Rowing Till The Riverbed

Let me fall now, no
Let me fade away instead
I am tired of being ever alone
Of being always afraid

I was a fool to grapple with the dark, you know,
A fool to light my heart on fire
A fool to eat the wounded ashes
To taste the honey of that sweet desire

I was blind with my eyes open
Blind to the water rising around my waist
Blind to see that I with my words
Was no different than the rest

So here I am now, here,
A face amongst other faces:
All fools condemned henceforth
To die; by hanging on her tresses

I should have known it, I should have
For it was no secret after all
That there was magic in her voice
And that it was a siren’s call

It was this damned dream, you see,
To be together in the end
So surreal that I forgot
It was all make-believe, a pretend

I am going now, I am gone
There are other lovers in the line
They ask me if she is a goddess
And I answer: Yes, if the Devil’s Divine…

The Men Behind Monuments

Image by Jiyad Nassar @unsplash

In this sudden stillness
A final silence grows
From beneath the dead branches
Enveloping ants and Angels alike

The dry mist of purpose
That once haunted men
Now haunts their monuments
The mindless mortar
Made and remade
For each thought
And every contour
Which seeks in itself
The forever form
That everlasting aspiration
Of becoming a being

But the Promethean promises
Are but promises
Just as the silhouette stems from the shape
So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette
Like a circle trapped
Within its own circumference
Sans a seen beginning
Sans any unseen end

There is a witness
For every arrival
Till no one arrives anymore
And then the fishes are left alone in the desert
To drown in the mirage of memories
The breathing carcass
Reminiscent of living
In an abandoned womb
Never to awake
Never to walk
Like ages unspent
Upon the faces of the rock

Remains of the Rain

Image by Mehrsad Rajabi@unsplash

I saw my children standing in the rain
Their faces lined with age and late reason
Watched the abandoned bicycles
And broken seesaws
Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops
Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind
Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old
Seemed painted
In the moist color of quiet
The abandoned delight
Having dissolved
In the lament of the rain
They turn; the motion a sad song
An unfinished lullaby
To look at me with eyes
Half awake but never asleep
As if I with my window earned wisdom
Would know
Why all things grow
Only to die
If life in the very virtue of living
Is a lie
But they know the answer
As well as me
It is better to forget than to believe what we see
In the everyday aftermath
Of the daily demise
Of choices left to chances
And promises made before goodbyes
For in the end all paths
Shall return where they began
Even the oceans with all their eternity
Are but remains of the rain…

Sleepwalker

All I can think about is dust and dusk
And drowning in a shattered sea
Made of glass
Like a photograph of a falling man
Who is never truly falling
But eternally trapped
With a suspended scream
In an endless dream
Like a dreamless wraith;
Weightless and wordless
As an orphan in death

But sometimes the night is too strong for me to sleep
And the dreams I have are too dark for me to keep
So I become a cobweb on the far wall
Or a three pin plug lost in a socket
Some crumpled paper on the floor
Or a faded face in an old heart shaped locket
A catharsis of cause
Building prisons to be free
An empty ship sailing
An emptier sea

Where there is fog in the air
And yet I stare
Like a blind man blinking
Without thinking at the sky
Wondering in my own vacuum
About the mute purpose of ‘Why’
With voices at the edge of my vision
And footsteps at the back of my mind
I am dreaming of being asleep
And afraid of losing what I cannot find

Thus, in this black and white world
In this sharp and smooth world
In this loud and quiet world
In this bitter and sweet world
In this dull and fragrant world
I shall remain awake
Till a different tomorrow

Incandescent

I was born out of the blue
Like a star without a face
And shall one day be falling too
As dust without a trace
In hope that when I am gone
Those very few whom I knew
Kept something of the light
With which their wish came true…

Daydreams Of a Day

I wore a blanket for a cape
For only in dreams I can escape
The mortal wounds
So lovingly applied
As an afterthought of ache

Oft nights when the world
Is turning inside out
Being snowflake proud of rainbow vomit and papier-mâché pyramids
Growing in a mindless ocean of silver sweat
I sit as stillness amidst the walls
Like a spineless spider flat and small
Aping what I think
Is the rhythm I cannot find
Do I mind? Do I mind?
Stars falling like dandruff on blank shoulder of the night
Do I mind? Do I mind?
Knowing my common mind preaches that I am one of a kind

The cactus upon the windowsil
Looks down on the street and see
Other trees meditating
Like monks on a subway free
Half dead and half high
Having two views of one life
An ever burning driftwood
Entombed in blue ice
I am that monk
That beggar with bright face
Having known no sunshine, I shine
Having known no misery, I make mine
From the refrigerated leftover of a burnt down town
Crying over T-shirts and Blazers, Tank tops and gown

