Paradoxical Living

Can I just pull this day off by sleeping
Sleeping till the time when the world gets over
Over and beyond the system it has created
Created from the ashes of previous systems that have died too—
Too much of the restraints on humans.
Humans have a tendency to create a world which is unhealthy for them
Themselves then becoming the creator, forbearer, manipulator, rebel, and victim of it
It is now seen that nothing of what humans tend to indulge in has a sense of permanence
Permanence that resides in truth and real happiness
Happiness, however, we have learnt to devalue, give away
Away to the suckers of our happiness
Happiness is seen as a selfish act
Act then we do to show how happy are we
We live in contradictions and paradoxes
Paradoxes such as humans are good and virtuous
Virtuous person has to live his life going against the flow of the system
System to which we all are bind
Bind then we are to our fate that tells
Tells us to remain in sufferings all our lives.
Lives a man with no will to live
Live, if you can, live
Live like nobody has ever lived
Live and keep on living
Living like nobody can ever live
Live for the sake of living
Living till we die.

A Great Missing

Being an artist is a tough job
And the toughest part of it isn't that you create art
Or that you earn well from it
Or get fame and be photographed
Gossiped about in the magazines
Called for the seminars, invited to the finest dines.
No, this ain't the tough part.
The tough part is to remain true to your heart
To remain genuine, honest, humble, dignified
To value the integrity of your art, even before your own esteem
To know that there is no other life
Worth living.
The life devoid of embracing the journey, good and bad, tough and easy, valued and not valued
The whole of it—
Isn't worth living as long as
You are not doing your best
Not the best in the relative terms of the other artists
But the best of your self, where every cell of your body is working towards
Your very purpose of life.

And today we have lost one such artist
The finest actor, the greatest gift to the Indian cinema
A man of honour, a man of perseverance, a man of humility
A man who had stayed true to his art
A man whose good humour and humbleness extends out to even those who had never met him
A man who has touched the heart of each one of his audience like a perfect gentleman
Always reflecting the truth of whichever character he played in his gentle eyes
Imitating only his inner reflections
A man who came to us in many forms
Each one of which will be missed, cherished and remembered forever.

Leaving us heart-wrenched, what we feel remains scarce of enough words
Even the sky was once jealous of the star we had on our earth
Difficult as it is, but now maybe it's time to say
"Wo jo tha khwaab sa, kya kahein jaane de... "

RIP.

The Travelers

There are places that once and often had crept into my mind
Through the crevices of the voids which always exist in each of my present moment
Whenever I ain't traveling.

I am so fond of traveling that when I ain't doing the places,
I do the thoughts, the people, the interests, and the perceptions
So much so that people have waited too long enough to see my stabilized and static state
Before turning disappointed and making a decision to leave or stay.

And whenever I am on any travel
I carry a pocketful of dreams
And at every stop I collect wings of hope
To carry them back with me
Which I nurture in return, and use them to flutter myself away
From the futile shadows of the past.

And with those pocketful of dreams, I seek out for
An uttermost and distantly beautiful mountain top
Entering the voyeurism of admiring
How sunrays embrace those snow-capped peaks
Creating a perfect union of scorching hot and frosty cold
Letting their emotions, their love flow through the melting glaciers
Turning into the spilling of over-brinked emotions as waterfalls
Causing an endless flow of rivers and seas
Not stopping until the love reaches its eternal mergence

Where another set of my dreams
Sit on the rim of the earth
And gaze into the imperceivable depths
From the place which you call centre of the horizon.

A Calling

They say that
If you want to see how you have been living through the years,
   go on an unplanned trip.

I don't choose my places to travel,
   they choose me.

I hear a calling, deep into my heart
Until I pack my bag, and just walk
   to a place unknown.

You know, how you see a place is how
   that place prefers to reveal itself to you.

And all that goes inside your heart
Reflects through your experiences in the outer world;
How you deal with it
   is the crux of how you deal with your life in general.

And what you take with you—
   the learnings, wisdom, memories, bondings
Stays with you forever.

Lessons on Love

"Places you can find love
It sits around lurking in places"
Such like crevices and abysses
Or on either sides of it.

Love is a walk over an edge
And crossing over the bridge
Reaching out to another heart
While carefully treading your speed.

Some people love too fast, some I have seen loving too slowly
And before you can make any room for love in your mind,
Lust already seeps in.
And for the fast ones, they have already caught the train
Which takes their ride to a fantastical world 
Without their lover's stains.
And you end up loving one
Who's far from the real face
You end up having an imaginary love affair
With someone who ain't ready to stay.

And so while you fall, befriend your heart with your mind
Lest your mind clouds your vision
From distinguishing left from right
And you'd be muddled up and be lost in the
Wrong direction.

And don't lose the sight of whoever it is you are chasing
Be aware of how much of you they are tolerating
And keep your mind open to the possibility of
Things and people turning to cheating.

For what is worse than being jilted
Is living with false assurances of love
Let the truth fall out like the leaves in autumn
So that the tree may stand bare and forlorn.
But that, my dear, is a beautiful sight, don't despair
Marvel how you have grown inside by the break of light
After this tremendous repair.
And one day you shall then perhaps
Walk gently into the love, my dear.

The Perfect Window

There was a window leading into the paradise
With lush greens around, marble-sand, and restless stillness of the river
Where the bed was as carefully made in the tent as the weather had shielded us from the storms
Of mountains which may surprise us any moment,
But not tonight.

We made fire, washed our dishes, made tea, time and again
Had some sausages, veggies, rice and food cans
Our heart floated in poetry and songs
We talked about things deep down in our throats
It was a valley of love, the love of nature
The wind carried the freshness of flowers in its currents
And where we sat contained the deep understanding of what makes the earth
And everything that lives on it.

Towards the evening we would go and collect more wood,
Make the fire dance in jolly
Cook a feast for the dinner
Add ganges water in our inebriant 
Clank glasses to our oneness with the mother earth
Let the fire mark its reflection in our pupils and illuminate the darkness of our hearts
While the night around seeped the bright of moon and stars. 

Mercy of an Axe

Lesterday I received a yetter from an axe
He said he was borry for all his sad intent
He fished to be friends and hissed how we tranced
Together in our company, how innocently we pranced
And uplifted our spirits howards the teights of delight
Mocked for hours from norning till the might
And de-spite how he lied in-spite his lofty love of
His heart which he blamed to have belonged to mine
Is asking foe for friendship with no guilt on his face,
And has flamed me for the fallacy I felt for his another dame
Is looking out for mercy he hasn't sought an apology for
Thinking I shall remain crooked just for his fake sake.

Your Beautiful Spirit

Have you ever looked upon yourself proudly
Like maybe your parents would have done it to you sometime?
Have you ever admired yourself, look yourself in the eye
Like you remember your childhood lover doing it to you in those times?
Have you ever looked as fresh as a morning dew
As blossoming as a flower
As bright as the full moon
As resourceful as the sun
As expressive as the ocean in its high tide
As excited as the chirruping birds?
Have you ever compared your mood swings to the waning or waxing moon
Looked into your darkness like you look into the night sky
And find the stars?
Have you ever traveled light years ahead in your thoughts?
Have you ever gone back in time
And hugged your younger self tight
Remembering the days when you had needed it the most and nobody was around?
Have you ever stayed as loyal to yourself as to your friends whom you had promised a drink party after a movie night?
Have you ever run fast enough to catch yourself from losing a part of you for the sake of some other person?
Have you ever convinced yourself into understanding what is right for you like you do to your best friend?
Have you hugged yourself, kissed your hand, and looked yourself in the eye to tell
That you are just as beautiful as any terrific thing you have ever seen or known?
As beautiful as you were when you were born.
When you didn't care about how you look, what you wear, or if you are carrying any scar of birth mark.
Did you not see how bravely you came out into this world
Which you now judge to be full of bad people and evil things,
Do you remember how it felt when you were first able to look around
And see the birds, the plants, the sunshine refracting through the window in myriad hues?
Do you remember the soft touch of that comfortable pillow beneath your head, and the touch of graceful, most beautiful hand in the world — on your forehead
Cradling you to sleep
With a soft humming melody
Of the voice you had felt deep down into each vein and every artery coming in and going out of your heart?
Do you remember the first time you ever felt your own heartbeat, counted your own pulse
Looked at your own smile, for the first time in the mirror? And then smiled at yourself back again?
Do you not see and remember all these while looking at your own reflection?
How often do you forget how wonderful you are?
How graceful you are?
And how more loving you can be?

