This is a lie, in that,
it is likened with the first thought -
blindfold for a day and daydream.

Sridala Swami caught a boy
who didn't wake up, odd hour
to let phosphene thoughts flow,
confused, like drunken drive on,
a footpath. This is likened to
a poem written wide awake,
could I ever really not see?

This has happened before -

The grass bristles ricocheting finger strokes,
pampered, like mother seeking refuge,
in the smiles mimicry of forgotten childhood emanates,
eyed closed, given in to the gut stretch fever
after retching and vomiting like a cartoon character.

One can't talk to grass otherwise.

In the purple faint of school assembly
hands reaching out to a thud
a concert crowd ready to catch
but delayed reflexes in play.
I felt the hands of strangers,
finger prints etched with water sprinkles
on my face, singing "Wake Up!"

One can't listen to hands otherwise.

Running on an unknown bridge
eyes blinded by sweat and tears
of shock sadness and watch dogs' stares,
of separation, disgust and anger over words
and intentions behind other's mistakes,
eyes closed under an idol unnoticed
a beggar's hand over the head in prayer

One can't sense an unseen person otherwise.

Inside out folding of your mind
impressions washed out, dried
on the wires of gratitude
unequivocal, irrevocable and unsolicited
in the summer sun,
feeling like a toilet flushed after years
I wonder if angels long for it too.

One can't hear silence within, so loudly otherwise.

It feels like the effort of scree's fiction against gravity,
the rocks on the mountain slopes,
doing everything they can to not erode down
When you aren't a person of your word
gravity plunges everything on the road downhill,
The cars passing by
your confidence to ride through the trails

It's amazing, that we always have a choice
to choose to act on something or not
heeding to the acts of God, memory lanes,
rising above the pressure of your lowers
to make you keep sitting down all day,
devour chips, seemingly infinite time,
movies and entertaining videos,
and on fine days, getting stuck
to the text an author put their time into
years ago.

These days the heap of regrets
is enough to act as morning alarm
lest everything falls into being undone.

After reading/listening to Rochelle D'Silva's "There Will Come A Time"

I woke up to a dream,
which we call reality,
eyes wide open, senses intact,
But who can really differentiate?

I opened my wisecracking eyes
to a photograph of father
grinning so wide, I mistook him
for an uncle I thought I’d forgot.

Prints of the past are like
yesterday’s prints of stale newspapers,
you don’t hold onto newspapers for the news
you hold on them to clean car windshields
and protect shelves from grime,
for chat-pati namkeen and peanut containers,
and then you thrown them away,
which probably get recycled;
but the prints of the past stick, no?

You cringe at the things you said
to the right person at the wrong time and in the wrong place
or five other permutations of the three.
You close your eyes hard
and frown while remembering the times
that you slipped your tongue mispronouncing
words which are in your second language,
or said things that you thought were funny,
but no one laughed.

Prints of the past are like laptop kept on for days,
just because you’d opened some tabs days ago,
contents of which might be unnecessary now,
but your mind’s stubborn to read them all.

*

Poets love the past,
it’s the foundation for words,
pain and agony, and also love,
probably forgotten in those browser tabs.

Without eyes looking out far or behind
without a past and a future,
we might feel hemmed between two walls
closing towards each other at the speed
of retracing your steps back towards
where you’re now, in the present.
What now?

When prints of the past and e-zines of the future
come to seize the end or even the journey for that matter,
when you find yourself extricated from the
vicious cycles of love and lust and and pain and hope,
when any ideas or thoughts seize to entice you,
you resort to memories that don’t make you shiver,
a delicious rub against a sack cloth to relieve an itch.

The crash of the milk bottle racks on early morning errands,
the shutting down of back doors of the bread vans,
or something out of time, something that is funny
and embarrassing that you can’t broach about it.

How seeing someone snorting back the mucus and then gulping it,
makes you nauseous but when you have cold,
you do it yourself, because the handkerchief is far,
and you'd rather not use your hand, "Eew!"

Or memories of an old friend, which is a song
by Angus and Julia stones, but also a song
of blissful senility, it’s been so long,
that you don’t remember her face,
but you still remember what it felt like
to play outside, hand in hand, panting.

Home is where the heart is, heart is remembering.

Or instead, you look at things with a blank slate,
where there’s nothing to left to think about,
you shut your eyes, get lost, probably get found.
By someone on the roadside, staring at you with concern,
perhaps that person is you.

Repeat the vicious cycle of cob webs -
love and lust and pain and agony, hope and thought,
intermittently, and then find words to write about it,
before you can’t anymore, again.

