I Speak to God

Snuggling my mother’s tireless feet,
I lay dead after school.
Tired and anxious I would try sleep,
And speak to God.
Just when I was there I would hear the bell.

The Hafiz would enter all fresh,
Kurta-pyjama so prim and proper.
The small, intricately done muslin cap seemed sewn to his head.
I despised the sweet incense he wore,
More than his uncanny smile.

I would wash myself clean,
Wear full sleeves,
And full lengths, everything.
If only I could speak to God.

Few words to greet,
And I would read. 
I learnt it so well. Truly,
I don’t know how.
But, he must correct me.
For I did not follow the nasal twang. 
Must learn how to speak to God, correctly. 

One hour of obscurity,
His perfect elocution seemed ugly to me.
I would sit drooped.
My right hand must point at the text,
When I would speak to God.
Always pulling my scarf below till the brows.
Felt powerful when I could escape his stare. 

He knew how to read perfect, all the text
In a language he did not know. 
Years and years, today I cant read that text so well anymore. 
I have happily withdrawn. 

Now, I often speak to God,
No letters anymore.
But in those sighs,
And signs of hope.

Wings of Whim

Came in cascades

His healing hymn

For ablution of the heart

For new wings of whim

Stars seemed closer 

I cannot reach that hand 

Unlike before

Waters weighed heavier 

Unlike before 

At the lore of sand 

For new wings of whim 

For ablution of the heart 

They walked their last

Leaving behind leers 

At a choking overcast 

The Distance

I will never step at your door,                  
Let me gaze at it in eternity,
From a Distance.

I will never call your name,
Let me be called your lover,
From a Distance.

I will never sing your poems aloud,
Let me be consecrated with them,
In a Distance.

I will never speak of your passion,
Let its memories skin me inside out,
In a Distance.

I will never ask for your hand in anything,
Let my grave be marked next to yours,
Going the Distance.

I will never envy the epitaph by your loved ones
Let me etch one for both of us,
Claiming not a communion,
Only the Distance.

           

Dispossessed Deonar Dreams

I broke a million mirrors

Into a million shards

Watched them go up in smoke

Making a lazy trail

With abandoned realities

Of my hunger

A hundred years of 

Listing out children

Dead from disease

Has not been enough

For my molten dreams

Mixed with unsettled ashes

A hundred years spent

In measuring distance 

From the city of dreams

That pushes me away 

Towards a killing spree 

Of dim departures 

On some days 

I hope against hope

When I see people with colorful cameras 

Gaudy gadgets and a ruthless census

That buys me few minutes of prime time

On other days

The mellow fruitlessness 

Of their passing passions bedazzles me

After a mewling monsoon 

Life sprouts in deception

Lush green meadow covers my muck and methane

As grazing cows revel in rain 

And a boy yearns to walk over me

Looking to break a million mirrors 

Into a million shards 

For his deathless dreams

The boy is you

And the boy is me

I am the Deonar Dumping Ground

I dream 

I dream too often

Of a deathless me

Saima

She exists in the 'auto-save' 

Of their system screens

They wonder, "if she ever screamed!"

Been a few days

Her puzzled weight 

Reached its grave

On the shoulders of 

A stinking bait

"She wasn't meek", 

They wonder. 

But why didn't she scream?

She lived her name, 'Saima'

Torn apart

Enlisted in her frail father's 

Worn out ration card

She is gone now 

He is silent 

More than ever 

How could she scream after all? 

She is gone now

It eased her pain, may be. 

The desk is moved 

Closer to the window

For someone new

Aazadi

When the dark fleet footed clouds

Settle above me

Into pink candy floss

Like the plump face 

Of my Mongolian muse 

From a folk tale 

I quiver as they thunder 

I rush outside 

Take the shorter alley 

Before I reach the bell

On my toes 

I hear their voices in unison 

Floating in mildly wet echoes 

I see them on rooftop 

I scream loud 

It teems down

And there was us

Happy and bare

It all belonged here

Every drop inside us

We got back up plans

If it stopped early

We will roll in the mud 

Won't brush 

No school tug

Memory

While collecting the fragments of a foggy afternoon

She heard of an errand stated 

A twinkle in her eyes, she rose quick with her heart elated. 

But her smile dropped 

Before it reached it's corners 

She sank in the irreversible 

Leaning back on the chair 

She almost said a word

They almost heard

She would run for it, 

Everyone thought. 

She almost forgot. 

They didn't work there anymore.

It had been few days after all.

How could she ?

She can't run for that errand anymore 

She wouldn't wait outside 

that facade anymore, 

The caffeine maladé no more.

It has been few days after all 

From behind those rheumy eyes

A few days felt like an age

This winter is different 

The freezing waves outside, 

Seem settled like a sorbet.

Outside that station

Where they often forgot time

And felt nothing but their 

Frosty cherry red noses

And suede bags 

Against each other 

His fragile fingers 

Couldn't hold their hearts together 

It has been a few days 

She takes the steps, 

Alone. 

In anticipation, 

of Bloody Mary 

And a writing Djinn 

Driftwood

Washed ashore,

It lay bare,

The driftwood. 

Flowing out from

The gushes of insanity. 

It sought solace,

In birds that sang 

Of life with grace. 

The driftwood, 

It didn't want to be seen 

But feathers find their melody.

In the beauty of a wreck, 

The driftwood. 

It lets the wet wild grass in,

To twirl hopes, 

Into its hollows. 

The room was filled with a pale beer tinge from the lamp. I heard a murmur, looked at mother, almost rolled in her sheet. 

