I knew they will come
In-search
Of yesterdays.
Today they came, jumping
the fence, somewhere
from the river bed,
where they lived.
While I sat inside
An air-conditioned cube
Sketching their fingers-
Like mine
They invaded a
Concrete jungle.

Why do you not sleep and roam with me, at night?
Talk to city airplanes, migrant trucks, loose wind.
Silent breeze. Tea across the road. Furious ginger tea.

Fetch me some sea, Arabian stories and boredom
To the land, lost and barren next to an unromantic riverbed,
My love, this land is everywhere but for now, with me.

I hear no voice, no music to your intimate conversations,
Let me gather my bits and press it over you. How does-
It feel? How does it finally feel to be a listener?

Days like this, I do not crave a somewhere behind me
Now that you’ve come so far, I might swim with you
But I need a return. A return before the night.

I was flying like a kite at the end of his motorcycle, I never felt it before even though I have travelled countless times with him for the past few years, I was drunk like the wind, dancing with his tripping silk wrapped around his slender long neck, the night I breathed him in, to everyone's disapproval. The night should have a comeback, but he's on his bucket list and I know both of us are not going back.

Don't send me, I don't want to go
To bridge poetry at the loss of words

Don't send me, I don't want to go
I've walked miles, singing Gulzar and Gazals

Don't send me, I don't want to go
To sail in silence, cadaver to your Dal

Don't send me, I don't want to go
I might return as a fragile layer of dust

Don't send me, I don't want to go
I don't, oh beloved, don't don't send me

I stand there, every day, nose to the cold iron grills,
Eyes to the sky, dark and cloudy, desperate to rain,
Feet kissing the earth, mad roots of hibiscus plants,
Clasping my hands to catch some wind and put-
It all inside my bag, time has come to gather my things
And leave. Live the moment with me, grow with me.

The catastrophe of being a poet is that you are an annoying brain with delicate bones made of glass, who watches weird TV shows and reads bizarre newspaper happenings, ponder over the final chapters of your literary idols while walking the rain with hands inside your pajama pockets and dig out incomprehensible meanings someone managed to scribble at the back of his notebooks. Psychologists have such complicated theories about your social ineptitude, hence you die breathing the yellow notebook pages of a second-hand bookstore even though your brain signals warned you about chronic asthma. But you'll live for centuries inside punched hearts, libraries and under lazy bedsheets because at least for a moment you made a total stranger giggle, weep, scream and sometimes jump in joy over a well-penned verse. Did your friends tell you 'you ****'? Well, no one's gonna  remember those *** holes and always remember if not today, but someday you'll be someone's wonderwall.