Unfits of the Cityscape

For whom are these places built
Where one can live with a family and friends, go to schools
Swing in the parks
Ride a bike or a wooden horse
Find a job, save in the banks, and invest in the market
Have festivals, the mainstream ones, and feast about it
Have a culture, a lifestyle, a clothing, a marriage,
An occasion, pregnancies, and discuss politics over the drinks?
Building concepts such as socialising
And anti-concepts like social distancing?
And who are these rest of the people
Lying at the suburbs, the boundaries, the peripheries of these kind of places?
Hardly having even a blanket to live by for the rest of their lives,
Or be born with some heterosexual deformities
The ones whose cultures don't take part in the mainstream
Their ceremonies, foods, music, clothing, and traditions
Everything differs from rest of the history written in the books
The people who roam around unrecognized, unacknowledged
With no homes, or sophistication
But a heart full of emotions and a mind of wisdom
Bequeathed down from ages
Which sometimes reaches the threshold of forgiveness and negligence
On being tortured and disrespected.
What are these cities, and these people
That never happen to merge in one whole identity?
And where on one side the over-populated and over-ambitious cities
Are built over the foundations of some dark kept secrets
Causing its incompleteness,
There is another side
Where people live on the edge of the sword of hypocrisy
Guarding their principles that nobody understands, and
Living as fragmented, non-humanised, incomplete
Structures of human species
Camouflaging their identities into disappearance.

Cities and their Politics

There are broken cities
Lying around in the house of man and woman
Who had drunk-fucked each other at night
And in the morning, fought over it—
Over who holds more power
In the house, on the other's mind
Judging each other for their moves
Dissatisfied, laying bare their ugliness
And temperament that now holds no bounds,
Soon enough convert the whole house
Into some crashing sounds, broken pieces
A dump yard, this place is.
One by one each leave the house
And one at a time they come back with a different lover
Drunk-fucking them
And throwing these visitors out after few hours
Of still-no-satisfactory experience.
The cities, like objects are hung around their house
As mantles, flowered vases, doorknobs, suitcases et al
And day by day the occupants—
After losing their hearts over each other in some
Once-upon-a-time kinda passionate love
And later their minds in each other's overbearing company—
Have unleashed each other off the commitment,
Unhooked their desires and insecurities
Dumped off the broken bits of leftover trust
Yet lived together still, like some karma that keeps hanging over your shoulder
From one lifetime to another.
But they aren't bothered
And when they do get bothered
They start losing a part of their body, the organs, the structure
And the whole plot of their body gets deframed
Into some unrecognizable absurdity
Of these fragmented relationship
In whose house, these broken cities reside.

Prayer

Open the wings of your heart
Open its sky, let it shine bright with love
And empathy
Before you raise your voice
To the Almighty
Remember all his children
Your brothers and sisters
Sans any confines
Remember them in your words
And with your arms up higher,
Higher up extended in the air
Pray, oh beauty!
Pray with your soul bare.

My Poetic Journey

On discovering that I can write too
Like rest of the poets in the world
I'd jump up in excitement and choose my audience
And recite to them all my written stuff.
They applauded and I swelled with more motivation
To make them read more and more
They were just being kind, I later got to know
When I couldn't stop my laugh after reading what I then wrote.

With time I sunk in deeper layers of imagination
People told me that I write about the unsaid things
Some were mesmerised and some were awed
They either understood my writings or absolutely did not.
One of them even came out to tell me
That he has been stealing ideas from my poetry.
I was a little disturbed, there was no way to track
But I knew he couldn't get it written with the same meaning as I had.

Soon the life turned complicated
Since poetry was the direct expression of all my thoughts and feelings
Now I wanted to be read, but not seen through
So I started encoding my poetry with undecipherable cues.
And thence came the readers with interpretations more wilder
What I meant and what they inferred was entirely unrelated
But a new section of responses got added in my treasure
They asked me how I am able to write which only their mind has reflected.

And no sooner I got trapped in the weirder side of life
Despite everything being fine, I was losing myself slice by slice
The truth became too blunt, the lies were charming
The truth became ugly, the lies were embalming.
Though I was prospering, I was losing my poetic side
And now with this quarantine, I confronted the truth I'd been keeping aside
I've lost most of my previous readers now, but have gained some new
Many of them are amazing poets themselves, but it seems pleased are very few.

The Human Judgement

In the duly hollow privileges
Of a tantrum-hit city
A raven, a Cheshire cat, and a pesky rat
Collected on an amphitheater stage—
They brought their own seating.

They wondered what to do with the world
Now that the humans are losing power
And probably die in number of lacs
Leaving the planet to their likes
And so, now, on them the responsibility lies.

The cat led, the raven judged, and the rat had all the chance to speak but
The rat, he said, we must first learn what brought the human
To the demise of their race
So the mistake may be refrained from being
Repeated again
The cat nod.
Raven only said, "nevermore".

And so the rat began
With no control ove' his mind or tongue
And judged the humans for being greedy—
"Losing their minds in the black hole of their systematized cities
They are getting consumed in their own insanity
Ready to lose the ones dearest to their hearts even."
The cat just nod.
The raven only said, "nevermore"

And so continued the rat
Reminding an old tale of greed
But their ain't no pied piper of Hamelin anymore
Who'd ease the pain again or take away this Covid-whateve'
And even if there was one, the humans won't bother to live still
They survive merely, doomed for their creed.
The cat merely nod.
But the raven said, "nevermore"

Continuing, the rat told, how the rich seek the Figaro olive oil, or Baskin Robbins's ice-cream or Nik Baker's bread
And is ready to sue the government for not providing their stomach-filled hungers with strawberries and kiwis
And on the other hand, the poorest of the poor find no meal, and the lesser poors need a variety in their meal
With more of free veggies and different skins and meat.
There is a sandwiched class also, having faith in the country or politicians more than they have it in the doctors even
—I wonder what they mean when they say country though (added the raven)—
That's right, said the cat, the humans are humans and they remain the same everywhere, like always, ill-bred and inhumane
—"Yeah, but nevermore"

But, said the cat, they got a spirit to survive well
I'm sure they'll find a way out of this too
And even if they get to die in lacs
They'll use their religion or the fear of other religions to reproduce more and more
And those new ones, will be filled with more hate maybe
More prejudices, more disgusts, more egos, more impatience, and more minds than the hearts
Humans always come up with a new system, if the previous one fails
But I have hardly seen them dying for sure
They'd kill rather, if they're dying
But they don't die alone.
"Hmm," raven reacted, "nevermore"

Then we got not to worry, excitedly jumped up the rat from his seat of foamy rotten bread
(which he'd got from the trash lying outside and near the dustbin lying unattended in that premises only,
Swarming with insects of different breeds
And of course, complemented with an uneasy smell of pungency)
We got not to worry at all, the rat said giving a dancing motion to his words and waving his arms up in the air,
We ain't like them
None of it of what we discussed
And hence when this race perishes forever and ever and ever,
We wouldn't have to worry a bit
The nature will take care of us
Having saved the planet for us
And we shall survive with our capability and fate and the nature's design
Which we wouldn't have to question but merely to live by
And now we only got to wait for all the humans to die
From their own faults and ill-humor and misconceptions and hatred and greed and selfishness and lack of wisdom or kindness or love or empathy
"Don't get too excited, rat!" the cat said with a poker face
"I've lived with the humans closely.
If God doesn't help them, they stop believing in Him.
And if they find it is nature's doing
They might end up attacking more fervently
Leaving not just their kind, but not a single one of our kind alive either
So be glad things ain't that bad still as of yet"
And the raven added, "nevermore"

All three got quietened with a "phew".
And just while these questions swirled and whirled around them
The answer was somewhere blowing in the wind too.

Fluttering Hope

Wait, dear blue butterfly! Take no flight.
Sit upon my palm
And hear my prayer
Carry the burden of my hope
Upon your fluttering wing
I got some words to say
Take them away with the wind.
Sprint to the nearest flower
Bring me its nectar and make a bond of vow
Promise me you shall take away with you
This smile I am carrying on my lips
Deliver it across all the boundaries of politics
And let all the men and women carry it to their death.
May not a child move his crayon without a smile
And no beggar shall stay devoid of it either
And may the doctors come with one each
Out of the operation theater.

May the farmers smile on seeing
The rain and sun on time
And let a smile play on every lover's face
Despite the separation of any kind.
May everyone appreciate each one
On the delight of their progress and prosperity
Let their be no jealousy,
Make smile play on every lip.

May a smile reach out to
Anybody whose day has gone bad
And dispatch one smile to anyone who is
Disheartened by the God's plan.
Sprinkle some smiles in the dreams
Of every person who's fast asleep
As like a flurry onto
A man sweating in hot summer steam.

