PLUNGE SINK DROWN

Singed breath and twitching limbs in

Liquid sleep gushing onto ‘morrow

With blended dreams of rage and longing

A cloudy morn in its ebb

A tortured night in its tide

What would it take to get over that smile?

STRANGE

Why conduct a cacophony
Of my unrequited longing?
O! Not all love need be declared
Some sorrows may suffer smiling
And so I'm strange, as a stranger
Should be. Strange, thy name is me.

Sometimes I think: do you think of me sometimes?

INSOMNIA 4

A metronomic ceiling fan measures my hearbeats: a deja vu of separation.

I remember your brow against my breast; do you remember my stifled sobs from the next bedroom?

Now the night alone thinks of me tenderly.

PROPHYLACTIC

The dear doctor decided
I should be cured, forever
Neither pain, nor anguish
No more tears

Now, I look at you smiling
From the LCD screen, and
In vain, search for sorrows
Familiar

Only a faint memory
Of a tortured existence
Murmurs from across keyholes

May be the dear doctor meant
I would be fine, forever
As the pills give love parole

BLUEBERRY NIGHTS

I am here now,
And you are over there,
But our time
(It was good) is gone.

Time
Never leaves us the same,
And if I step across that door,
Friends would meet as strangers

I'll never step across
That door
Being scared?
Or obstinate.

Life was good
Life still is
Life shall be
As always.

I await my blueberry nights.
Wish me luck;
I think I know you would
Love.

Deepavali

People laughing close by
Laughing, talking, shouting, screaming
Bursting crackers too
Merry people close by

I disapprove
Why must you disturb my slumber?
The somnambulist that I am
Walking through life in a daze

All you people close by
Go elsewhere;
You must have better things to do
Than heighten my sense of alienation

It is official now: I hate festivities.

When did I last tell you that I miss you?
Or did I ever?

WHERE WOULD YOU FIND ME?

When I run away, away
Through the midnight streets
Of a steel city, guarded by

Halogen eyes of Praxair towers
And dark silhouettes of giant
Mechanical sentinels,

Along boulevards of conspiring
Peltophorums in a wintry dawn,
Sighing lemon yellow flowers,

Along accidental highways
With coke-shops and temples
Haunted by the ghosts of melancholy

Evening bells and passing orgies,
Along derelict downtown markets
When all the cars have gone

Home, and three stray dogs
Bark around the ice-cream parlour
While bulls and bullshit litter the desolation,

And through jogging tracks
Of history and alacrity.
When I run away...

*

An invisible fish subsides,
Inscribing silver ripples
on the wasted waters of the Jayanti

March moon-lotus drifts along the Kharkai
A speckled lizard scampers from 1/4
to C8, leaving a trail of click-ticks

Confirming some unutterable misfortune
An inflamed Sakchi sky
Pitted olives ham and peach

Linger in neglect, on bygone
Tuesday evening shelves.
Life is a long due bike ride.

*

Cheap motel toilets
With white lights and
Green linoleum floors

Tea-stained blanket-sheets
Sighing ceiling fan
A notebook of Poems and

A pack of cigarettes. Each night
Death lights the Zippo
In return for fellatio.

*

Maybe I don't remember
Your touch, distinct from
The lovers and pimps,

But I do.
Maybe I should claim
It does not matter,

But it does.
My skin misses you as much
As this thumping pumping organ

Now diving down to
My navel and loins in an
Oppressing Dakshinayan.

Two years of love and
One year of penance.
Now you shall find me

With white hair,
White breath, and
A white pyre at Manikarnika.

Devipaksha

Old friends inspire old memories
Vintage heartaches seem like day-old wounds
Yesterday I thought of love, despair
And today, of the dead, between hours
Of sleep, prolonged.
The living are corrupted by the
Present.
Only the dead speak to me of days
Of innocence.
A living beyond life, and loving
Beyond love.

A FAMILY MAN

As I witnessed the match-making bear fruit, I distracted myself with a fling with a masochistic poet. It made my room-mate jealous and sad. Arousing such despair, the fling could not last. I survived the wedding-planning days by howling through the interminable nights, and making tea in the mornings after. Finally I escaped, in time for the engagement ceremonies. The days of the wedding I spent in an ancient city by the river: a place we should have been visiting together, as per my naive daydreams.

Back in the metropolis I started seeing other people. Nothing did compare to those two years of happiness; it was an unfair burden. I immersed myself in the old University. A year went by. When the madness and heartaches of new loves subsided, a longing, a despair for my days as a family man kept coming back. What had started with the summer heat and bottled cures for hair-fall, ended in everlasting sorrow.

END NOTE

Picking up the residual shards
Of a failed attempt at life,
I struggle to move on,
Too often convinced
It is best to give up,
Let go.

For how much longer?

Mother-Father;
You who brought me into being,
And loved me till time's end,
Towards you my duties
remain shamefully unfulfilled.

My sisters, my blood;
If I leave you with a heavy heart,
Know a heart was too tired to carry on.