Her face covered, only hair left out on the pillow and a despondent white rosary, hanging from the side. 

It has been overused. Once all it’s beads had fallen out, never knew something like that could be reassembled so finely. 

She often goes to bed while praying and other times she kind of does it because enunciating those verses for merely few minutes would sedate her. 

As she snored at the challenge that this day was I read with my hand in air, moving it impatiently to find more light. 

With a twitch in the neck I realized it was over, after almost having read for an hour. 

And all this while I had been holding it like a delicate art work, my hand being the easel. 

OF YOUR BEAUTY

The most vivid images 

Are of course of your lies

Twirling a vine

Their sartorial grace and ingenuity 

could undo all damage

The patterns bolstered 

After every unceremonious loss

Of their face

Every time you smiled 

At those 

Unhinged by the 

Failing memories, 

of your truth

Every time you were

On a killing spree

It Pours

I see monsters soak in the walls

Paper pink flowers yearn incense 

It pours now

And they have waited long

Crickets chirp till dawn

Not a flicker 

And silence so wet 

Seeping in the green

It pours now 

And had never been so long

From within a room so dense

The faces outside, begin to blur

Merging in the mist one moment

And walking out of it

In another

It pours now

They had all been walking long

Few Words

Untying the imaginary knots 

From the draperies of their madness

A sum of their depths

Lies between their eyes

With only edges and angles

An unaccomplished 

rhythmical chaos 

That has left a running mark

On a pale canvas

Seeping in an age of love

 

His face is worn now

Fret with few words 

The few she remembers

Out of all the ones they fell for

Look Away

You look away?

Your soul will abide

Taken in conscription

You look away?

As they run amuck 

It will swan indistinctly

In the pale scribes

Of those heroic embezzlements 

You look away?

As they polish their medals

Or you blind with shine

You look away?

Run a riot elsewhere

This march is over

Raqs

 

The tall eucalyptus bowed down,

After a thunder storm.

The teen shed shuddered,

Covered with pale leaves.

Laundry curled round the rope.

A beautiful calm,

And it came.

 

The smell of drenched green and moist mud,

Beads ballet through the window sill,

Trickling the weathered books on the board.

As darkness smeared in,

My heart unfurled the quiet.

 

I heard the wheels roll over,

The engine roared and resettled.

Standing at the door,

Leaning on the worn-out mesh,

My wings aflutter.

 

Rising up on my toes,

How I yearned for a tender dance.

Caveat Emptor

It will enter like incense 

Through an unperturbed window

When you are half asleep

It's sweetness lingers on

Like the tender spring-wood

A sign read- 'Caveat Emptor!'

Will sweat passion 

In it's early summer

And before it has been long

The scorch will announce it's trials

Blinded by the heat to trust

The glistening fluorescence from far

Will bring thorns, in measuring distance

On knees, right before they fall

The lilacs bleed belonging

Like a fallen graft

After a mewling monsoon

That belies it's hybrid beauty

With failed attempts

A sign read- 'Caveat Emptor!'

The sun dried leaves rustle

In despondence 

They whisper autumn 

Into the flame red boulevards 

Soon the hearts were numb cold 

But moist too

Praying for this solstice to be the last

This winter of love

Wrapped withering hopes to dying warmth

Of Endless nights 

And cold-blooded closures

A sign read- ‘Caveat Emptor!’

APPETITE

"Do not, DO NOT! Let a man define your life", he said

She felt strong

She developed an appetite 

"I moved cities for you", he said.

She smiled and choked

An appetite for stories

Few months later

That felt like a million years

She cannot imprison her thoughts 

In her expressions

Her appetite for destructive silence

 All she wishes

That he had completed his sentences 

He did complete them

Not in words but

In flesh and blood 

She is scared to read them complete. 

"You make me complete", he said.

"You will leave me", she always felt

Like half a spoiled portrait, 

abandoned by its artist 

Who ran away 

To save his face

His appetite for grandeur

Who turns away when 

Every-time it's pulled up 

On a humiliating display 

Her appetite for his silence

Was now over

LOOSE ENDS

You couldn't break her heart.

So you broke her spine.

Tying the loose ends!

Till you could see her fall, everyday.

Was no Cleopatra 

Not from a glorious father

Couldn't bite the snake

Or poison the stoup

She must lay on her back

On the muddle of knives

That you forgot to arrange

Tying the loose ends!

There was no Brutus 

No battle she could fight

Your truth was decent

Your lies prettiest

Your story always won

Myriad ways of sacrifice 

You had only forgotten 

One does but return

And rebirth required death

Tying the loose ends!

At dawn

Wide awake at dawn 

lying on the floor.

Teary eyed I stare 

outside the window.

The giant Neem,

Restless, 

bellowed up the silent clouds.

Dark and mysterious 

Into the never ending nothingness.

The leafy green almost struggles.

I can feel it ruffle my unkempt head.

I wish it whisks me away 

as it resettles

Into the never ending nothingness.

The bitter sweet

Never ending nothingness

Fall

You were falling from the top of a nowhere. 

Screaming at the dark to break, 

Almost without a voice. 

Your eyes clenched, 

and released the dark,

at the same time.

Chasing a no name and running away from it.
At the same time. 

You felt it was your last.

The fear of loss exhausted your breath.

But right before the final thud 

You were pulled by a tiny hope.

You mustered all your strength 

And opened your eyes.

That feeling of immense relief,

A sigh and it was just a long scary dream. 

Your mother was by the bedside

Her presence calmed you

Little will you ever know

Of her fears and sores 

Her endless wakeful nights

Since forever

Yet she always smiled.
More and more.