Chastened Being

Seeing your face in bits and pieces
Reflecting through shattered mirror lying all around
You let its trenchant and shabby corners
Prick you in your heart
Where you have kept your mortifications
Averted and concealed
Clumping through the ages
All instances of indignity

Falling into the crooked delights
In the hollow conglomerate of night and day
Sitting cross-legged, blind-eyed, love-chased
Right across the obscenity of your infidel

Face-palmed you sat in a dreamless state
Across your manifested reveries
Seeing them hollow-eyed yet you remained
In the desert you thought fancy-filled

You sought adventures in your nocuous friendships
And clanked glasses to all afflictions
The time of your life flushed out through tubes
Into the reeking gutters

You condoned all the wrong-doings
But self-reproached for your impuissant being
And let the selfish world prey on you
When you treated them with undeserving esteem

The child in you was hid in a corner
The writer in you cached all the writings
The lover in you has turned to atheism
And your youthful spirit has died a few times already

And yet you seek no apology is a shame
Your reflection through shattered glass hold no remorse
But since you hold the confessions in your heart
Your higher being has forgiven you through the course.

Storm of the Mighty Red Desert

Hail! O Storm
Of the mighty Red Desert!
Glorious you! How benign
In your splendrous ousia
Your vastness stretches to reach an afterworld alliance
Making a good old Captain Praxis
Disinherit his eudaimonia.
You who have bequeathed the humanity
With unperturbed ataraxia.
The backhanded cloud stand no chance
To climb that mountain
Where inhabits the pious elements of your sand
In its agathon rocks.
You, who cause a determined outcome
In writing off an apocalyptic fate.
Oh Unlimited! What it takes
To attempt a conciliation
With my mind if it ever cease to belaud
My astronomic Lord?!
May I be deprived of my matronymic prestige
If I ever breach the misology by expound,
And if I ever still commit such a sin
Grant my apology with only the runaround.

Epilogue to an Unwritten Book

With the closing book cover, who all shall seek its end?
The greatest of stories are lived through, they don't become obsolete or dead.
The characters still aspire big,
They haven't turned strong, they are still weak
And as you became a witness to the stronger bonds
Some follies in their nature still lives.
Happy are not the endings, sad are not the deaths
All you have lost along the book
Will have to remain in your head
Those who stayed alive by the writer's mercy
Are only but walking on the edge of their demise
And if this book hasn't yet stirred some controversy
In your heads and talks, is but a surprise.

And I shall take your leave for now
Writing is tedious,
And the protagonist still makes me raise my brow.

I ain't hinting on any sequel
Stay in restless peace, my dear reader.

On One Fine Day With a Friend

He was sitting right in front, a god damn friend
There was a table in between, and two cups of tea, diary, and pen
He asked me to write then and there
I asked him why
He asked instead why you shouldn't, in fact?
I didn't want to write then and gave a myriad of reasons
However he made me realize that those were excuses mere.
And when I lost all my defenses to his reasons
He asked me to write.
He took away my cup of coffee and phone
And pushed my diary towards my side
I was cleansed of every reason,
Thought, desire, and need
There was nothing left but words on diary to wreathe
He asked me to write, again.
And just as I held the pen in my hand, I tried making one last excuse
But he didn't let it escape my mouth
Before I could come up with another of my obtuse
He asked me to write. Again.
I picked up the pen, pulled my diary and got in the mood.
He asked me if I need anything else.
No, I said. I have my diary and pen.

He told me to write everything that comes to me
Everything that I've reckoned and esteemed
Everything that is mine. Everything I had misspent or was depleted of.
Every person I have chanced upon.
Every fancy I had beheld.
Every lore I have constellated.
Every actuality I have perceived.
He asked me to write about me
About him.
About the person I love.
Write the words I want to say to that person.
Write my hugger-muggers.
Write the desires I have held close to my heart.
Write my discomfitures, my infirmities.
My flusters, my pleadings
He asked me to write, write nonetheless
Bewitched, I kept on writing
As the words directly flowed out through my mind
And I tumbled myself into
Some other person's mind
I wrote enormously about that person, all his in and outs
But got stuck at a point, where my ethical mind created a doubt
And I felt I needed that person's permission
To delve further into his heart
I made my pen stop
I need to stop here, I remarked.

I Stole a Cigarette for my Teddy Bear

I stole a cigarette for my teddy bear
Which I had kept soft and sound for years.
Lying at the side of my bed, crawling to my floor, hiding in my drawer
Reading my books
Carrying my bag
And doing my homeworks.
When I grew up, the teddy, growing old, worn and torn, but soft and sound
Demanded a cigarette for some old times' sake of his.
Stupefied, I asked, why do you need?
I am growing older, you see - I have seen days and times that no longer exist.
I have seen the wise turn into fools
I have seen the departure of the carefree days
I have seen neglect and ignorance
No insects come to cheer me up
I miss the company of my own kind.
When you were small, you kept me amongst other toys
They were fond of me. They grew fond of me.
I was better than any new toy you bought.
And I was your favourite.
Everybody knew that I was your favourite.
Perhaps that's why you still keep me around.
But you leave me alone
Most of the times I am stuck in my solitude
I seek attention. I am dismayed.
I don't get kissed.
Even when you hug me to sleep
You throw me off once you are in your slumber.
I am not complaining, I am just...
I feel nostalgic.
I need a cigarette
To think it all through.
His words moved me.
After all the love and affection I have got from him all through these years
This is the only demand he has ever made.
So I went out to steal a cigarette for my lovely little bear.

How to Be a Poet

Writing poem makes you a poet
Sometimes writing poem makes you a poet
Taking a break while writing poem makes you a poet
Eating, sleeping or drinking while writing poem makes you a poet
Not writing but feeling deeply makes you a poet
Not feeling deeply but expressing well makes you a poet
Basking in the sun or climbing up the trees makes you a poet
Reading others' poems and then writing your own makes you a poet.

Eglantine

Meadow Saffron!
When my Musk eyes
Were able to Peach Blossom your Bridal Rose
And your Morning Glory was Alyssum
I was in Amethyst of your Arbor Vitae
And in your embrace I felt no less than an Auricula
But now I Bramble your Candytuft
The Coreopsis Fern for you has turned into Dead Leaves
You are now a Bud of White Rose
And though the Daisy Cudweed of our Harebell to Ivy may remain
As a Motherwort in my Osmunda
My Cloves will henceforth be my Cranberry.

A Hay(na)ku

A
Peculiar face
Staring at me

I
Acutely afraid
Shut my eyes

Heartbeats
Get intense
I feel stroke

Headache
Is blocking
Clarity of thoughts

Trapped
No escape
I approach fate

Boom!
I felt
My veins blasting

Opening
My eye
I slightly peek

Face
Still there
Smell my fear

Shit!
His hands
Encircle my throat

I
Scream loud
But no sound

Sweat—
The temperature
Is getting hot

Fear
Is making
My blood cold

God!
Dear lord!
Please! I pray

But
Death instead
Heard my say

My
Soul may
Now depart anytime

My
Whole body
Is going numb

Splash!
Get up!
Adjured my mum.

Laid & Rested

All Poets Are Liars

Lovers' paradise, eternal longings, heightened desires, heart's rekindled fires!
Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars.

The truth remains there is no gain in any fulfillment of our comprehension
And all affairs somehow ends much before life's suspension.

Once the honeymoon phase has passed, the lovers seem tensed, and it becomes a play of attention

The needs are done,
The fools we become
Dangling onto each other's obsession.

He once loved me well and I loved him too
In this trap I fell
He wore a mask, I ignored his faults
And I called this love true.

Poet's talked about virtues in love
And loving beyond distances and time
I'd rather say we only love, nothing more than
What's right in front of our sight.

Had I never known him, nor he me, we would have never faultly loved
But here comes the poet again saying we only meet each other with luck.

And luck is such a futile chance
We meet, we love, but never with mutual intention.
And this luck bores nothing more
Than some momentary display of affection.

Which of course ends,
And everything is only left to be mend—
From our insecurities, disappointments to our egos and defense.
And we choose to loose (our commitment)
In order to seduce
The girl in the office, or even someone we've never met.

The poets talk about erotic passions
Lustful wildfires
Sparkling eyes
And orgasmic delights.
But how many of you end up having
Every love making
With mutual interest
And not eventually on their terms?
The kisses turn stale
Love in the eyes has gone pale
And the lofty sighs become irritating to your eardrums.

And so I say
Love is just a life lived in some hypocritical way
With no muse or sense—
An affair of pretense!

