of mirrorless love in it

In me, they stage a speechless pageant
But why, but why is love imagined

Friday, 6 May 2016

Waiting

One hundred and one times I track
His presence, absence and time trails
I was with him when I was born
It was to his shadow that I held on
When the soul train arrived yet again
But meanwhile, silence rains on tintop ringer tones
Emptiness presses bubble wraps
Of boredom
Waiting at the window side,
Night turns to day and all the stars fade
I was with him when each day was a living death,
With him when daily death silenced life
But as I turn back in daylight for him
One hundred and one shadows remain.

Will He?

Will he not weave a bouquet of sighs
When bitter dark coffee smells plagiarise
Wood fire nostalgia of his tangy verse?
Were it not perchance for this clockwork universe,
Where sighs, smells, verses die all too soon
Would the ocean be haunted by this memory harpoon?
Waltzing fins of monsoon moons evade
fatal stabs of the shiny harpoon blade
But at a touch, my vermilion blood spills
And his ghostly verses arise draped in spine chills











Thursday, 5 May 2016

Unhurried Fun

Childhood came on a summer train
Bearing dry-leaf packets of unhurried fun
Adolescence too with its zits, pits and nettles
Stole a few glances and unspoken words

Above the secret stream of invisible kisses
Your lips opened into the railway tunnel
Lightless moments of plaintive pocket radio tunes
I seized those stars from the speeding fields

And tied them in your poem's meters
I will rest on these soft verse bundles
At night, at dawn, in unhurried fun.



A Happy Substitute

You carve mountains of mud
Build havens right into heavens
You say your prayers to social networks
Dream up your music note after note
I kiss and pout, tinted and filtered
Snapshots of happiness, a happy substitute of
Smells from a far away kitchen, warm sweat,
Paper wrapped treats for the afternoon
Spent under inane, mundane, arcane sunlight
Seven-year old’s timeless rituals of flowers
in sand tombs of ants sacrificed in the garden
Now you dig trenches to throw your trash
And sculpt beauty in recycled plastic

Wednesday, 4 May 2016

Complete

We spread soft clouds under our feet
And pass summer noons in white heat
Seize upside down maps of unknown worlds
While magical mirrors on still lakes unfurled
I blow bubble names of many past pictures
Touching your skin, they burst into scriptures
Today, here, a myth is born, again
Love is fashioned in old-flame pain
But if the map of strange worlds turns upright
And magical mirrors fade in the night
We would have touched clouds with our feet
Some bubbles would have merged, somewhere, complete












She Loves Me

Yes, no, yes, no, yes 
odd or even those chosen petals 
You knew they would pause at yes
And yet you pluck them once 
and again, she loves me, loves me not

Tuesday, 3 May 2016

Radha Do Not Cry For Moonlight

You seek him day and night to heal your pain
Perhaps in quantum physics, a drug you'll gain
For it says time has no lines but curves
And the universe makes no sense
On its own, but for you, to be it
Could it be that love is a quantum state to be in?
Complementary yin and yang,
To exist and to perish and to do both all at once?

Radha, do not cry for moonlight

Radha, Do Not Cry For Moonlight-2

When you left the land of yesterday
You didn't see, dear Radha
But your Blue God tied a knot 
In the right corner of your saree
Unravel and you will find
Those embraces in furtive moonlight
Radha, don't cry for moonlight 

So What?

Okay so you kissed me
And then, the moon jumped into
Sunlight pools. So what? 

Heaven plays with earthly minions
Saturn carves karmic boomerangs

But when you kissed me
Fate dropped his notebooks into
sunlight pools. 

We seek to never forget soft-focus moments, 
Love's intimate babbles, sweet torments

And then you kissed me
Love lost his focus and tripped into
Sunlight pools. 

Sweet-moon kisses, Karmic- fate kisses
Intimate- soft kisses, sunlight pool kisses

So what?





Pain

Stripped of pride, vanity and of joy,
She came to you in search of why
Little God, do you laugh at her
Unclothed desire, wasted spur?
Seek her hand for thereins lie
Seasons, winds and kites to fly 
Stark naked she walks around
Clothes, ornaments, words just surround 
And warp sacred spaces in between  
Across the temple pond in a silent ravine
She sang hoary arcane hymns to invoke
Your lost pain, lost pleasure, heart broke 
But you little God, you stole her clothes again 
Sent wild forest flowers of surruptious gain
But she remains naked, stripped of pain. 




Sunday, 1 May 2016

Radha

Radha sought pleasures carnal, profane
But selfies live in a future-past hologram
Which spirit is appeased when senses abstain?
Love's sweet lips to remain unkissed, damn!

Mazerunner, mindless your labour, thought
You seek to drown death's murmuring fife
While drenched in desire runs the river of life,
All along almighty job, oh the battles you fought

Lustful wetdreams you read in verses mine
Alien idioms fashion moral keys to unlock
Doors that were never locked, but you mock
And in Jayadeva you seek love, divine!

Oh damn!


Be Gone

Do not forget me, high priest of my ruined temple

Cry not for me in sadness. Sleep, gentle

Dusk's oil lamps spew smoky verse

But think not of final farewells, 

Yes, April rides on summer's thirst

And no, mirages thrive not in cloudburst

But my priest, you chanted sacred

Hymns, stone images breathe naked 

Cover me in silken azure, do not forget

However beleaguered and beset

My image worships you at temple dawn

Praying for you to move on, be gone 

Do not forget.








We

We were not meant to be 
Together you and I, as we

Who was I before you though?
Each of your dreams, without me, fallow

Did chance play a game of cards
While designing word-play boulevards
Rainbow paths of randomness
Your eye meeting mine in abstinence?

You arrived into my puzzled-maze life
Singing sweet sorrowed stories of strife

Thwarted time did a turn around
Raining smoky fresh morning dew
On lives that could have been, and are
In star-bound cars from afar, doors ajar

You drove me to a land of could this be
And for a snatch of eternity, it was, we

But words, cars, spaces do they make us whole
devouring pieces of me and you, this we, a black hole 
But entwined forever in words, 
you, I not meant to be; we.





Silent

I wish to write in my yellowed page
Of finger-speak, touch-speak; tastes, textures, smells, oh, they all speak
In ascending crescendos of accord
But words, they remain silent today

Far away in a land of could've been
Your heart beats to the rhythm of mine
A hundred violins linger on a note 
An ancient hymn comes alive
But words, they remain silent today

Eyes tell stories from lives beyond
Of broken wings, pride and regret but arms!
Your arms pronounce an incensed spell 
And my book of life has a fresh new page
But words, they remain silent today

So come lets weave a language together
Pauses, silences, glances, fingertips
Your body burnishing verses in a script 
Created by mystics, music, you and I
But words, let then remain silent today

When our book is full, I will walk around
And passing each library in town 
Ask each page the meaning of love
But just, now, for now, in the clouds above
Words, let them remain silent today