Into the ocean

There are sinking boats
tailgating the sun over
the ocean
My hands are 
stuck 4 feet under the
ground
I would swim in dark waters
to find the other
side of the shadows
we have become
There is silver in everyone's
pockets
and the bare sky weeps
reading testaments of us...

The woods crowded
under my umbrella
Tears from the cities..
       falling

Poem

For Manik Sharma


When I was a kid
I had wondered
What made the kids
Now that I know
I don't feel any better

A casual poem

You stood there like an empty window and it was

too much to bear yes i saw you secretly

sweat a humid June poem   right there 

but i'll  stay mum   till i say hello

  and then? 

         and then?

 today in the city      everything is

                                                   skidding and wet

                    again

           

               (it is raining)

 and soon one grows sick of justifications

  and the logic  in particular   for ex.

   

    (who needs duckback shoes when you can stay in ..)

             

       clack  clack  clack

          
          you did and left

and now

i am left    alone      midnite

               making  gates

moving  in

              and out 

of you

A rant at Shankar Chowk

I ducked out of sight and ran across the road feeling sexy wearing
who-cares-what afterall if everything is well defined all we'll get is a restaurant
menu a well gilted a la carte lunch followed by everything that is true- Italian coffee
or a café au lait  each name holding the mystery with which carrots grow - amazing joys
of being buried result in imperishability   of all the things  Thank God!
we hindus burn the dead. It is not joy. It is 6pm at Shankar Chowk  it is time to
breathe we breathe. The clouds are the teeth for the sky engaged in chewing
the judgments  of our coal industries cars tempos vans eighteen people
trapped in a Shankar Chowk auto well arranged like petals in Japanese Buddhist
poetry falling timely one  by one it is not joy  it is a stampede across
the sun's chest by migrating birds The sun should get back at them when it's equator.

Up in smoke

i stood between my lives
lit a smoke with one
and put it out with the other,
We burn until we burn...

the kitchen window-
a mynah watching me
break morning eggs

A Sentimentalist's joy poem

(For you)


While writing for you last month

I cremated my self on to several empty

sheets of paper. This week I hung them from

a wire in the backyard and they floated as if

they were cheap paper cups, I had always drunk my

whiskey in. I hit them with fingers very

gently and the sky was an ash

grey canopy the entire week is what took me to realize

you have confiscated my senses and

the key to a  perfect metaphor.

Stairs, of wood, each, one hundred and fourteen

years old became silent in time once you, stepped

in. It was as if you owned the very place.

Skytalk

Clouds repose
waiting for the wind
to stitch them together
Little birds
homeward bound
fend smoke
Chimneys look up,
waiting for the rain
to wash their eyes
Trees look down
as if trying to move
blood in their heads..

A sleepy street

Lam posts whisper
to each other
about things on the
other side of the road,
that they wish
they could see...

Profit

the veins
on the back
of the arm
of a rickshaw
puller
have
risen
like flags
fluttering
in the
useless
wind
gaining on
the day
by
inches

woman bathing
roadside buffaloes
    we too get wet!

turbans in Mewar
  look
like Sunsets

Gentle time

Sitting naked,
by the drying lake
pecking at stones

listening to the watchman's radio
while he sleeps
the stray dog yawns

sun about to rise-
the drunks
are fetching another bottle

in and out
of smoke clouds
the moon - Samsara!

bullocks in haryana
chewing
green election flags

monkeys stand in lines
on electric fences
they know, a joke
will hit them
lets die smiling...

jumping-
from one cable
to another  this moon!

Naked child
wearing a garland
   -footpath spring

mexican oleanders-

sleeping on the ground

too much of spring

The contours of birth and death

Let death be
Ahead
Let death be
happy

The closet

Subtle like drizzle,
Catchers on rainbows
Where dreams fly under

Shining in a closet
A stone
Golden with age

the sky
grey!
as a pant


i assumed the cow
to be a farmer & asked
for directions

The time is right

Drinking to tomorrow,
Yesterday in a spoon
left in a corner

What are those yellow flowers called?

Mexican Oleanders   are nodding
to the wind patrol   all
four of them   the wind smells
empty taxis. The birth of an extra car at the end
is the denomination of a loss of breath every
day.
(atleast life is always winning
outside drugstore windows.)
  The shafts of light on every street
have been persecuted
by the dust.

It has issued pores on their surface.

These shafts are set into
motion by men in majestic blue suits
who are sweeping the streets clear of daylight.

I lost my privilege
to participate
to a crow who is now
crossing the river (Yamuna) without
getting wet.

Poem

Thinking your summer
knees in the shade
of a tree which fractured
its elbow last night
 when  the storm came rolling in
. .  i am seeking somebody
skilled in his trade           like priests
              a woman perhaps
          who can
rearrange me into shelves
so that when i am the top
i can negotiate time
with pigeons sleeping in the garrets (at four)

Outside the rain
is making an eyebrow
on* the faint road
it certainly
is
yours.

A tractor is making
sections of this road
fertile.
That is where I anchor
my lies and by evening
     i have grown a pasture
to rest with your cows

*of

Talking to elms

Walking by the trees
the necklace of the sky
glitters like windows
with shocked eyes

the water in puddles
lies dead like sleep
somewhere nearby,
a dream shivers quietly

The wolves in his lines

Over red clay
a writer fumbles
his words,
rich they seem
like the rain in his lap
shouting at mountains
the wolves in his hands

Left Blue

by brown and cream trains
red BEST buses
I travel in black and yellow autorickshaws
taxis
through the neon burning
red green orange fluorescent
pink
and think how much the withered darkness holds…
the fractured stars’ sob stories…
that disturb the golden sand
dreaming at night.