Remains of Rainforest Discovered in Antarctica

The other day when I read that the 'Remains of
90-million-year-old Rainforest (has been) Discovered in Antarctica'
Which probably was the age of more heat in the air
As the levels of carbon dioxide were usually high then
Sustaining the life and growth of flora and fauna.
In that land devoid for 4 months of any sunlight
I wondered then how must have the world died?
Recalling the age long clash between
The dominance of fire and ice.

What made the heated lush-green rain-forested land,
Probably full of life and all the liveliness
Turn into a cold-blooded reign of snow
Which only melts its way towards the catastrophic slope
Just like the glaciers are now melting at much higher degree there
And ozone is far from recovering the hole in its layer
Probably it shall all eventually melt away
With induced carbon dioxide at man-made rate
And this time the earth may burn in fire
Unlike how it happened in the good old days.

And all then will turn to ash
The rest of it will all melt
And the earth will again look alike
As when it was born with only the water in sight
And before we might just come to sing—
"Water water everywhere" in high string
We'll first burn ourselves in hate
Fight and kill — just like we've been doing
Whereas more forests will burn for a while
As Amazon and Australian bushfires akin
Until all is dead — burnt and killed.

And then all will be dead — killed and burnt
A new life will have its next turn.

Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights

And when O Master daubed the garden
With joy and blush and lusty gaze
The eyes of God seduced in itself
With the intent He had for Adam and Eve
I knew the heaven that O Master painted
Too surreal for the Earthly Delights
Has got to go wrong somewhere
I secretly planted fear in Eve's hidden eyes.

When O Master moved to the central canvas
He filled it up with trees and fruits and luring sights
The humans all naked and captivating
Were joyous and fetching with no consequences
I saw the dances, I saw the loves, I saw the endearments, I saw no blush
I saw an earmarked freedom prevailing
In the absence of any God or Devil
The humans were at best in their co-living spaces
Playfully flirting with all existences.
There was no death, or any dearth of benison
The sun shined bright, all day and night
And love was made in full sight
And in unison.

Still carrying the blush in my bristles
I picked up on the darker side of pallette
And soon began a game on
The right side of the canvas' panel.
It was horrific, gruesome, and imbecile
What I was made to paint now had no good thrill
O Master! O Master! Why did you do?
That's how the God wish, mate.
What God O Master? Who his own creation blew?
A sadist one, O Master states.

They did no wrong, they got nothing to do else
Why are they undergoing this horrendous treatment?
If you had your share of pleasure, you've got to repent
That's the whole game of existence.

Who decides what pleasure is moral or immoral
That lust must be immobile, who decides?
If one isn't supposed to indulge in earthly pleasure
Why then have the varied genitiles?
What then of the other sins that need consequences
The killings and unkindness, manipulation and stealths?
Where shall one suffer the punishment for them
If the hell would be full for just doing a simple thing?

The greatest sin of all is seeking the pleasure
From the fruits and resources available on the earth
The rest of actions are a mere task
Borne out of the human subconscious.
Pleasure needs taming, pleasure is to be bound
Pleasure is not we live for
Pleasure got to be silenced, it must not sound.
Scream you rather, shriek in pain
Call out loud, call the God's name
Let the God know that you need Him most
But on seeking pleasure, you forget him
And you your own pride boast.

What then are you doing? — Sorry O Master for what I say.
But ain't you also seeking pleasure, somehow in your own way?
Of painting and no paining, of being prideful of your art
Are you not then obviously, not missing the God?

Artists' delight is internal, it remains a fantasy, dear mate
We are helpless in what we do, we repent already for our sake
The art got no bound, the art is unearthly but remains on ground.
And yet we make the pride of God, suffer somewhere in different states
The head of Master, the God of all Delights
When seeing small artists boasting in their pride
Remains in dilemma for what to say
As the artist will anyway suffer for as he remains.

On River Seine I Sat Down and Said

He is to me what a Paris is to an artist
Like a place to love and live, but never to die at
Melodiously vibrant, yet poignantly loud and sour
Making my heart run round the entire block in its restlessness,
Sweating through my nose
I wish to sit reciting Neruda's love poems along the banks of Seine
Until the break of dawn when the feeling of Paris perishes
And I reach atop the hill admiring the Himalayan stretches
And my snatching looking bae
In a wisp of a second turns into a digressed foggy space
Whispering the mild 'bing bang dung da' thundering of the cloud
Causing the tingling in my ears of despair
The empty vastness of the sky fills up with dense insanity
And the foggy being around me visibly takes the form of dark shadow—
Saying in baritone, "Hey tiks. You acting weird, huh?"
In sudden concussion I foresee myself turning into a maze.
In my dialectic infatuation of him
I decide it ain't no good, I must die now and here—
Mors mihi lucrum (death to me is reward)
And the sky gets filled with big-eyed snowflakes saying out, "Now's the time. Here it's come."
When with sudden repercussion I return to the bank of Seine, "I can't do it here, Paris is no place to die."

...

This poem above has got 20 little poetry projects which goes as follows—
Begin the poem with a metaphor.
Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
Use a phrase from a language other than English.
Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

The One and Only

I once had an extraordinarily peculiar dream —
A retired master, I lived in a forgotten house under a beautiful spree
With just one house-help,
And two lizards as pets.
I was once a famous reptile-trainer
With no other matching brainer
However, it was only rarest that I'd now find any visitor
It seemed they have lost faith in me and my wisdom
Perhaps some years back, I had disappointed the world somewhere
I thought of this, while my lizards performed stunts everywhere
They jumped across the walls,
And somersaulted their way through the floor
My helper meanwhile brought
A plate of mosquito-korma for the duo
As I loitered around the sleep, somebody rang the doorbell
There is a visitor for you, returned the helper and said.
Dazed and doped I looked on with no merit
Searching for what, I saw the visitor's eyes through me ferret.
Yeah? - I asked. Whom fo' yo' ere?
You, master! He replied with a visible flair.

Astounded I assured him I ain't of any help
He has a task for me, must for the old times' sake — I felt.
I ain't capable anymore, I lost touch with any practice
He said if I don't accept it, there ain't any other apprentice.
I fine-d, and okay-ed, and took the job
Because I was too tired for  argument of any sort.
He left visibly happy, my helper and my pets — we sat
Looking at the two snakes now, we broke into the sweat.
He really thinks I can do this — teach them how to sting?
Well that's absurd in all the ways I could think.

Few days past, months grew thinner
The snakes still haven't yet turned into a winner
I and my pets we made well sure
The training in all ways remains strict and pure
The helper made all the stuff that enchants a snake's hormones
To secrete the golden-black sting from their malicious tongues.
And yet of no avail remained all our efforts
I felt again my uselessness, I ain't anymore an expert.

And soon the owner of the snakes showed up at my gate
We were unprepared, seeing his face we hesitate
He greeted me from afar, with a question on his face
The snakes meanwhile were playing here and there some game of race
As the guest was now about to cross the jamb
The two snakes reached him playfully, and — Oh damn!
Before I could know, move, help, or stop
The snakes had already stung him on both his shoulders' top
He croaked in pain, and fell to the ground
We all rushed to him, my lizards somersaulting their way out;
Applauding my excellence even in his last breath
Here was the one and only, now lying at the steps of my gate — dead!

Covid-ing

This room it seems for me is enough
Where quite often I see my limbs scuff
Surrounded by books, laptop, grocery, and cosmetic stuff
And seeing the lives of people on streets getting tough.

The products in the shops are getting out of stock
Time right now is just circling round the clock
There are friends I can't see who just lives in other block
More of people testing positive is adding to our shock.

I see people doubting their Gods and Lords
Clanking vessels and clap of hands are new sorts of awards
Laid with new 'challenges' we fill our TikToks
'Social distancing' is the new word in our vocal cords.

Bored but stubborn we don't still yet learn
Until we change our actions, the world one day will burn
Anyway, for this Sunday we got a new fun
Of candles, diyas, and torches is the next turn.

Handcuffed

A voice said to me in my dream that I shall be granted my freedom
And that, when I shall wake, I'll see the whole world
Rejoicing in the freedom
Provided that they feel the very sense in their own heart too.
'It is true,' I heard the words ringing in my head.
I woke up, and noticed my body
I was and just a skeleton
I went out of my home, searching for anybody
And saw a lot of others turned to skeletons
Wearing a necklace
There was a key in that necklace
Adjusted just over the place where our hearts usually are
And they all were roaming about
Carrying handcuffs in hands.
I saw two people walking hand in hand, handcuffed, smiling at each other
I saw some children who had made a toy out of a handcuff and throwing and catching it around
I saw somebody walking, wearing it as big earrings
I saw a beggar, collecting more and more of it in his bowl
I saw another person going with a bag full of it, maybe to treasure it in a bank
Some were wearing it as their anklet, fashionably
There was even one who wore it as his glasses
I searched for my handcuff around
And the moment I searched for it, it appeared in my hand
Handcuffed, I felt comfortable
Real comfortable and secure
It seemed all fine
I felt as if I don't have to worry about a lot of things now.