The world with its thorned tendrils and tremors of love
The world with its crow’s claws and feathers of a dove
Knows the weight and cost of a coin unspent
For this life; a tragedy, for this life; a parody
Is best lived,unmeasured and as if each day is on rent

I have seen geisha queens
Dance on aspen nights
Play with children made of fire
And love men afraid of light
I have known threadbare hearts
Bare it all upon the floor
And yet be trodden upon
Like a foot mat at the door
And so much more, so much more
I have seen and chosen to ignore
The what if and why not
The why now and not before
So much more, so much more, now no more anymore

Short-lived Lotuses

Forlorn face
Hollow heart
Granite grace
And me
Together we
Are falling apart
Like shadow of the tree
And though they make a single sound
All leaves are not the same
The sky is blue
But never new
And memories;
They have no name

A Line On The Sand

Amidst the dunes of Rajasthan
I breathed as an ocean would;
Endless and eternal

Death, Dear Friend

Image by Dave Hoefler @ Unsplash

Death, do not cry
I know; you are no one’s friend
But that does not make you; a foe
Like all who have been and are being swept away
Like a clove leaf upon a current
You too are destined by design
To sow and grow; sorrow
That abandoned thistle tree
Which all passes and pretends not to see

Death, do not cry
When your choices go wrong
There are so many voices asking
To add another verse to their swan song
But you know as do I
That music is sweet only for so long
And it starts with no cymbals and shall end with no gong

Death, do not cry
People do care about you a lot
You may not always be the fountainhead
But you are almost always an afterthought
And we may not think of you as we breathe
Or when we play the games of Holy Land
But we do rehearse our union every night
Though not all of us understand

Death, do not cry
We shall meet for once and forever
But before that I must ask an honest, humble favor:
Of all the places for us to meet
And greet, if you could visit me when I am fast asleep
Then there shall be nothing for me to weep
As I skip; the curtain call of my every emotion
And be like a nameless raindrop falling into an aimless ocean

The Art of an Artery

I see yet know nothing
I know but can see nothing
Perhaps because I close my eyes during the day
And in night I keep them open
Or perhaps the day dawns when I close my eyes
And night falls when I do open
Thus, I am riven, cleaved clean
And both parts of me are lost to the void
Where they each calls for one another
And each fails to answer the other
So that the half words spilling through the corner of cold blue lips
Become eddies;
Wind painting on water
And the colourless quiet
Is divided equally to all drowning men

This darkness of thought
Tunnels connecting the passage of time
Yawn endlessly
For who would turn and fall asleep
When all answers of today are again questioned tomorrow

We come and go, we come and go
With what desire of knowing
We may never know

Splashes of white and black
Stars streaked with paint brushes
On the decaying horizon
Universe diluted and powdered into pills
To be taken twice with warm water
Before the self-hypnosis servings:
‘Ode to me, ode to me
The orphan child of galaxy’
A child who sees, who see:
Spiders crying upon the wall
And ants dying without a funeral
With the human belief of being surreal
Something more than Picasso’s parody of each man watered down into the same shape
As mercury, slithering inside our throats,
We paint the dreamland agony on our own
A martyr decapitated by needle
Love loaded with gunpowder kiss
Lucky draw for cursory chemotherapy
Armchair dissection; with thoughts clinging to the end of the scalpel
Manufactured magnanimity with expired life lessons
Vending machines for vison; a dime’s dream for a day
Granite gods, chiselled, chewing on sand and white vapor of wisdom
And we the people, popcorn patrons, watching this apocalypse through donated eyes
In a fostered future where, famished children pose before the camera
For takeaway Pulitzer
And the humanitarian prize.

Walls with wombs
Gestating hatred
Watch us, the metallic vultures, as we hover
With our telescope tuned for hypocrisy
Our heavy hearts, aching with empathy, from behind the Kevlar vests


If only the bombs being dropped were bread
There would be no war left to win

Two mirrors
Broken
Thousand miles apart
Watch each other and weep

There is a shell of silence about us
And all those who can see cannot show
And all those who cannot see would not know
How the world is a fish tank
Submerged in an ocean
And our giant leaps
Reaching for stars
Are paralyzed thoughts
Trapped in an endless motion

So, take me to the quiet room
With windows overlooking green fields
And empty blackboard,
Where blank books of history
Are taught by children;
I shall be a student of lifelong happenstance
Waiting for the recess bell to ring
And sunlight to flood out
Into the playground
And make
Ghosts out of living men

The texture of wind
Is not felt by the fingers
Nor the weight of the shadow
By the ground
The time is not seen
On the skin of the sky
Nor is the source heard
Within the sound