Like a Christmas tree, remove the soundproof
from my walls. Clean the dirt, remains,
Slide out the shell; be me. Abandoned fortress
Festive from fatuousness can’t tell:
Left behind: gone, the pomp, the pageantry.

Babul seller, by two couples, in salty yawns,
Feel the tremour of the soft wind
By the scenery. A flatboot voyeur,
squinted eyed, stalk the whole
outside chance of catching a glimpse of eternity.

It is early morning
A little after 7 AM now
And blue clothed guards march the campus
Like in Blake’s Garden of Love.

In a milk teaish colour
A shapeless sun is yet to rise;
All scholars have gone away home —
An ordinary Tuesday, otherwise.

Blue sareed female guard, rise on her toes,
Picking flowers to be laid at the coiled feet
Of a stone made Buddha. She pauses a moment
To return with a smile a male colleague greet.

On a given day, then, would the creator have thought
To have had more security than students
Either way it is sought? Capable carders, they easily have now
Made this their garden of compassion; love.

2012-01-17

When I go, you will not know it by then,
And you will not know till you take your eyes off the beam
That, in the blinding light, what you lost in vain
Is what when you see me you will see me from what I seem.

Yes, I dream – where you are, I am there
Watching through the darkness silent like the eyes
On the hanging, held by string, from the cold, wall where
One smile is the equal of uncounted sighs.

Like the dream – where my beauty, its softest strain
Strokes my insides whenever I am lost
And as I am shown repulsion again and again
With one last slow sigh I resign to frost.

There is no flicker that will carry,hold,
Numbed, where life stutters,
You stare at the screen and the cursor where it blinks.
Dead mist of midnight hum sighs by the shutters,
You’re dead to your self and surrounding things.
It will move on, even if you survive, even in pain
Life smears ahead, very Life to you have told:
In breathing in and exhaling very little matters
For, you’re bound to be slithered again.

Gently press the syringe
And let a drop spurt out and smirk.
You’re about to make a living
Dead relationship work:
As uncomfortable seconds become
Stable by the minute; you win. The moment you win.

Stare hard at where they’re buried,
As you rise from the leveled earth.
Friends that thrived all along as you
Once you’ve seen through their worth
Will not revive – cannot be revived –
There’s a law of gravity where on earth they lie.

He was once what in the world you
Had for a shoulder. She was the
Smile that could light the best part
Of your day. They were the cradle and song;
And, now, hereafter, you lie down and you whisper –
You watch as they wash away.

You await as they wake from their
Occupied slumber and you watch yourself,
At distant, as you dial their number.
They do not wake, even as they speak,
Your ear hears what, for the moment,
Is a wobble which, by the minute, fades weak.

2012-01-11

And words that don’t matter
Where words dare not tell
Keep coming and coming
Like gun shots in hell

They melt away; from a distance
A crazy rock smears
To irretraceable spots
Waves the ocean depth hears

And self-conscious you sport,
Self-conscious you speak.
The unconscious thumb drumming
Of your consciousness weak.

For, there’s more time to make a
Statement for the guarantee is there
That, this moment once done, this
Not a moment we share.

There, the motions you run,
Thoughts drift where they scatter
And as long as you dream
What you do does not matter.

Matter of fact is that you
Are composed as you sit
And composed am I seated
And that is it.

In the rooms, lost in thought,
Twisted humanity lingers its eye
Around and around the leveled white ceiling,
The grief of a heart too heavy to cry.
A minute, like an hour, passes by.

The heart is the place where
Gentle blossoms spring. Untouchable as it is,
That sanctimonious thing, the goodness in all
To the knowing eyes bring. It is a time
Where the birds nor the starlets sing.

A paint brush rushes along the outer wall
As his call to mop out dripping paint
Comes as paint drops would fall.
A painted house new-roofed that knows no cheer
In tragic metrical flow, like Shakespeare.

Play the soft piano, my sweet,
On it a tune to a listening ear that
Gives melody to your thoughts play for me to hear,
As I stand outside, there, where the blood once flowed
And as I watch the window shut, as if now widowed.

Play — play — from some small fragile note
Begin to play for that time is feeble and it
Flows and as you play the time goes.
The cloud of darkness, it passes where we look
And of joy, fate retains what inevitability took.

2011-12-13

The other watches us, with a martian sneer
And wonders, O’ Lord, see them earthlings fuck:
How alien this aggression — and the spectators, too,
They, with aggressive denial,
Under key and lock.

You steer with your foot on
Keyboard complicated; oncoming saucers
Blare their wailing honks. Even if we hit we’ll
In death be unseparated. Says the alien through the gag:
“Look the road, you wonk!”

Take it slow, allow the moment,
Not cos we might hit and perish,
Because this moment, for long, won’t come.
So, go slow, go slow, on this fast moving thing:
Passing saucers slow down to VGA my bum.

Listen, Martian watching, if you ain’t
Gonna play hero, the knots on your hands
We will let undone. Your voyeurism’s no phony,
Cos that’s how everyone does it, and
It keeps you a prisoner until you’d come.

“Earthling you fool”, the prisoner in muffles,
“You ain’t never let the female do you from top”.
Fool yourself, bound Martian, for ours is pleasure
And in submission to such notions
Earthly missionaries stop.

Past a billboard with a Statesman
Towards the Wonder of Asia,
Spear-like, the saucer in search of destination,
In search of a cup. Where the highway is over
And the exit point’s avowing, we gonna keep on a roving
And sail o’er the top.

2011-12-10

In a morning dream, not far from
Where my eyes open
To sense my mouth awry,
You sleep where you were squashed O’ can,
For you did well to satisfy.

Ginger ale for the frail male thing:
You try dip it in the bottle
And watch it in the bottle go.
Pencil thin, nimble-footed cock:
You rock the Ginger ale you whore.

Next door to paradise, God confused
Flips the pages of a brochure
That I once used. I listen with my ear
To a keyhole of a kind. I am Milton tonight
And blind.

I remember how you told me
That a bottleneck is close by,
That by the bottleneck the water flow
As, squeezed from the sides, the rivers go.
I was wetting my limp lips. And you thought it was lust.

Barmy — you’re so barmy and you’re a
Horrible, horrible thing, you know.
Sleep a calm unnerving sleep
Cos, the night is fucking young and slow.
Don’t wake me up to make you blow.

2011-11-26

I saw her through the staffroom window.
“Do you know the The Beatles song?”
You speak to me from the other side of the wall.
“It’s called She Came in through the Bathroom Window“
And as you look at me eyes through the call, I say:
“I changed it to Staffroom” and I smile.

It is in your nose. It is there, somewhere
In your nose, somewhere — a kind of button,
A switch; or an invisible itch
Which makes you smile. Somewhere in your nose
Too close to be known how it goes.

And finally, stretching myself like
a Metamorphosed old cat, I get off bed
And fumble for black rubber soles.
Ironic that I have to go, now, speak in
The most erudite spirits of the nation and its holes.

I hear you walk, as I sit at the table
And I hear as you pass even as I don’t see.
I hear you walk, far away from me
And I hear you hearing your footfalls spatter to you
Nuanced stories of mediocrity. I shuffle
Imagined ipod; play Let It Be Me.

Stupidity. Lethargy. Angst-ridden,
Rotten carcass — my body — with a head,
On which I use different slides,
To keep my shoulders company. Frozen insides
Remind me that I’m fast becoming part of the arid scenery.

This is not what I wanted and
This is not what I want.
I’m bargained out and bought
And like a Picasso I hang from dangling thin string.
They see, they don’t understand what they see.
Only know the fake joys faked moments bring.

2011-11-22