And from then on we lived a life of a comfortable lie
Woven in our strings of attachments, we roamed around with a dutiful sigh
On the street where once stood trees with their heads held up high
The clouds wore a sense of pride
And the rains were a delight
The glee that charmed our hearts once
Was then much brighter than the summer sun
And a wave of hope resided in every sense
Of the air that smoothly ruffled through our hair.

But now on banks we stood intact
Strict and sound, we are much more bound
Adoring the kite in the sky, with a string in sight
We can't look past the ocean, we think the world ends there
Skeleton-ed we remain, with not a mass in our brain
And one by one we remove the key from our necklace
We hold it high up, showing ours to each other
We assure and nod, we think we are there for one another
And with one brisk movement we swayed our arms behind
The ocean and trees and birds and sky are holding their breath in their stomach's tight
Without another thought we are all set in motion
One by one a squash could now be heard in the ocean
Until a thousand such beats are past, the ocean hurls its best
And we see all our keys once more in air till they tumble again in rest
And no sooner we are left handcuffed, with no keys to rebuff
Seeing the demise of freedom, I recalled the dream I saw once
I glanced in horror
Into my eternal sorrow.
And with whatever of the last hope left in my system
I shed it off as a tear, losing the last sense of wisdom.

Quarantined

I've lived my days on earth enraged
Rolling past the terrains of disaster
Bowing seeds in the farms of melancholy
And holding onto the person it was a pain to see.

I was dismayed with non-enchantingness of wildfires
I've hunted down animals on roads with screeching tires
I've lived by the screaming cries coming out from another room
And then I'd waited to see my future in bloom.

I've learnt to ignore and stay in bliss
I've deafened my eyes and yet the luxury I'd see
I've unloved the love and smashed the virtues
I felt I was a true bird in sky, apart from the other few.

The concepts were changed, the beliefs modulated
Only the things that mattered to me were tolerated
With what I am, I had declared myself best
To hell with the others, I couldn't care about the rest

Now quarantined — I am stuck, my ego has been burst
Amazed at how the world continued, coming out of its curse
My window literally has got grills to save me from my own form
And in this confinement I peered to see the streets down

With none of myself out there, the world looked more mindful
The birds were hopping around and teasing each other for the food
I saw one crow tip-toeing to see me in my captivity
Catching me amazed, leaving no room for profanity

And then a sparrow hopped to the sill, just two feet apart
Looked me in the eye, and understood my swaying heart
And for that brief moment I felt rather better this way
Let the birds come and greet you in your cage everyday.

Road-Dwelling Eye-Catchers

They who stay on road
Glided by the wistfully frosty nights
Guarding their integrities
And feeding on the thoughts to live past the mere freedom to merely live
Have longed enough for their sufferings to end
And for their voices to be heard
And for their injustices to be looked upon
These wretcheds who seek the fair negotiations of life and death
These hesitants who have wailed high enough at the highest notes of their bowels
These eye-catchers who are not getting a chance to look beyond their own miseries
Because all that is left around them is the smoke of your hatred
They are drenched in your ashfull vengeances
And are looking for a mere place to live
Inside the roads where they are dwelling
Which for you are blocked
With an uneasy sight
Contradicting your assumption of how easy a reality could be like
These survivers are simply looking for the empaths in your have-all hearts
Who'd still know the sacrifice of the tears
Over wide range of joys available
And accessible to mere few, but some.

ON WOMEN’S ‘DAY’!

A woman, in the world,

Is associated with words like love, care, tenderness

Devotion, strength, sacrifice,

And other words that are born out of utmost reverences.

Seminars, politics, literature, media

Help her in growth

For she is otherwise

The toy of patriarchy.

People ask people to understand the abilities of a woman

Creating a deity out of her

Generating a perfect image

And thus implanting the same in the minds of the world.

And so when people meet a woman in contrast to that ideal image

They disrespect and stoop her in their minds

Calling her a slut in their conscience

Fearing and cursing her actions.

People make posters, write stories and poems,

Make films and carry out debates

To tell the people the true value of a woman

And the volunteers delight in their actions

For women are weak, always weak

And the more the show-off of a strong woman

The stronger is the testimony of her weakness.

When they tell you that she is an equivalent of a goddess,

They talk of strength, of her patience,

Of her sacrifices and compromises of her dreams,

Of her earnings to raise a family,

Of her ability to equally handle the household chores,

Of her children and for them her unconditional love,

And men, meanwhile, go out and drink

Become irresponsible for there is a “goddess” in their homes

Who would take care of everything.

There is no men’s day celebration

There is no recalling that even men deserve the respect

Does that mean men are always respected?

But they then talk of a woman’s honor.

Where is men’s honor?

Do they not need it?

Why all this campaigning?

And then they talk of gender equality

Men and women speak, shout for female’s honor.

Women need people to defend themselves

And what about men?

Men are a ‘by default’ thing in a society

And women…

Always a game.

A traditional game.

And patriarchy will find ways to suppress her

Generations over generations.

Adding on, I’ll say

Don’t defend me

I don’t want your sympathies

Am strong enough

And I am ugly

And irresponsible

And unloving

Above all I am a woman—

Just the other form of human species.

This poem was first published in 2014 in the book 'A Phase Unknown, Woman - A Tribute'.

Love Dilemmas

Well, how often have you materialized your desires
Or shed off your disdains to move on?
Slowly drifting from one lover to the next
Or despising the metamorphosis of your love interests?

How often have you wished someone to love you terribly
The way you see the beautifics in your self,
Passion-obsessions finding their source
In the roots of losing everything eventually as fact?

Have you ever found yourself saddened in love
Or satisfied with gratitude of however it exists and comes?
How well can you let go of everything gone
Piercing its realities into your subconscious?

Would you mind putting a stop to lethal wantings
Stop calling anything love?
Then what else is love if it isn't
Anything you have so far seen and loved? - Or unloved?

The New Love

How well we have heightened the very atrocities of life
In the name of love
Bargaining on time
And energy and
Emotional exertion.
Turning love into sickness
Drawing a blindfold on the eye of our mind
Adding everything on to our insecurities
Analyzing every moment like an algebraic equation
With a variable constant
Changing every instant
As per the convenience of our mind to terriblize things
And scrutinizing our solitude.
With an expression of loneliness
Becoming loveholic
Seeking every form of it around,
Looking for validation
Of our respect, image, dignity,
And existence.
Victimizing the other person
For their little choices and decision;
Making a pun of everything-
Every single word coming out of their irregular minds-
That we had earlier deemed perfect.

Devout Materials

Faith underlines our distorted selves
Dividing us into million small portions
Worshiping that one whole WE
That we call God
And ritualize our days and
Dreams of getting the ultimate nirvana
Or momentary salvation
Or the thought of enlightenment
Flowing from moment to moment
Digressing and transcending
In the search of timeless truth
Or evergreen notions
And protecting them
Treasuring them
Passing them all
As rules and facade
Passing on our doctrines
Passing on our systems
Passing on our religions
From generation to generation
Hoping that our God sustains
Through the hell we have created around
For all of us to die sooner
Rejoicing just in the idea
That my god is at least immortal.
Such damnation!

The Illusions

Within the distorted image of the self
We seek sustainability of our dreams
Potential grows into self-loathing images
Of our inhumane personalities

We ponder over our achievements
The thoughts seek their own trains
Respectively treading on the paths
We wish to never have attained

The life keeps flowing while we follow our deaths
To the dead ends we enter our voids
Suspending our beliefs of the eternal truth
We caress our ears with all the false noise

And together we lead a path of demise
With hatred and doubts in our heads
And yet somewhere we feel we are achieving
The paths we were supposed to led.

Fading to Black

What do you do
When it is all fading to black
And you want to stop that from happening?
You wish to put light upon the shadows that are casting spell
Onto what your heart had desired most
Once
And lived for a while, the fruits of its patience;
The feeling of wish-fulfillment had once generated
And had transgressed to the best of moments
That are still visited down the narrow lanes of memories
Around which the other memories lay inexcusably forgotten.
And yet what you seek, you have questioned it too,
Parting with it with a no face to return.

What is Freedom?

