Hey!
Listen. Listen you!
I wanted to say-
Yes of course I'm talking to you,
So I was saying-
Don't get me wrong
But when you'd so nonchalantly
Placed your fingers on my shoulder
And had tapped lightly
To say "excuse me",
I'd made an irritated face
But just when I was about to make way,
Then-momentarily-
Oh for a fleeting second it must have been-
My eyes had met your eyes,
And though they were shielded by your thin-rimmed spectacles,
I swear,  I could see them beautifully shine.
And the dark black of your hair,
Black salted with those stray strands of white-
Those young white strands-
I hadn't meant to stare-
But they looked so beautiful,
Messed up, mixed up,
It was almost involuntary,
Some sort of magic, believe me!
I know I'd looked for a little bit longer
Than would be considered appropriate
But I'd just got busy following your lips
As they'd curved and took the form of something
That looked like a crooked, confused smile
And I'd kept looking until I'd realized
That it was just your way of politely inquiring
About why I was staring.

That time I'd gone red and had
Averted my gaze
But here I am, I followed you,
Yes I did, I just had catch up with you
Because I had to tell you
That even though we'd met for a moment
Something unprecedented happened.
Nothing major-
And I don't know how but
This heart of mine-
It's really, really so rogue, I agree-
Yes so my heart somehow,
Got entangled into
The awkwardness, the oddness, the beauty
Of that little encounter of ours,
And like it never was mine,
It tore away from me,
And it stubbornly says
That what it wants is shelter inside your chest,
So it can stay near your heart,
And beat along with it.
Funny it is, but what can be done?
Yes, so, hear me out carefully,
I am about to say it finally-
That now that my heart has decided
That what it wants
Is to be yours,
And only yours,
Could you play along with it for now?
Could you, perhaps, let my heart,
Beat with yours, for
Just some time?
I'll try to dissuade it later on,
But right now, this is just what it wants!
I would've ignored it but it wouldn't listen to me
You know how adamant
These hearts can be!
So, tell me, what do you feel
About this proposal of mine,
Would you like to accept it?
All my heart wants is a home near yours.
Please, oh please,
Do keep it.
:)

It dances and shimmies and leaps.
I jump and howl and weep,
While the tail-less lizard tuts in dismay,
"Oh dear I'd never dreamt of this day",
Wiggling away to the deep.

I warned him I was poison,
That my womb spouted lava,
That there was fire between my legs
And it spared no visitor,
Yet he laughed, the fool,
And the proud, vain loon,
Did not pause a moment before
Barging in unwanted,
Like he had, into ninety-nine
other forbidden heavens,
Eager to add a tale more of dominance,
To the ninety-nine others
He would proudly tell,
Only to emerge- consumed,
scorched, devoured by my fumes.
Hadn't I told him I was hell?

If I could be a poet
Not just on paper,
But in every moment of life,
I know I'd keep you much happier.

I'd have no ego
To bruise you with,
For a slave of rhythm,
Doesn't sing egotistical hymns,
Like a poet, I'd be giving and kind
Like a poet, my heart would double up
As my mind.

If i could be a poet,
Not just on paper,
I would never be the heart breaker
I am for you,
For who would know better
Separation, agony and pain
Than someone who cries only
through words and smudged ink stains.

I wish I were a poet
I'd be truthful and loyal
Like poets are to their art,
Like a precious manuscript, I'd guard
Your gem of a heart.

Forgive me love, for this handicap of mine,
For being the kind of lover
Whose poetry for you either
Stays bottled up inside,
Or manifests itself
Merely on paper.

Her mighty pen glides
Enveloping in hot flames
Of words, this cold world.