I feel the vastness of the hand
like I move my hands to and from the sun
or the moon to fit it right across the diameter
when it lands on your back and I start
moving up and down, to find
that you can’t be controlled like the sun
and the moon can be, from a distance,
that when I will scroll down to your beloved circle
you’ll be a rebel’s soul, parrying quietly

When my tongue will be a mast
in the throbbing waves of your inside
pointing towards the sky, it’ll 
fight the battles of the seas,
with the purpose to make peace with it.
You will wet my tongue mast and I yours
moving, thrusting, squishing between
the winds of my *******,
you and I will sighs the winds of storms
like they were trying to create
another earth only more, more.

“It’s throbbing more and more,” she said

Let it feel that it longs for a pacifier,
that would heighten its heartbeats first
perhaps even a minor undetected heart attack
burning like the bed sheet under us
lilt of our movements making air
from the fans incapable of extinguising
the fire that will only rest once
it has watered all the trees inside.

Perhaps it was too soon
but time will tell me that
it was the right time when
it got loose out of my pocket.

The agony of the lost ink pen
given to me by my grandfather
is not that it had a thick nib
that glided though sheets
of stories, gave track
to trains of thoughts.

The agony is that, I wanted
the pen to be the living proof
in his posterity, or mine
that he was a good man, and
only grabbed by the ills of habits
and inability to control one's mind
did he speak bad with others.

I had a hard time, gulping the loss
like the hardened blob of mucus
too difficult to shove down the throat
but too difficult to push it out.

But then I had no other option,
I could sulk in the moment for long,
or I could imagine that these poems,
are what would show him a good man,
despite his odds of the world against.
I'm the ink and the ink pen
and not what got lost.

For this body too is borrowed,
expenses not more than
what bought the ink pen.
Of course grandfather would
probably get angry if told.

So the agony of the lost ink pen
is that it got lost, but also found
by someone. May the person
find good use of it.

Tomorrow I may never die,
writhe in the loops of time
like catching cold endlessly
over so many lifetimes

But the place I sat,
eyes, a waterfall
of suddenly gratitude
towards existence
for its too trivial
for it to have any purpose
other than to exist.

Eyes fluttering spasms of throbs,
shedding some unknown impressions,
long held in the eye of the mind
suddenly vanishing in the air,
I was born anew in shifted time.

You failed
not waterproof
you allowed water
to fall into
feet bottom skin

Lucky we had
enough of you
we juggled you
in the leaky shoes
that were
no good either

Next time
you’ll be worn
inside trek shoes
so that
you wouldn’t have to
taste the marshy
stink of feet bottom
the premonition
of possible fever

I wish I could be a book
I could send myself to you
in envelops and postcards
over a laconic lifetime
rungs of ladder climbed
waded through like the push
of legs in the water, over sand
chewing on the words you sent.

We, are a family now,
some privileged in the boundaries
of grandiloquent bags and pouches,
some forgotten in the drawers
before relocations,
versions of a person’s state of mind
over time, we make history books
capturing people in the making
of an indistinct next moment

sometimes we carry our own praises
outsourced by the wits of our writers
like love they did find not in the other
but their own selves, blind still.

Does your reader pause too?
basks in the glory of an empty wall
staring at nothing in particular?
I wish we had will and means
to write ourselves on ourselves
so that we could reach other and do that.

Instead like our creators, we are
dilapidated ruins of yellow bodies,
left to live and die on dirt and air
once they are gone, aren’t you scared
of death?

Seeking Reply
Letter A

I was looking for a friend,
when you tapped my shoulder
from the back and
I was confused how to
respond back to a recognition
from a person
that was not mutual.

Last time this happened
I was in a hall
trying to remember something
about microprocessors
so that I could at least pass,
when the invigilator stood
on top of me,
just staring me, writing.

Cold sweat droplets
started racing on my face,
assumption: he was
from my department.
When he finally spoke
he asked which exam
was I writing, and in
absolute bewilderment
I forgot, the name
of the exam I was giving!

You girl with an accent,
I had watched your poems,
writing you on stage
like the broad nip ink pen
that road trips with blue ink.
I just forgot,
in the sun burst of your face,
standing in front of me,
as if you knew me
for eternity.

Amazing, curve of an arm,
wave of a hand speed breaking
over the stretch marks on lower back
feeling the lines like the habit
of taking corners of clothes and sheets
pressing in between the gaps
of *******, a pleasure
no one else ever even sees.

Wrap of an arm, making the back
and front the ancient interior China,
the arm, the great wall of China,
protecting from sadness
and occasional loneliness.

Curve of the legs fitting the other
like they were two rods under thermal stress.
The vastness of the *** comforting the lack
of it on most days, when my body hair
is as natural to you as blinking,
I miss how two bodies become void
In the shape of night’s silence, the arc

Cockroaches, I can understand that
if you had our ears, you would
run at the screams of my little sister,
who screams like she had seen a monster
crawling on the walls of the washroom
when instead she had just seen you
strolling in the late evening
basking the glory of tubelight.