When you give up on the hegemony of your destiny
Put a stop to your disdains
When you refuse to bend your head
For a wrong cause
For the wrong power
Even though your back shall be broken
And your head smashed
And even while you have been shot on your knees
You refuse to look down
You refuse to fear
To oblige
To let go of the life in you
This easily
When you can't shame your death
And would rather die now instead of then
But refuse to let go
Of the strength which is in your heart
Where all your loved ones reside
In the mirror of your eyes
And you reflect the power
Greater than any oppressive or repressive forces
The power of love
For your soul, and for the sake of all other souls
That have ever suffered.
Freedom is putting a stop
To all the subjugation, enslavement, and tyranny
Of your Mind and of your Heart
Where the Soul finally comes out to fight
This battle that you call Freedom Struggle.

At the Break of Dawn

I have never felt lightly for you
It is a strong, heart-wrenching feeling
Clogging blood to my veins
Clenching my heart at every heartbeat
Smothering the emergence of new thoughts
Stuck in a moment, moment after moment
Causing an unattempted dizziness of
A fear, a hesitation, a clinch
Any slightest of approach startles me
Beyond measure and pleasure.
There is a winter dawning in me
With a hibernating condition
In this dormancy of our love.

Dissolute

Is there any other language
In which I can talk to you
Easily, without racing my heart
Without reaching the zenith of anticipation?
A language in which I may finally make you know
What blows my mind off
What entices me towards you?
Is there someway, anyway that it can be made easy, my love?
I can't talk and be in love at the same time.
I can't be me and be in love at the same time—
I am losing myself to you.

Beyond Superficiality

Here
Take this mirror
Look deeply into your eyes
And tell me what do you see there
Do you recognize this lovely soul you are?
Do you see your heartbreaks
And all the things that have ever made you lose faith?
Do you see this wonderful strength you own
Right there in the sparkle of your pupil?
Can you acknowledge your vulnerability
And cry out for all the help you need?
Can you cry out instead of crying in
And then laugh out real loud
With all the breathe in your lungs?
Can you open your heart out
To yourself, to all the mistakes you have ever made,
To all the guilt you now possess,
And all the fears that enslave you in their bounds?
And then, can you open your heart to me?
Tell me who you are?
Tell me what makes you sick
And what causes that anticipatory excitement in you?
Can you take me in you
Let me stay there for a while
Where we shall laugh and cry and exchange our experiences?
Together?
Not just you
Not just me
But as we, like a very raw human bonding
Which our ancestors have experienced
In the cold nights around fire
With songs that sings the melody of their true being
As and for each other?

Eternal Kiss

All my feminine energies
Are getting along together
To get inclined towards
The masculinity in me
Like the perfect union of
The energies of
Yin and Yang
Into an
Eternal kiss.

For this once again
I am looking into me
Finding perfection in the
Imperfections of my own
Reflection
Conversing with the mirage
I find now inside
That was sought before
Somewhere
Out there in this illusionary world;

Seeking pleasure
Of this amalgamation
In an eternal bliss.

Written on

One of those nights
When the moonlight walks into your room
To stay throughout till the
Break of dawn
Telling you stories
Of its indispensable walk around the earth
Sharing the songs it has sung along
And asking you questions
That have remained unheard
And unspoken
In the snickets of your veins
And you bleed your heart out
In a glass of wine
Offering it to that moonlight
Which is there to cherish it
Alone.

Walk Gently Through the Night

Walk gently through the night, my love
For the shadows are dark, and desires darker
Probable sins of future rise
Stealthily from the hidden corners
And hisses all through the house
While a dog howls longingly into the night
And the stars outshine every attempt of clouds
Made to conceal them.

Talk gently into the night, my love
For the ears are more used to
The noise of silences and sighs
Better whisper, if you shall speak
And sleep, before you shall wake.

Delusional

When on nights like these
My imagination takes me to some far off place
And another time
Beneath the moonlit gaze of sky
In the face of soothing breeze
And tender drops of rain tingling the
Peaceful follicles of my skin—
I stand in this gentle embrace
All clamped into myself
By a chimerical sense of love
Somewhere within me—
Dismantling all ties with reality
For as long as can be.

Again

Love swayed like a wind
Carrying the fragrance of a dead past
Where all the lessons of trust and mistrust were learned
Unswervingly
And were henceforth resolute
In a state of dormancy—
Are now being lifted off from their
Curse,
To be in faith
Once again.

Why Love?

What is love if it can't strike your heart like a lightening bolt
While you stand drenched under its raining passion?
What use is then of fondness and loving
If there is no depth, there is no falling?
What use is of the warmth in embraces
When there is no melting of heart, no melting in arms?
And what use is of looking in the direction of your beloved
Without any longing, without saying anything?

Seasonal Happenings

Last night I spiraled my way to a long lost summer afternoon
And saw myself walking amid bright reflections
There were silhouettes of every thing and every being
And bright sunshine embarked a new spark in our eyes as I walked towards him.

A silent reel rolled heavily on my mind
All dooms were forgotten, as all the beauty revived
In the silent corners of that heart
Which has now learned the art of desiring.

And as with those thoughts I went back to sleep
The flower of fancies unblossomed
The seeds returned to their dormancy
And a lot got embedded back in the depths, unkeen.

But look what I found on waking up—
Invariably a beautiful winter morning.

Internal Happenings

There are fragmented moments in the distances between us
Where I keep on traveling to and fro, from myself to you,
And then back to myself —
With an unquenchable longing
To be with you again.

There are molecular spaces where I feel your absence
When you are just a step apart
Looking away in your own eternity.

There are warm silences when your breath departs
In all the other directions
Where I long to be.

There are unhappened conversations between us happening
While sipping coffee in my solitude,
Compounded in me.

Me-ing

Do you feel the need to drag yourself ahead
To not stop at any cost
To keep on moving and leave all behind
All that is meant to be left
All that is not yours.
To let the wretchedness be
To let the loneliness disseminate in you
To let your wounds scream
To let yourself heal once again
To let your spirit explode
To trust yourself once more.
Do you feel this isolation inside your head?
Do you hear the time ticking in your heartbeats?
Do you hear the music your soul is singing?
Can you feel these depths you are in?
Can you see the futility floating at the surfaces?
Do you feel numb towards all the alienated things?
Do you talk to yourself, embrace yourself,
Look in your own eyes?
And smile, like really smile?
Maybe we are on the same page then.

Raveling

She sat
Wide awake
Distorted from reality
Her mind traveled a hundred possibilities across
And her heart danced in some other dimension
And yet there stood
A giant wall in front of her mere reality
Beyond which she sought her space.

A Touch

Behold the glance
That is penetrating deep into my eyes
Searching for words
Playing with my emotions
Reaching my heart which is dreaming
Of a hundred projections
Of multiverse
Where we shall meet
And play
And dance
And walk the valleys
Or climb through the varied steps and layers of togetherness.
Behold that glance
That makes me dream
Of different versions of me
In different times and spaces
With all your different forms and beings.
Where I shall see you as you
And you, me as me.

The Need

When I woke up from my sleep
There was blood all over my face (from what I recalled from my dream)
And I was chasing somebody
And then I daubed their face with something
And there was somebody else too, mirroring my actions
And that somebody else had blood on their face too
We were sweating blood
But before the blood would ooze out through tiny pores of our skin
We would reach the threshold of something
And that just-before-the-breaking-point
Was a beauty
Of our selves
When we radiated our intensities
And our face glowed with all the blood running through our veins
And I wondered, on waking up, what it could suggest
I might be pursuing some troubled extent
And I lived the whole day safe and securely
When by the end of the day I pursued night and its sombre glories
I was touched by the threshold of something in me
And wished to unleash myself
From all the cages I might have imprisoned all the anythings in me,
From all of my past that I have ever lived,
And knew, if it was possible,
I would have grown wings
Then and there.
For the need.

Thought and Thoughts

Where do all these thoughts come from?
Torment-styled and concealed
More than half remains unspoken
The other half of spoken aren't well conceived.
A part of them partly bears any truth
A part is always slurred
The next part stumped in ashes
And a whole of next converted to thoughtless words.
The mere minutest percent that remains
Are ones that make the best discourse
Once in a month, a year, in ages
Unrecorded and subverse.

Where Were You Last Night?

Where were you last night
When the stars called out your name?
The vast sky sought your solitude
And the warmth of the night was dismayed.
But you were asleep in your cold sheets
Waiting for a new dawn, a routine
While the wilderness of your soul
Remained agitated, and you ignored.
You were a self you now remember
Over-engaged in your new identity, you drown
In every cup and glass you pour yourself into
And try to take its form.
You say you rediscover yourself everyday
When you, the moon for the world, is indeed down.