Equinox

They say,the Spring is here
nay,not true!
they talk of equal days,equal nights
and yet,disparity is all over the place

Japan

Everything is heading
japan the newspapers
are from japan written
in english i never read them
people have gone
missing from my window
the two trees at the end
of this turn look
like fools no
wind today no fruits
no birds they are
not in forests
electric poles grow with them

straight lines

an old man sits, singing at
the break of dawn,pulling
the sun with his hands
that take him places

His days have been spent
rolling wheels and the nights, rolling over
death hangs from the rooftop
pouting at the heads below

He looks up every night
like a bent tree waiting to grow
to the sky

Transmutation

A little miss,lost in her own world
her companions,minions at best
all at work,her commands playfully obeyed

something happens,the games stop
she runs back home,crying all the way
fright,anxiety,an acute pain

later that night
a realisation sets in
she has become a woman,no longer a child

The stakes have shifted

marigold

sitting atop a motionless train
a headless eagle
wavers to the wind
like a nymphet,
to a song sung by boxes
behind glass doors

a tunnel tapers like night
on a train moving away
the girl stands bare feet
with the end in her eyes

There Is Nothing Left

to say
to this endless grey
how many white wishes
lie unfulfilled
how many dark black lies
there is nothing left to say
it says
I am the hollowness
of the world
the sea of forgetting
the no escape
I am the house
of the lost.

Outlandish ambitions

If given a choice,what should one prefer?
Relentlessly angsty days,sleepless nights
over the apparent comfort
The known,tangible doesn't hurt anyone

But then,you weren't really living before
A monotonous garb of sorts
so,shed it for an unrevealed
Beginning

Total

Watching the shafts
exhaled by headlights
move through the dust
towards a circle
of old men and
the peepal   next to them : total clean wood
I got run over by a car
but for R. who later said, "Again.
It took a moment for the year to occur".
Afterwards I nodded
to him. This is the essence
of time. It does not
grow on a tree.

Tarred Roads

of umbrellas
white cars
swish water
back to water
and the umbrellas sail
black sea
of no colour
swooshing down the streets
like an ocean
splashing
into anything
it finds.

I Went

down into the streets
to get a haircut
everywhere people
rushed by
motorbikes cars rickshaws
they went by the shop
behind glass I saw
the pretty women
on their way to work
and when I had had
my haircut
my very short haircut
the wind fled round my head
I lifted up
into the blue skies
from my high chair
I breathed white clouds
people fled from my head
some shying to look at me
some happily amused
while one or two were clearly
shocked and threatening
I went home and took
a bath
I shampooed my hair
till it stood like a forest cool calm
silent
and then the world settled
in my head
and the day curled up to me
with a book in bed.

Poem

The wind in her hair
        is imparted to trees
leaning on to promenades, and
       me, sheltered by an ash
grey evening   canopy.
They swayed, and
    i   made a poem out of it.

The Evening’s

come to rest
in this room
my glass in its
pool of water
on this quiet brown table
under dim red light
has golden whisky
silent like the walls
listening to the slow change
the pictures come alive
the side-table
and the speakers
high in the corners
cough through static
some dead singer will croon
of love
of loss
and then the bar will bristle
the conversations start to flow
forks and spoons
clatter on plates
when a glass
falls to the floor
from someone’s hand
that couldn’t hold it anymore
and we’ll all find the swimming ceiling
the spinning sky of misery chasing fun
chasing misery
till it breaks free from the darkness
the cold torn stars
the dust moon
that claims us all.

Silent Holler

and tonight,she will quietly shed rivers

broken heart,tattered spirit

tomorrow will be a new beginning

'cause,ironically,even life doesn't endure no-hopers!

First snow

in corners,the trees titter
with orange faces on them
before the moonshine
encumbered with the night ahead.
the morning,insultingly
litters the sky with eyes
not softer than little white heaps
the giants are now found to be

Non duality

If words could suffice,epics would have been constructed
but they wouldn't ,so, they are not
so sense this,once and for all,the ultimate truth
I AM

Look for me,in you
search for me,inside your soul
Find me residing in your heart
I AM

Period.

Couldn’t Find Out

till a long time
had passed
couldn’t find anything
both sides of the road
were the same
everything was the same
the shops the restaurants
the railway bridge
the buildings
I sat down on the ground
on the dusty stone footpath
and wondered
where on earth did I live
where was my home
until my friend tapped me
on the shoulder
and pointed there
across the main road
you take that street
he said
then everything
came back into place
I recognized everything
often later I wondered
where did the world go
for those few moments
and my friend behaving
as though
nothing was amiss
and all he had to do
was point and say
there
and the world came back
and I could go home.

growing,amongst walls

she flowered into a woman
lying secretly naked behind gardened walls
as the moon hovered in
corners of the sky
with the shyest gaze

today she kicks around in her abode
little siblings of yesterdays,
lost in her heart
the memory of being alive
for death kissed her so slightly
she danced into its arms

Fair

The only losses in the rains
are snails  curled
waiting for death
which is running    late
from all the slippage.

Fever Tree

ablaze
brown breaking leaves
birds
not mine
burn the blue sky
who cares
for the grey buildings
almost gone
from my window
disengaged
hanging from
my mind
unable to speak.

Illusions of Cal-de-sac

Head bowed down,eyes misty
all lanes closing down on me
is there any hope for resurrection?


The answer is given,it is sought
That thou art,That thou art
I have faith

bullet-in crows

strapped to triggers
every winner shoots,
at the ground

Trying To Take

the greyness
out of the water
till it is colourless
at the end of land
where it merges with the sky that is grey

trying to take the greyness out of the sky
I travel in
a city of grey
waiting
like a photograph
that is probably not there.

1

there is wind
in the wings
of arboreal thieves,
the sun has fallen
like a stone