A certain peace envelops
The second hour of the night,
A little mellow, a little electric,
The ratios positioned just right

I'm sure this chai I'm dreamily sipping on,
Would not seem as delectable in the day
As it is right now, with its caffeine
Making all my senses with abandon, sway

That's the thing about this hour, I say,
Its still tranquility, its silence and calm
is merely superficial; if you're up this time,
you're part of a storm

A simmering storm, with a quiet surface,
and a whirlpool of life concealed within,
A psychedelic fiesta booming with
A myriad of emotions beneath the brim

Indeed, Silence turns Audible,
Colors turn Tangible,
Misery turns Defeatable,
Loneliness turns Affable

Music begins to make all the more sense,
When freed from the cacophony of the day,
In fact, the night will tune a sweeter melody
If you'll put those headphones away

And listen! Listen to the solitude,
The slow tick-tock of the clock,
The distant horn of a car somewhere,
The occasional howl of a street dog,

The rustle of leaves as they dream in their slumber,
The whisper of the wind as it strolls outside,
The sound of Papa's snoring the sole interruption,
To the fluid rhythm of the night.

A certain contenment surrounds me tonight,
As I bid goodbye to the second hour revelry,
Where my sentiments turned to words,
And words turned into my long departed but duly returned,
*Poetry

I've always wondered
What it'd be like
To make love in a tent,
Fragrance of soil and sweat
And urgent desire in the air,
With the dark sky lit up with
galaxies and galaxies
of stars and the letters of my name,
Punctuated by your breaths as you'd
Chant it like a prayer,
Risqué and **** and earthy,
Rawer than the last time,
Rawer than that time,
Whispers so titillating they'd
Make the silent night blush,
Make the dewy, green, lush
Grass curl its leaves in shame,
And send the river stream flowing
A little too hurriedly,  
And the clouds a-tizzy,
And the Earth a-dizzy
When I'd open my eyes, exuding
Fire through and through,
I know the sky would mirror me,
And undress into its brightest crimson hue.
I know if we'd make love that way,
The sun would rise earlier that day.

Ours wasn't the romantic saga
We had imagined it would be
But no less than a fairytale it was
In its length, short and sweet.
Few pages, yet composed with the
Most melodious words, moistened with
The most crystal tears,
A whirlwind- intense, abrupt, yet unbelievably soft
Our very own novella
That we wrote with our fingers intertwined
And illustrated some pages
With the color of our kisses
Remember you asked me why I left that last page blank?
I did it for this moment my dear,
Meeting you after all these years
You say you're planning to leave your hair un-dyed
From now, it'll be glistening white
I wouldn't do the same, I'm still coping
With these crow feet near my eyes!

You have a different world
As I have mine,
I didn't leap into your arms and shower you with love
Like, almost, was the norm in our time,
No playful nudges, no giggling, no madness

Just a strange, settled, calm kind of tenderness.

The tenderness, that, untouched by time,
Dutifully stayed
As a silent, poignant reminder that
The love never did,
And never will fade.

Are you a ******?*
Whirlwinds of flashes
Passed in front of her eyes
And she shut them tight,
Remembering,
Had he touched her?
No.
Had he touched her?
No!
Had he touched her?
Yes...
He had touched her deeper
Than the reach of physicality,
He had touched her firmer than
Sensations of all tactile reality,
She knew kisses that tasted of Forever,
Without having kissed at all,
So what could she answer!
She was untouched,
Yet she was not.
She recollected herself,
Replied a meek Yes,
And felt herself violated by
Another alien self,
A tear rolled down silently,
As her soul bled to death.

I'm penning a poem and letting it
Shoot towards the night sky,
And hang on to those little celestial
hooks that adorn the universe,
to fit itself amongst the million other shiny ones,
that gracefully illuminate our world.

Sending a glittery part of your heart
so far away, I won't lie, is hard,
yet the Gift to create as I write,
comes with its own fair price,
So I rub my palms together and
open them to find,
Magic with a shimmer so dazzling,
it needs a place in the Divine.