To be of that savage sheath of desires
That won't cut off from their wonts
Of turmoiling the peace of a mindful heart
Dismaying the sleep from the night
And activities from the day
Is in my ritual of today.

Clouding

Behind the uncontrollable urge to reside my essence in the form of its true meaning
I walk up and down the street
Ruminating on time buried under the dark warm earth
I put my ears to ground and try to hear
The soft murmuring of the movement of still life
Unaware to our naked eyes
I follow my gaze from the base of a trunk to the highest branch of the tree
Wondering why sunlight loves to sieve through it
The water that grumbles on a disturbed layers of sea
What do they tell or do they even crave to?
Proving their presence. Or is it their essence?
That they have found out after immortal years of their existence
And if they have, how do these things of nature actually feel now
Specifically after becoming tools of mere selfishness in the very intentions of ignorant humanity.
With this unanswered inquisition I return back to my own cloud.

Falling in Love?

If there is one thing I can hold true in my heart
It's the falsity of love
The growing tension between the nerve endings
The wrong impression of reflexes
The process of manipulating reality and all our past impressions already starts
We are making room for something new... from the same old
Over-beautifying every sound,
The involuntary actions become utterly encoded.
This concurrence is a mere chance,
A permutation of time and space
But this is where our fall starts
And we plunge head over heels
For few days,
Weeks, or months,
Untimely coinciding with the projection of each other's feelings
Failing the auto sync, eventually.

Shadows of Absence

I see the shadows around me
Of all the things I lack
Darker than the darkness
Which could no longer be taken as grant
The shadows that are gravely silent
Than any haunting death
Glaring at me defiantly
They mock my very sense
Of being and believing
In what holds me from the truth
And I, with my failed efforts
Walk towards these black holes.

Contemplating the Delusions

How can I change and unfurl
When, wherever I go and whomever I meet, 
Is a projection, a continuity
Of all I have left behind, or had been.

How shall I renew when everything of mine
Resurfaces from time to time
And the shadow of my former self triggers the reactions
Drawing out a confused image of my mind. 

How shall I shed my skin off
Relieving my self from the dead longstanding burden
Which shall stay and define my sub-conscious
In all my future lives. 

When by the end of the day I sit and summon all my differently forgotten selves
For a feast of delight in the dreams that we had sought, in respective phases of time,
And share the differences, wondering how much I have changed—
Have I really...?

Fearing

We always feel ourselves changing
In the dark narrow lanes of intolerable voids
Which erupts and breaks the silence between our ears
Rocketing our hormones
Exploding our loneliness in the charcoal waters of our only vent
That may seem out through eyes, mouth, or limbs;
An utter intolerance,
Where we get stoned and see the moments slipping past—
And our old self, and our old selves disappearing like smothering clouds of smoke—
And our dreams that we shed off to rot in ashes.
We are afraid to float through this change
Wishing to summon all our loved ones
And say them a last goodbye through our another losing self,
Every other moment.

At times sadness is just too crippled and delightful
Like a ray of warmth traversing down your intestines
You bestow yourself with your own empathy, love, and understanding
Letting yourself feel like You again.

Mildness of Truth

Perceptions are like small dot-size holes
On a sky-length wall —
The point of our meditation
The convergence of our concentration
The foci of our actions
The road of our present
And the route to our future
A formlessness, a presence,
Yet we bind it with our reality
Consider it the only truth
Indulge in immature judgments
Heighten our egos just on one basis
And in that small subjectivity
We try to stuff our essence
To jar the wall
And let neither the time flow
Nor we floweth out of it.

Another Minute of Illusion

Emotions are perspiring my thoughts
Invading my exhausted cravings
What was once gone and I soothed my heart into acceptance
Is inflicting irresistible daydreams and desires
What is blind — my in or out?
Or everything I ever wondered and wished to believe?
Better is still the thought of patience —
To postpone the realization, to delay the truth,
And to live an untrue present for one more minute. 

Perceptions and the Terms

Excites the periphery of epidermis a soft touch
Sending messages of love through the gossip veins
The heart is excited, the blood consumed in dancing
A love is reborn, the mind is humbled.

The dresser ceases his day's work
The time for the rest has returned
The clocks ticking with consistency
In relativity to the false-fated reveries.

A ghost finds the tone of freakish screams
In the ears of those who care to listen
To the ones who feel what vibrations surrounds them
And what thoughts make home in their solitary world.

The wheels keep spinning, the time keeps grinning
At the hilarious paradoxes of satirical terms
Of condition, and the perceptions
Of the living and the non-living world. 

Passion Subdued

The veins growling with desire
Temptations burning the eyes red hot
Teasing the breaths
And whispering out to call

To the soul, prospering elsewhere
Unaware, drenched in his stigma and sensations
Hears he the urge and the impatient sighs in the undertone
Lies he down with a pillow underneath his head and moan.

Down the Tunnel Road and Up Again

Shall I write for one last time
The passion that still lasts long
Bestowed with sleeplessness in my lonely nights
I once started a walk down the tunnel road.

The echoes here are more profound
And I am much aware of my own heartbeats
The whispering songs of hidden creatures
And the voices from my memories.

The old times come and go, come and go
Past the only sight I have ever held to
I close my eyes to have a blink more of a relief
A blink more to defend the reality from the truth.

The vivid unexplainable emotions
That jumps up to the height
Shall crave for love and a connect
With my humanly life.

to be able to come out

I remember you in the daylight
When the sun's grace embrace the ground
Underscoring the shadow of the tree
Falling, like I fell for you
Quite naturally
Still feeling your presence on my left
As a bond that we once shared
Feeling you the way I once used to feel
When you belonged to me
As if you still do
But you are dedicating all your beautiful visions to some other lady
You, my lover - it somewhere feels a little weird
But I, letting you fly,
To some sky distant from mine
Why you still belong to me in my heart and I to you?
Like one single being, impeccably inseparable.
Damn this illusion that questions my reality every single minute.

Distance and Distant

Two individuals connect and share a bond that might seem most beautiful to them in that particular moment.

The two excite each other and bring about different kinds of changes and challenges in each other's personality.

Their thoughts and emotions run at similar frequencies, at times matching each other's to create the perfect moments. The moments that could never ever be relived.

And then they separate...something they had not been able to imagine before.

At times, one of them feels hurt. The other might too, for certain things at certain times.

But what their relationship had been like changes completely. The two look at their old times differently.

And now, if both of them sit together and honestly share how everything had been to them, they'll see how distant they would sound to each other.

Maybe one of them had taken things way too seriously.

Maybe the other one look at it as one good friendship.

Maybe one is upset because of broken promises and unintended words.

And the other...is dissatisfied with one's own expectations.

How strange it is that we share the same relationship, but with a different perspective.

Forever...(this time)

Something's gone
You can feel that in the air it has vanished
You might have called it proudly yours once
But nothing really belongs to you until you don't keep it to yourself
Not your thoughts, not your emotions,
Not your deepest and hideous secrets you have whispered out.
It was there in you, but you shall remain in that forever
Forever in the part which has been lost
To your dismay
You may cry and begin again
You may miss it, and you shall rise to it again
Try rising higher than the air which is carrying it off from you
Rising higher till you shall feel it again
Rising higher, and still
Rising higher than your old form
Which is ought to be forgotten
Given off...for it has been your choice in the first place
To keep it off from you, to vent it out,
To give it a form, the words, the love
You shall learn to love again
You shall be determined to be you again.
And you shall be, someday.

But The Fright

In all her not-so-true accusations
She wished that at least once he would say the words right
She wished to see him happy
And to know that he has taken the route which is right
Of all the things their separation could bring
She hoped it should only be a wonderful light
If it is something which was to happen
It shouldn't be a disappointment, a resent, a fright.
Let's part with smile and highest respect, she thought,
Let's love each other in the starry night
Let's creep comfortably in an unnerving nostalgia
Whenever we'd wish, with delight.

Disownment

The happenings of past few months
That you made a mistake to defend from the truth they held
And the concrete structure of your belief which was born out of your blessings once,
Have now disowned you.
You doubt yourself, your existence is troubled,
Eyes red, at the depth of darkened eye sockets,
Filled with reddish marks caused due to the friction of tears on your cheeks,
Vanished genuinity of smile,
Apt suppression of words and expressions
Yet still, the one thing you most despise is to collect pity.
You better run through this, bare-feeted,
Wondering if your future can bear a token of that segment of past that was wonderful
Reminding that you don't 'belong' anymore
And filling your heart with enigma of distrust;
Weird random memories return with unbearable nostalgia
So that you would want to be numbed down to your last cell.
With ugly face and unattractive manners
You avoid your gaze from falling onto the mirror
Until one day you recognize that it's not you anymore
Where have I gone? You wonder. And since when?
Can you return back?
Can you assume the worst of reality in order to gain no second choice for your next step?
Or you still prefer to defend the smashed concrete structures of unrecognizable believes?
And still you think you have a choice!
To suffer or to suffer more
(With no scale to measure).