But me, I come from peace,
I’m not disgusted by your existence.
I do not get flabbergasted by your
occasional flying skills. Infact I,
say hi to you when I come to brush.

But you, you go haywire in fear.
Do you sweat? Is there something
equivalent to that, that you do?
You needn’t, I wish I could talk
and tell you that I love you, and that
I do not want to **** you.

The bond cow
was strutting in the night
the wind,
the bond movies' audio.

The bond cow
alone, with a blue hue
around the bones that
shaped the flesh in between,
in the orange of streetlights

The bond cow
unlike the lazy cows
huddles on sideroads
and mid roads, mud roads,
clean roads, ***-holed roads,
what the hell were you doing
up at that time.

on the prompt "Falling in Love (more than once)"

I thought about
this prompt you gave me.
A ******* a train,
I had fallen in love with,
Silhouette of her hair
border lining the darkness of eventide
towards Bangalore.

We met in a ground a year later,
no intermittent contact held,
like quantum-entangled electrons do,
dumbfounded how it'd happened.
And again on the road in Bangalore
three years later.

A direct line to the eye's sight,
first time, under a morning seeming streetlight.
A latch bolded in the color of the eyes,
I longed to deep dive in.

Words finding silence at the wrong time,
so they resorted to not all things
and happenings having reasons
and fear of consoling a needy
in a fear of an upside down going failure.

And like between life and death are only breaths,
the silence between the sentences
was filled with ours
and death by chocolate,
and thoughts of silences
of the other's mind, unheard of,
aware only of an unbeknownst wind
of familiarity of an unknown kind.

I had fallen in love multiple times,
which is to say I'd sifted through
the earth to the other side
and started rising, from it, in it.

Following down the gushes of time
sinking and rising sensations
of guilty pleasures in the chest, insinuating
that the thing of beauty is a joy forever
but only when not possessed.

                           ***

There's an old man, my mother's father
not loved by anyone, angry all the time
illogically unnecessarily hurting others,
drunk trashing long hair and glasses,
rusted in the smell of decay.

I make me fall in love with him,
again and again and again,
so that he knows he's not alone,
always.

If I was your date, I'd try to be sweeter
than any other fruit, hotter than the land,
that grows me, stickier, than
chewing gum, and honey.

If I was your date, I'd remind you that,
You can't have me for more than a day,
for I'm a polyamorist, I love everybody.
I'd remind you that I could be your last,
someday, any day. But that shouldn't,
stop you from loving me, right now.

If I was your date, I would share
my gaze of you, in the silent reflections,
of my convex eyes,
tell you that on this date,
you are the only 01.01.01

I remember the first time
Somebody held my hand
to spell you right in fourth grade
and in a better handwriting.

She had a long braid
that dillydallied in the law of inertia
and a mad boy
instead of playing with us
kept rushing after her.

Of little things that I remember
and I share this trait with Stephen King,
Petrichor is how you're recognized widely,
but I smelt you between the cracks of my cement roof,
my sweat when started pestering me
despite your elongated water droplets
trying to win over my body

Your shyness, which shows in your hurry
to touch the ground as soon as possible
is fought back by the shine that you give
to a lush green mountain pasture
suddenly finding itself bathed after days
like boys and girls in colleges
topped by a ray of hope
to not get exposed
to the winds that might block your nose.

Rain, Bangalore makes you unbearable
so I quit my job to come back
to where you belong best, in the
sounds of my hair being stroked
and brushed by a hand, subtle,
like a woman's hand reaching
speed of light, having converted
to energy, makeshift gestures
of sorcery, on you
coming from above,
like a snap of remembrance
of a long lost key somewhere
in the heap of clothes and underwears.

But I did mistake winds
for the sound of you
in Cubbon Park

Rain, I'm so selfish
I only talk about you
when I'm with you,
Rain, perhaps next time,
instead of writing a poem
to you, I'll just listen
to the stories you silently whisper
in the sounds of squishing
of my sole against leaky shoes

Batman joined hands with Superman,
I’m Batman, I’m Superman, I’m also
A human battling the side effects
of one of our primal instincts.

A rush of emotions, and the primal
takes control, and the mind is, but
a computer controlled by them. The
Process of yielding reasons of regrets.

A gush of pleasure vs an eternal bliss,
I find myself giving in to the former,
but I’m highly aware of the latter, and
that sources the root of all evils.

I close my eyes less often, if I’d more
often, I’d be less often exposed to
the cardinal vanities of the side effects,
of one of the primal instincts, laid.

I’m not the chemical desires of my body,
not the monkey who dances on the tunes
of emotions, not an addict to pleasure,
I’m, just that, I’m, the cosmic comic sea.