And off it goes! Launching from my fingertips,
Propelled by a charm I utter from my lips,
To snuggle into the welcoming realm
Of the mighty Heavens, my poem smiles
down on the Earth, twinkling with rhyme,

It sends across love to the broken hearts,
Radiates warmth to the shivering soul,
Wraps a comforting arm around the loner,
Soothes the ones wrought in sorrow,

For whoever looks above with despair in the eyes,
Finds that there's hope glimmering there up high,
and the stars of the verses created by You and I,
unhook themselves dutifully from their perch and fly
Down to the reader and calm their sighs,
Which is why,
Which is why,
The poet gladly diminishes his own light,
So his words keep alive, the benevolent night sky.

Namaz was less prayer and more about
Standing beside Amma and mirroring her,
When as a toddler I stood on the chataai
Murmuring as she did,
Bending down as she did,
Resting my head on the floor
And then waiting to come back up
When she did,
Some days I'd be so sleepy I'd sway on the mat,
Only to be jolted up by an angry Hmph! from her side,
Some days the patterns on the mat seemed like
They were God's silhouette- something she always denied,
Times of silently bonding with the Almighty and the Amma,
Slowly faded into me deciding to pray solo,
When the hour of maghrib coincided with a
Mother-daughter tiff,
And even when we stood praying side by side,
I'd make it a point to not let our sajdas coincide,
On the mat laying bare our rifts and divides.
I wonder if Amma noticed me daydreaming during prayer,
My musings whether God understood English,
My requests to Him to make that crush like me back,
My teenage self angrily bubbling at her obtrusions to my 'freedom'
As she prayed and prayed for me.
Years have passed,
And how I'd love to synchronise again,
The pace of our prayer, the length of our sajda,
But the days, and this new house,
Are now ridden with so much more clutter,
That, though the chataai has stayed the same,
There's not enough space to accommodate
Both daughter and mother.

Sometimes what I write
Is less poetry, more rant,
While sometimes, this girl
Plans beforehand.
Yes, I like to play God sometimes,
And before I actually sit down to create,
I twiddle my thumbs, think a little
And decide my dear poem's fate.
Ah when I know exactly the very last line,
Those poems are the best kind!
I may wander, get lost on the way,
But the finale is crystal in my mind.
So today I wondered if
I already knew-
Just like I know this poem's conclusion,
That the ****** of my life was going to be you,
How easily would I spin my entire life,
All my dreams, my nights and days
Around the beautiful knowledge
That you were just some wait away.

                                             *

Though now that I'm pouring
My thoughts into creation,
I realise the end that I'd foreseen
Doesn't really meet my expectations!
I'll have to let the words take over now
Perhaps, like I'd let destiny
Govern us too,
I'll let the end pave its way through,
Just like my life stumbled into you.

Because some poems, and love stories
Aren't made with pre-thought choices.
Some poems, and love stories
Are best served with sweet unknown surprises.

Cornered by two-faced,
Three-faced, uncountable-faced,
No-faced monsters-
The so-called confidantes,
Well-wishers and friends,
Who deep down are back-stabbing fiends-
I put up a brave face,
And try to take them on,
With a true face, my only face.
I will hold my own

Oh Winter, I welcome you,
Your nippy air, your kindling hues,
And the tint they cast on my moods,
Oh Winter, if only you knew,

The simple pleasures your arrival bears-
The precious sleep that only your lullaby brings,
The sudden love for rich food you excite,
And so many other little 'winter things'-

Things like colourful gloves and socks,
And poor unsheltered, chilled pink nose tip,
And age-old pseudo-smoking out cold breath,
And cherry/strawberry/cocoa balms to coat the lips,

Doodling a beloved's name on a frosted window,
And tugging blanket under toes in bed, snugly,
The evening nap feeling more easing than ever,
Followed by heavenly gulps of warm milky coffee.

Oh Winter, despite, as the time of
Separation and Forlornness being ill-famed,
Each time you visit, you touch my senses
And leave them pleasantly tingling and inflamed.

For summer may be bright, sunny and sky-blue,
But you can be an enticing dark, a passionate maroon,
You mischievous cupid hiding under the garb of cosiness,
Refilling hearts with yearnings anew.

