Awakened with…

a veil of smoke garrulously whispering
to the pirouetting winds

about the victory of a desire,

about the blood it dried,

about the battlefield that cried from the
cornus blown to signal the dawn of resistance,

about the cabbards sworn with swords
that are desiccated for victory,

about the skies falling prey
to a crimson tide of soldiers
who marched their souls to glory,

about the children running across
the fields – green and the streams – pure
playing with the color of truth,

about the women wailing and bearing
the fruits that are filled in with
voices which challenged the octaves
that nature had written,

about the winters which shivered the mountains
taking casualty in those effervescent leaves,
bled and flew across to their
embittering graves that encapsulated it in

A dream of no sleeping,
A fight of no winning,
A pain of no crying,
A death of no living,
A sun of no shining.

Fist on face

Fist on face
Prepare for disgrace,
A violent embrace.

The governments fall
New ones rise,
Never a demise
For starvation.

Curses of nature
Wrested upon farm-men
The affluent steal,
their grain and fields

a storm flickers,
under a darker billow,
its arrival bickers,
the leaves feel hollow
and detached,
months of sweat and blood
drained in minutes.

How long can we take
those fists on our face?
How long can we savor
this violent embrace?

SMOKE A CIGAR

[Soliloquy]

Hey little fella how you feel the wrap,
Let your wrinkled body get pampered by fire,
I know you would love to burn hard
And fill my thoughts in your gaps.

[Soliloquy ends]

Out on the streets with those empty lights,
A lady’s shadow was blinding the neon lamps,
Waved her hand with an unseen zest,
The car kissed the asphalt with a screeching halt,
Her lips were painted by the flames of the sun,
they were burning red,
eyes – hazel,
smile- dazzling
shattering the momentary silence
her voice crept into the air saying
‘Can I be your desire for the night?’

A ray of darkness broke in from the window sills,
Every passing moment sun buried his light in the shroud.
Whispers filled the empty spaces in the room,
Her hands reached out for the switch,
‘let those fluorescents be put to rest till dawn’
I held her hand- tight
Felt her lips light
Sensed the lavenders that dissolved in her skin,
Innocent eyes,
Seeking innocuous ties,
An asylum from her world of lies.
A veil of smoke circles round her head,
I pass few words into her ears
‘The gravity of our sins is pulling us deeper towards oblivion.’

Billows from tobacco slip away in the window of time,
I can feel the blisters on her fingertips,
All those words falling from her lips
‘you wait in loneliness and let time bleed,
Only to know how hurting the wait was’

Her dead eyes embellished by a scar,
Blurry is the vision,
Dreary is the mind,
A feeling now filled with numbness,
A whisper now full of silence,
My emotions fervent with fear,
Fear of being left behind.

Another cigar bathes in fire for a moment,
Another frame from my memory falls.

Peripherals in your body falling apart,
Suddenly the nerves snap control of the limbs,
A thud awaits,
The wall loved the sound of your impact on it
and it took a little friction to leave you with a cut,
The blood on the wall slithers on to your tongue,
Your tangs question your mind of its taste,
That’s when you realize that your tangibility is put to rest.

Suddenly awake,
Twist of door knob,
Man who bore your trust arrives,
A faint picture of past,
A state of déjà vu,
He slides over you,
With black satin covering two naked souls,
Lost in word, action and thought to a different world,

Now you lay in tatters,
His smile hid the blisters from the lashes of your fate,

I take back ‘your’,
Remember the day the ground beneath our feet was unsettled,
The sands threatened to crumble,
But we had left a fine imprint on the shore,
The action of friction comes back,
Junipers burned fiercely to compete with moonlight,
With our hands entangled by trust,
We promised each other that
this union yielded ‘our’

Awake again,
Your eyelids bat furiously,
Pupil moves sideways,
Scanning for a helping hand,
Fragile is your voice,
Eyes convey better than words,
You realize the time for departure,
You just become lighter by every passing moment,
A faint reflection called memory remains,
Your stay here is caged there.

Ubiquitous is sun’s battalion of rays,
The ray of darkness is put to rest.

I wait for dusk,
The stars have maligned,
They hide behind the clouds,
I too blow a cloud of smoke,
Come alive an old song,
All  notes played on a restless key,
Hitting unknown chords,
Riding on odd time signatures,
Lost into those waves…

[Soliloquy]

you are washed on the shores of reality
sands feel like sands
an invisible oasis,
but you love the delusion,
you dive back into it
your thirst is quenched there
for a moment you are eternally lost in the delusion
only to emerge out of the veils of imagination
eyes wide open
you see
a reflection of yourself on the desert skies
a lonely sailor on the sands of time
a compass pointing towards an unidentified horizon
you travel till it ends,
finally…

Awake again,
May be for final time,
May be not.
A new scar shows up on the mirror,
Ugly as it may be,
You want to dispossess it,
Days pass on,
You can feel its coarseness soften,
You realize its beauty,
You live with it.

Huffing and puffing in air
You conclude
‘Pain is the panacea!’

[end]