I breathe fine, so much I saw a deer kiss a lion.
I was dancing on my bed when I fell and my eyes
Perched upon the stars, the guitar felt being driven
By the magmas of undulating plasmas of creation.

The skyline, the star line , the jawline smile,
There goes a man, there! comes a child. In the
supermarket of emotions I sit down on the aisle
of mountains, plaid shirt on my chest, I breathe fine.

City of dreams, city of creams, of murmurs and screams,
there! Goes a tie and there! Goes the lie,
in the air, in the past. Down the road and on,
roads meet, cross happy and die, but
does ever a mason stop when he has been cut?

I find time losing everything in my mind
Remembering all my life is just a game.
Time, I don’t have too much time, places
I will ever find, are awaiting me.

Pretzels in the pocket got tumbled
with the pocket watch, the locket that
somebody gave to me still hangs
like the eternity of temporary end.

12 is my number, of my jersey’s, of many days
that I had such that something happened. 13th
is my father’s, and no he is not a demon.
I share it with him. I had it from him from the
league of legacy that few people take pride in having.

Waiting for that paper, a light
A cursor that keeps blinking for the next word
Even when the screen arranges to sleep in daylight
Fingers begin to itch and start being febrile.

An email, such a pity,
is more accessible than
a post box.
All the handwriting fonts that I did try, couldn’t,
Just possibly couldn’t mirror the impeccable tries
To struggle to be parallel to the top
Or bottom of a page.

The improbability of what the next thought would be
The prediction  of where the addressee would smile
Or frown, or pick up eyes to stare at the wall for a while,
To embrace what had just been conveyed.

Letters are like light, they reach us later
From when they were born, but the spaces
they illuminate or burn on their arrival!
I wonder if our pupils shrink.

They more than just tag along, they tap in,
They’re the result of cleaning the ink from
the nib, a thousand times, over thousands
of sentences, or maybe just a few, but they do.

And don’t dare ask the pen for proof!
It’ll track down wrinkled pages
Who had their thirst quenched by
The swipes of fountain pens’ fountainheads,
And pictures of the fingers
Bathed in red, and black, and blue,
And occasionally of table clothes
Spilled over by the consequence of imperfect handles.

Imagine if light came as soon as it was made,
It would be difficult for our eyes to handle such bait
Sometimes, a pause is necessary,
Imagine a world without commas!

I’d like to peek into the writer’s letters,
Not to read, but to sense the shapes of emotions
And stretches of As and Ns, or the reach of commas
On the next line, and then, close my eyes
And shove my nose in it, to sniff hard
The paper and the blue smells,
And die doing so if it was eventual.

In the ocean was a drop of oil
not wanting to cease the boundary
but when the oil drop plummeted well
in the vast expanse of the profoundly
seamless ocean waves, and when it
hit the endless particles of water
he saw that love was all there was
and love was all there is, and love
is all there will be, and he melted
into the heart of the ocean, only to evaporate
so that part of it, could come back and
love the ocean like by being
a drop in the sea, but also the parts
of it which didn't make it, had learnt already
Where ever they were now, were already burnt
in the love of knowledge of love, for love
is what there was
and Love is what there is

When a humble abode, redirects you
like the page redirection of gmail
to think your body is not more than
a container to get you the bail

Of the next life that you'd get
in the astral or the causal tree,
or perhaps you'll dissolve you bet,
in the ever flowing cosmic sea.

To myself I ask, say
who am I and wait.
I don't know, but
every time I ask this
explicitly or implicitly
in the voice that isn't
even head voice,
echoing in the head,
but that unknown
experience of yourself
saying something
to yourself
without words.
I smile a little.
Repeatedly asking
this question gives
more strength and will
of what I know not,
than before, even
on failing to get
a definitive answer.

The gap between the neurons,
gave up on the natural rule,
that you have to maintain spaces,
as much as God originally mulled.

How gaps can trigger more
"How and When I'd die"
How people care and irk
at the very same time.

Nothing's ever in control,
heart, breath, all tripping
the light, it's a rigamarole
to try to understand why.

It was already awkward, taking you
up the dubious muddy mountain, with
thoughts, unbeknownst of their occurrences.
All the more cliffhanging at the edges,
of the next moment, like a word expected
or not but not spoken, left alone in the mind.

But the lake and the wind, provided the lure,
to stay calm and composed and intermittently,
shut up and stare at the nothingness that the wind,
the reflections and the darkness offered. In the gaps,
between those nothingnesses, words place-held
the thoughts and bouts of past, present and future.

When you slipped, I pulled you by your hand,
harder than the pain stilling threshold.
My other hand carefully place-holding,
in the shape of your lower back, so that
just in case my pull became insufficient,
I wouldn't hesitate to prevent you from dipping
your clothes and slippers in the little mountain mud.