Welcome, dear Season of Romance,
Time to commence the routine all over again,
Of you- enthusing me with deep cold-warm sentiments,
And me- writing poems celebrating this eternal game.

Gentle breeze
Tickles my toes
Rocks me softly
Back and forth
On the swing,
Arms wide open
Legs outstretched
But not quite touching the Fore.
Head propped backwards
But not quite returning to the Before.
Eyes with comfort
Fluttering, closed
Simply suspended.
The Present, the Now,
Illuminating my very core.

Mommy, it’s late night; I want you to stop talking,
And drift off to peace as we sleep in our bed.
Then for a while I’ll wait for you to turn to the other side
So I can take my hand under the covers
And touch myself.

It’s not easy being me the whole day.
Hiding behind unflattering clothes, books, unkempt hair,
The other girl living inside of me tries to come out from here and there,
So I need to keep her tamed by
Telling her that I love her too.

She’s black, evil, and beautiful.
I know you wouldn’t approve
Of her existence inside your little girl,
But believe me, she’s the only real part of my fake world
And I need to be one with her each night
Only then will tomorrow morning feel alright.

I’ll touch myself in pursuit of the moment
When everything but pure pleasure, will be forgotten.
I’ll chase that instant; it’ll taunt me and tease
Then I’ll finally reach out to its heavenly release.

I’ll hug myself, exhausted and weak,
She will softly lull me to sleep,
The two of us, closely intertwined,
My black and my white.
And in the morning, as your darling,
I’ll start the day over,
Smiling with the thought of the secret lover
Who waits for me under the covers.

Hey! Did I just put on my best makeup
And my prettiest dress
Only to have you stare endlessly at
That one loose tress
Of mine and describe it as
"Exquisitely enchanting"?

*The blessed misfortunes of having
A True Blue Romantic darling

Gasp!
I stutter!
Chest rising, air-hungry...
Again, I sputter!

Efforts to resuscitate
My grappling form
Are all falling in vain
What is this storm?

Hands reaching out
With a desperate yearn for something
I lost, while I was busy
Extracting, gaining, bargaining.

Parched throat
Unmoistened by water
Tremulous heart
Beating feebler, faster.

No antidote works,
No therapies suffice,
Oxygen flows through,
Still I'm devoid of life.

The world dejectedly shakes its head
Everything known to man
Has been done. But
twists of fate, who can understand?

'Cause in a magical instant,
The Hand divine
Rests on my ebbing existence
One more time.

Once again dysrhythmic heart beats
Start dancing in orderly unison.
Breaths start entering-exiting
In perfect, beautiful, natural fashion.

In goes life,
The reason for my being,
In goes truth,
All knowledge, all meaning.

And finally, after the
Evil, cidal, unending eternity,
Out comes a deep, long, fulfilling
Exhalation of Poetry.

Now, alive, I truly am.

Both
Too much,
and too little
Commotion,
Can mute the poet's emotion

When your conscience's clear like crystal
You set them off-balance,
For when they see you, and try
ever so hard to find faults in you,
All they see is themselves.
Because you are clean fresh dew!
Pure like sunlight; you act as a mirror
for the soul of the onlooker,
And so, as they peer into you looking
for deceit and dirt,
their own face stares right back at them,
ugly truth gloriously unfurled.
Your open goodness
irks them, agitates them, provokes them
to claw at you, use their might, to
destroy you and all that's right,
but little do they know that you-
are Invincible. Beautiful. Resilient.
Birthed from struggle.
Tempered by truth.
Chiseled by principles.
Challenged by adversities galore,
haven't you always conquered them all?
So shine! Shine with all your brilliance,
and no one can break you,
for your conscience is your greatest wealth,
for your conscience is your Kohinoor.

Popping out from slumberous state,
Little buds, you come to life.
Fight, fist, fend the odds,
You’re different; you survive.

Combative, commanding, cruel,
Your army, every restraint exceeds,
As it marches on, devouring
The very platter on which it feeds.

