Soaring from the breath of my soul
Winding silence in between my dreams,
I stared at the swellings of my eyes
Over creeks and soil wiping them dry.
From Gulmohars to the things unseen
My earthly shell has learned life
To heal the revealing wounds.
I’m prisoner of the fortune no more
I live and breathe in tranquility,
The poet’s potion to heal the bitter portion!
I was the White Mountain faceless
And lonely like the tiny blazing aura
Numbing away from the crammed world,
Slight and elapsed like the deft cloud.
A new season I can foresee
Inside the distorting images,
Archaic and ripened from lemon pennies
To receive this broken unattached life!

It’s all about remembering the calls of the blue water and stories when the golden globe sank inside happily to be born somewhere else with apologies for the rejected words and love and a reminder to nail the frail blank papers!

It’s all about carrying picture albums all the way round in the school bag and holding the panic of leaving the heart possessed things, to leave foot prints at the door steps with sonnets in heart and ink stains on the skirt with the word ‘forever’!

It’s all about the crisp wind easing the whine of heart and the effortless glad crimson scars of life, drinking coffee and lobster watching rain through the cracked window pane searching for the adventures of beauty!

It’s all about becoming a part of the unwanted yellow note book pages breathing the never spoken emotions, ******* the tiniest memories with echoes of time and dust and whispering to your silent soul about your lessening autobiography!

It’s all about being the ballerina when melodies played late night, to see things scattered all over the desk and lay by the window on the crest with memories pasted on walls filling stillness all around the corroding iron ramparts!

It’s all about searching for the dried out basil stems and binding them with a thread and wishing that someday they’ll fuse together to swim in sun lit mornings for the dragon flies to bind the kaput dreams together, to live life!

It’s all about waiting at the familiar doors with the falling petals of memory and still trying to figure out the moist waited face with a screaming brain, aching veins and wrinkling skin ;the fingers searching in the wet mosses for the familiar shadow!

It’s all about dying with a dream of the familiar imperfections with the stony silence of the skull and dreams of a twilight graveyard with darkness all around a red rose faultless among the dried damp flowers!

From fetid ashes and sinned sleepy logs
I desire to enslave you to my lucky red seeds
And imprison you from my forgotten birth
To another universe forsaken from this earthly tomb.
Hide our unspoken lies with a furrowed vine,
Goodbyes cannot slur the listless loops
For I have the screeching pleasure of hope
Between every breath I took to meet your eyes
And the soothing unexpectations of the new world.
I never felt scared to defeat my homeless tears
But I gently feared the faceless stranger,
My heart, every insane edge of it yours
Just as sharp as the brilliant lonesome star
There is no profound mystery in these eyes
Other than the magic of my little red seeds.
Behind the frozen mirror there you are,
I’ve lost the piece of heart I  burried with my luck
The gap in between the recaptured echoes
From my melted strength to frozen smile
I can tell you, you’re my lucky red seeds!

What’s the color of the sky in your memory?
I know you loved your twinkling mansion
But with misty eyes I realized that-
You’re awaiting just beneath my heart.

I hummed melodies lacking pace
And studied verses to sidetrack you
But do you remember the days
I talked to you endlessly?

You kicked me with at most joy
And somersaulted all around me
But you never knew that I dreamt-
A thousand dreams of loving you!

I’m sorry for all your dreams
I’m sorry for all your smiles
You deserved to be born
But I butchered you!

In deep skies preaching storm clouds
Swinging between life and fate
I lost all the faith I captured from
My most nurtured brutal days
To my inherited nightmares.
The wrath of my stale sand
Cried for my world's flipped smile,
The turning tides wrapped a tempest
Inside the ballads of my December nights
And I finally digged my dreams inside.
I pulled myself over the floor
Before sinking down into the waves
But the concern remained over rejections
And the crimson heart waited
To defeat my drained destiny
But I crashed and failed again !

When the world slept I sat at the barricade of old classics I ate all morn and at night I went out with the characters one by one, I got drunk, drunk in poetry. The rhymes played at the backstage of my ears and words danced over my forehead. I sat to pen them down and they disappeared with promises of coming back another night. When I slept for odd little hours my muscles ***** me and then they came and flirted with my dreams, gave directions to my winds and wrote music notes for my even eyes. I did not wake them, the dreamy bodies that travelled late night. Where did they all go? Half naked body and an exposed heart did not look for a home, skinny bones and busy fingers lonely under a ****** dark sky killed many restless nights. There was a regretful pile of unwanted recollections I never made peace with, they mocked at me. The odd hours became safe, comforting and easy to swallow? There was no starry night or awaiting lover at the balcony, only a dead village, deaf people and dumb streets. The village girl somewhere missed the city terribly, a convenient companion of her sleepless nights.

We stood in front of my grandmother’s
Old almirah, facing each other
The peacock feather and empty bags  
Of the square room fell silent all over again,
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

Then they all came, marched in, reflections,
Paraded in like martyrs of Brute’s History.
I knew them all, she knew them too
They came, touched us one by one,
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

She looked confused just like me
Watching life pass by, centuries reuniting
After a very long season break, nations-
Travelled, explorers stood upstairs watching,
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

Streets strapped the coffee cans and middle-
Aged hospitals swallowed wars. Married women
Bend over like animals and in months, unable
To breathe they gave birth to few number plates;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

The city vomited battles, human heads
And dreams of muted foul slaves. Men and-
Their violent tradition screeched for blue number-
Plates, lean number plates, handsome number plates;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

Unexploded bombs bounced happy homes,
My brothers, my kids, my mothers
Blew their windows and ran, ran away,
Ran afar without destination;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

They were all dark, their land was darkness
Or were we all blind?
Like a watchman we preserved darkness,
The vapours that filled their glasses did not speak;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

We are all reflections, ripples and mirrors
Of men-dead and living.
They all stood outside my almirah, million faces
Inside a mirror. She did recognize them;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

She did nothing, an unusable empathy rolled in,
The hypocrite did not even cry.
In quiet hours she smelt pain, blood and
History flowing from confronting corners;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

An insignificant obligation drowned her nerve,
They needed a home, candle flame, cotton and wool.
The land, their land has become unfamiliar
And they stood outside locked gates and laws;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

They all smelt the same blood, the abused blood,
I tried to kiss them and they kissed me back with-
Their cold lips. I tried to touch them, they touched-
Me back with water in their eyes;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.