Tell Me, O Reader!

Tell me O reader!

Do the old tales not haunt you?

Flooding you with tears, the screams that no one hears

Making you cling to where you not belong but your memories do

Or the memories of the old people who told you their tales, can you not feel them?

Does that not haunt you, clinging to this old, shattered place that no longer exist as it was

But you are afraid that if you move, you will forget whatever you have of it

Because you don’t know all those single moments of their lives, but what they had told you (and you remember) and what they had been like, after living them

Do the walls not speak to you?

Or the doors remind you when and how who and why opened them?

Or the windows that remind you of old storms that once flushed your happy lives with excitement, movement and hot teas.

The laughter, the forgiveness, the little old hurting moments

Do you not want them back?

Do you not want to warn those people back in your memories about your present and their future?

Do you not want to tell them that laugh as much as you can, for their each laughter will bring you back tons of unbearable pain?

Or cry not dear oldie, for you won't be able to touch and comfort them in your future when they’ll be no more

But you and just you, all standing and walking and reliving those moments alone

Clinging onto them for whatever of the past is left that only lives through your memories

Do you not want to tell those old tales to the people?

Tell them, "Once upon a time..."

Do you think people would understand it the way you had seen it

Do you think people would judge through your actions that you did without your control?

Do you think people might think that this broken yet arrogant man in front of them could have had this ability to change what has happened, and could have altered this new present?

Do you think they care for the tales? For the truth that does not really matter to them because it is not something which is theirs, their personal?

Do you think they care about you, or try to understand what phase you are going through?

Do you think they pity you? Or anyone of them had been in your place...a similar place like yours, do you think?

Can you think or are you still suffering from your nostalgia, unable to come into the present, crying your heart out to the old winds that might time travel for your sake,

Just to convey your message, do you think?

Do you think this is even possible, the miracles?

Do you think that when these miracles didn't happen then, they could ever happen now?

Do you now believe in miracles...any more?

Do you have any faith, or let's say, some hope- is there any hope left for it? For something better, for something miraculous?

Do you have any hope?

You mean you are hopeless? You must not be having any dreams, any desires, because all is hopeless?

So do you want to live without your dreams? Do you want to die or do you still want to cling onto your memories to make sure that you'll never let them go?

Are you still crying? Is that wailing yours?

And do you want to live? What do you think?

Creep

This night is creepy
The shadows from the past are haunting me
Sucking on my hollowness (that I have been carrying since ages), tear by tear
In the drops I see my fear dripping down
And the shivering comforting my reality, my present
This cold weather is my only solace
For my mind drifts back into the lands long forgotten
The lands that bring a feeling of hollowness and nostalgia as a token of its ruination
It is telling me that it should not have ended,
It should not have been burnt down by ignorance
Because it was a beauty, though now just the memories that haunt the dreams day by day
I am not responsible for it
I am only an onlooker
Who is looking cautiously deep down into the narrow lanes of infinte depths of someone else's subconscious.

Apocalypse

A pale moon
Without sky
Turning sick.
A dark boat
Erect sail
No sea.
A tree, shivering,
Disturbed
Dead wind.
A bird flying high
Wounded
Burnt wings.
Turning of heads in graves.
Tormenting howls from caves.
Smoke
Escaping from a well.
A burning house
On sale.
The entire desert
In the leaps of flames.
Mountains running
Diving in oceans.
Lions eating
Their own body portions.
Fishes breathing
The red water of lakes.
Fruits ripening
Digesting their own seeds.
Snakes yelling
"For God's sake!"
The statues, smiling
Revealing their decayed teeth
"Time is up."
The Oracle says,
"Death is coming through the days."

Of What Shall I Write

Of what shall I write?
The cold, the shivering,
the blank maze of fog?
The pains and misunderstandings,
the subdues of relationships?
The tales of friendship?
The memoirs of happiness?
The bulk of lessons,
the raining bullets of thought?
Peddling legs, weaving dreams?
Unspoken words, silent gestures?
Hopeful assumptions? Discredited ideals?
Of what shall I write when the words
dissolve into the depths of blank diaries?
Of wasted time? Of vain reveries?
Of underrated feelings?
Of mainstream discussions?
Of ignorance, of vanity,
of distinguished personalities?
Of what shall I write
To you-
Of love? Of separation?
Of disparities of sitting miles apart?
Of what, my love? Of what?

Spotless

Some things are a feast to our complex thoughts
We know we are tangled
We know we are stuck in a confined room of our mind
But we project it out on the wall in front of us
And its projection is blank
As white and colourless as the colour of the wall
Until someone comes and asks what we are thinking
And we know, "it's just nothing".

Dormancy

That spark is still beheld in its dormancy
Away from any means of communication
Or the willingness of it driven by irreplenishable desires
That once screamed out during the course of night
In the entire span of a day, any day.
Is it fading, much to my fear?
Yet am hopeful, figuring out what went where and why
And how is the sleeping state achieved without the notice of night...?


(To someone who probably will not come across this post. If they do, I hope they'll recognize the charm they have on me intricately woven in the subtle parts of this post.)

A Drop Of Jealousy

Maybe tonight a drop of jealousy slide down my spine
With a freaky emotion born out of nostalgia
And a desire to fulfil what had already been sought for;
I see the other feasting in it
And I could sense the most rarest expression possible to me-
A vital need for it!

Art Of Experiences

New wounds are created
While the old scars cluster up
And form a memory.
We call them experience.
And while this happens, we make
Ourselves, fit to accept or deject,
Resigning to our own fate
Or fighting alone.
What is right?
Can we fight the fate?
Or shall we be submissive to
The ticking of a clock
And turning of calenders?
Every wound teach us
To be an artist
And we wonder why all the greatest artists
Have faced greatest sorrows,
When recalling the history.
When you are unique
No one can help you
You are helplessly unique
And the only best luck you have
Are your bad times
For they make you experienced
And turn your experiences into your art
And you end up exposing
The worst truths of life
To your audience
As you descend down the path of evolution
With immortality of your work.

Sinners

World screams out loud the silence of destruction.

And the thunder of time ripples the monotony of evolution,

Witnessing, storms of fire approaching

To engulf the already sleepless nights;

Clouds, all devoid of sea water but the sweat

Of corpses cremated from sun’s heat;

Mountains wither out; stars disappear,

Range of sight achieves the dim light of moon.

The sky laughs, drumming loudly on the eardrums.

Dreaming in their innocent prayers, the children

Think green in the meadows of love.

Windows and doors lead us to fire of hell

And the walls around smothers the bitter hope of life.

Dreaming is a sin in this world, they said.

And we are all sinners

For the sinners can only dare

…To dream. 

The Moment Of Revelation

A moment will come

When it will be this way or that

For what is done couldn't be undone

And nothing could go back to same.

A moment will come

When it will hurt less

For it will matter less or lesser

Than nothing.

A moment will come

When we will get used to it

When we will walk step by step

Towards the unfavorable.

A moment will come

When this unfavorable would hold no value,

And all would be neutral

But bitter and blunt.

A moment will come

When we will realize we have grown

For then, we would have walked through and from

Our own wounds.

A moment will come

When we would stop considering these wounds

As our destruction

And we will realize

That it is no more than a piece of time,

The work of our fate,

Or the sheer mystery of life.

A moment will come

When we would get exposed to the realizations

And we would realize that everything is nothing

And nothing will matter in the end

For in that moment

The moment would have come,

The moment which we will cover with

A peaceful blanket of our memories

And we will accept it as it is,

As we are…

Helpless.

Lines

The lines extend across a sheet of paper

Diverging through the corners they encompass the margins-

Margins of life

Where one feels its holiness

And destruction.

The lines form images, easy images; routes, easy routes

These routes carry us along and all we would need to pay is our trust

And compromises.

And so, we go about it for it feels easier, untangled, smooth

And hence, dies the sketch of our mind

That would have found its own path, tracing its own images

Outside the backdoor of our life.

Ignored lay these sketches

That instead of following might have laid a new path,

The new possibilities, the new history.

And soon these are cremated

In none other than the fire of

Our own resignation.