Slithering, slipping stealthily,
Deadly tentacles spare no bone, sinew.
Boundaries are blurred; your territory expands,
Your militia continues to exponentially grow.

And soon, your red flags of victory-
Those flags of death, demise and doom
Are planted everywhere; each bit
Of terrain you’ve invaded and consumed.

There you sit, content, in the middle of all the gloom,
Immortal, indestructible, infinite.
With power of the magnitude you possess,
There’s no force that can give you a fight.

And when flies of decay begin to hover over
Your kingdom, you smile, flexing your pincers.
Thriving on the depressing glow of the setting sun,
You- the kark, the crab, the cancer.

*(to the malady that ate my Grandmother away)

Take them off now,
It's been too long since
we've amused ourselves
with those layers of
goofy humour, non-sense jokes,
favourite song, favourite movie,
hell I don't even have any favourites
I just told you to keep
the conversation going, so
I could reach somewhere deep
beneath your colorful veil
and explore the place no one else has
touched,
dim and soft and silent and still,
house to your secrets,
your fears and your dreams,
your demons and your guardians,
the dark and the sunny
facets of your being-
take me there,
Disrobe yourself,
of these distracting layers

Never really mastered the art of intrigue,
I sometimes wish I had that skill,
Of treading light,
Of being the diva
Surrounded by a mist of aura,
Controlled in laughter,
Calculatedly revealing,
Measuredly unraveling
Her inner self.
I stomp in love,
I bare it all in love,
I laugh with abandon,
I shout with animation,
I cry in immoderation,
I never really learnt to leave
Anything for the imagination,
And it's the greatest gamble,
The toughest game,
To tear your heart out and
hold it in your palm,
And show it to them,
Look, this is how I beat,
Not many can deal
with someone this real.

He vanished one fine day
Left his cellphone on his bed
Packed no clothes
Withdrew no money from the bank
Spoke to no one
He was under no debt
And otherwise too,
He didn't appear distressed-
Well, assuming so,
Because whenever you would
Mock him, call him a name or two,
Become aghast and ask
"Who gets married and starts a family at fifty two!?"-
He'd not do much,
He'd mutter few profanities,
Or curse your favorite cricketing team,
Or he'd just skip lunch,
Go for a stroll and he'd be fine again.
But this time he strolled away
Without a trace
Leaving you to scour newspapers everyday
Matching the photos they print
Of abandoned dead bodies,
With his prematurely aged face.

That sight of the scars
Painting her young wrists
Shook me with with disbelief
Yet overtook me with jealousy

I'd never be able to express pain
Like she did in her poetry

The crispest of papers
The finest of inks would falter
In front of that beautiful, mangled mess
Her smudged, blood-tinged words would author

Isn't ripping a
Soulmate away from your insides,
Too,
A kind of suicide?

Broken shards of a broken heart-
Each piece composes a different line,
Then from the crevices bleeds out your poetry.
And then you ask me why it doesn't rhyme.

:)

Hearty laughter and untamed voices,
Bright red lipsticks and brazen choices,
Bold heels studded with some virtues-some vices,
Tongues laden with sharp, unabashed spices
Go out and out, and be proud, women,
The time is right, to be loud, women!

Multiverses infinite,
Endless permutations
Harmonise together into
Fortuitous combinations
Of planets and stars,
Of fluid minutes and hours,
Zoning time into a ceaseless warp,

Yet, the sole instance I ever achieved
Absolute **Mehfooziyat
Was in that stationary speck of a moment,
When my heart lay idle in your arms.

He used a nice word for it-
Emulate
"Oh! Look how her imagination glides
From glorious skies to
Eerie depths, no hesitation
Dropping from resounding thunder
To dead silence that shatters asunder
All that is sensate
And that, my friend,
Is what I'm trying to emulate!"