My friends, and little ones;
Grieve me not:
There shall be other things in other places
For charming momentary amusements.

And my unborn son;
Like you, my love shall remain,
Endlessly scattered in the smiles
Of the world's innocent children.

ANNIVERSARY

I think, believe, hope

I cured myself of you

Once more.

Finally.

At last.
There: I turn a smile at life,

And the tendrils of longing and despair

Twirl round my guts, unawares.

Once more

Sorrow sprouts like a cancer.

Let me scatter into a million minuscule fragments.

Without shame, or reproach,

And without permission,

I shall dust your shoulders,

Kiss your brow,

And find everlasting sleep,

As I disappear into your breath

Finally.

SMALL TALK

Though you complain of my reticence,
I shall rather not discuss my life,
Which revolves around your memories
In ways that you would not approve.

Let there be talk of ailments and ill-weather
Sandwiched between hellos and goodbyes.
At least, there shall be no need
To resort to a subterfuge of silence.

Remembering the ninth year of the millennium

My mornings’ glory, my evenings’ nest,

You were my mooring in life’s unrest.

(But let us agree it was not love, if that is what makes you feel good: we never even had a song for us.)

Now all that I have must seem enough

For nothing more can be had.

On a stained pink bed-cloth lies tarnished,

Freezing, frozen Silver.

DELUGE

It continues to rain here, 

And all is soggy,

Clammy,

Muggy.

A damp delirium

Punctuated with Wittgensteinian yawns.

In centuries like these

My petite ponderings seek refuge

In damp margins

Of university notebooks

Shoved under dorm pillows.

WANDERING 'WONDERINGS'

If ever a morning, lost, finds its way

From the gutters of my dreams,

Through the wasted gargoyles

Of your downtown church,

To your quizzical frown,

Would you wish it well?

Would you take him home?

Dear R

I was naïve, thinking

Someday I shall accomplish

Loving you no more.

Is it foolish to

Love, when one is aware of

no hope, no hope, none?

Yes, I am a fool.

I continue loving you,

Always and forever

May you find love, true,

Wherever you desire.

Happiness and peace.

APOLOGY

I love you.

I shall never say that again...

Cross my heart.

AN ATHEIST PRAYS

I knew no God;
Love had made you mine.
Then, grant me this:
Let love not touch my heart
Ever again.

WHAT YOU HAVE IS WHAT YOU GOT

Waiting.
Mainly, waiting.
For messages responses calls anything nothing something please?

And worrying.
Is it fine okay unusual strange something bad over?

Feeling anxious,
Helpless,
Agitated,
Insecure,
Miserable.

AHAIM

Consoling myself, rebuking myself, crying myself to sleep.

These are the things that I shall miss from now on.
It feels strange to know
There is not even a hope of being let down tonight.

JUST AN EXPIRED DREAM

Hold me close,
And hold me tight
Whisper how you want
Me

Somewhere it’s all fading,
And you’re too scared to think
Don’t know what to make of it:
What to make of us?

Think about it when
You are slightly more free,
And you’ll know how it’s all over.
Over.
You’re free.

Planet Romeo

"Ah! My mucus past compare
These dewdrops bright I wear
Am I not Prima Insectum?"


Behold how my scales glisten
With hues of the burnished sun
My down so white and fluffy
Like a fruit of the dandelion,
Ripened by the caress of autumn.

Where have you seen
A proboscis more elegant:
Curved like an Ionic volute,
Or a thorax more gracefully formed:
Ribbed as English smocking?

Gaze in to my luminous ommatidia
Graze my tarsus-tibia
Feel me, feed me, fuck me
But first, admit you love me.

(Originally published as Nubile in Kindle, June 2011)

To a young man, distant in space and time

Great days roll along
Great loves die
Only the hope
That you shall remain
Survives
In promises and wishes.

R

It rains tonight
My longing bounces forth
Like droplets off the puddles,
But never reach you,
Nor your dream.

I imagine your soft breath
From an evening of love;
Your eyes, comforting
Like the nest of a bird at sundown,
Remain closed now...
Oblivious of my distant gaze.

If I could visit your dream,
Would you remember in the morning?
May be the brow shall carry
The memory of a kiss.

I love you; no love is ever too far.
All shall be well, as you read this...and forever more. :-)

LAST LOVE

I did what I had to,
You did what you could.

Did we say goodbye that wintry morning?
Memory fails me.
Is it Time's mercy,
Or my usual forgetfulness?
Imploring all my senses
To capture each moment
For eternity,
I had lain awake all autumn.
Yet so little remains,
Except a distant ache.
Now the leaves of summer
Glisten by
A thumping rumbling vector
Hurls me to new destinies.

You did what you had to
I did what I could.

(First two lines courtesy Shreyasi Bose)

DREAM

The storm abated
Moonlight on my bed
Let's make love
Hesitant and soft
A nocturne of Chopin
Peace

Complaint

You have spoilt me for others
O Malady, suggest a cure.