With such shameless eagerness
He shifted styles,
A form-changing, chameleon of a poet
Ever so often devouring a new set of words
Like rich, delicious wine
And fashioning his words into
The poetess' writing style,
And crooning with her tunes
For as long or short a while
As his lecherous dog of a heart pleased,
Then letting himself be afflicted
With yet another poetic disease.

I rolled my eyes, yet silently asked
Him- the Casanova of verse-
*When will you stop falling in love?
When will you stop drowning into
Another woman's words?
Think about me,
Struggling to keep up,
Changing tracks with you,
Climbing up and down
Ballads-Sonnets-Haikus-Epics-and free verse
With you,
Watching you enamoured by her,
Still trying to emulate you
For the most vain of reasons there is-
Hope.

Oh he's got such flair,
That khuda khair
One can't help but just stare...
**Unabashedly

Oh what a wonderful phase
We are in right now, us five girlfriends,
With defunct love lives and no immediate hope
of securing a boyfriend.

Oh what freedom there is, in
branding ourselves "unaffordable platinums",
And priding ourselves at being too good for
those mortal, fallible, self-proclaimed "alpha" men.

Such hypocrites we are, actually,
Ridiculing and belittling that cute guy,
Still discussing his every move, nudging
and giggling at each other when he passes by.

But hey, call us hypocrites, evil, mean-
All of it we whole-heartedly accept.
Right now, we're living life in moments,
And our bucket list of madness, we mean to "check"-

Aimless flirting - check!
Pointless bedtime discussions - check!
Choosing a guy and then dissecting
His every habit - check,
His dressing style- check,
His twinkling eyes- check,
That had met ours today over lunch break- YES! Check!,
His last aloof message- check,
Sending an even more curt response- check,
Our hidden hopes that he would reply,
With affectionate words and also apologize,
For all the times he wasn't all that nice- wistful check.

Oh we're a bundle of emotions, us five,
Sans pressures and restrictions that a guy brings along,
Sans complexities and compulsions that come free
With his supplies of testosterone.

So, broadcasting this to all you gentlemen out there,
If you ever venture into our line of sight,
Prepare to be scrutinised, evaluated, and then rejected outright,
By this precious, exuberant pack of platinum five.

For watching over me as the poet in me changed-

From deciding the subject of my next one
A week in advance,
And spending the next few days,
Creating the mood, the right ambience

To having words ready
At the tip of my fingers
To my life revolving around writing,
And not the reverse

From choosing the correct length
The right vocabulary, rushing through
A dictionary for just that word I needed

To being effortlessly able
To aimlessly babble
And in the end, smiling at how poetic
Were the verses I'd created

From wondering who would ever read me?

To feeling a warm, fuzzy glow,
Seeing the lit up yellow lightning
Giving the happy news that my ideas
Someone, somewhere, was absorbing

From having that secret desire of
The Dream Guy stumbling upon this page
Reading me in and out, and
Falling in love with my words before
He began to love me...

To... Oh! Who am I kidding
I still have faith in that fantasy!

To a million more poems,
To many more hearts to enthrall,
Cheers to poetry,
Cheers to y'all!

At the darkest end of the rainbow
It lies,
The balance of vitality gone askew
Unleashing its evil side,
It creeps slowly then bares fangs
With speed,
Potent beyond regulation
Its aberrant seeds,
That will grow into whatever they want,
That will grow however they want,
That will grow as much as they want,
Taking shapes of
Flesh and blood and bile and bone
And twisting their faces so
They're recognisable no more,
As if mocking us and our prayers
For Growth-
The immoral, the immortal side of the coin,
Cancer, the evil twin of Life.

The best part about
Being a rule-breaker
Was the beautiful fact
That we did it *together

Tiny specks, smaller than sand grains,
You and I-
Lost in the daunting cosmos,
The never-ending skies,
How insignificant, how minute
We are, I wonder,
With the Universe spread out
Before us in all its splendor,
Until our eyes meet and
The world we share, plays out,
I stare at our galactic bond,
From within and without,
Than all depths, vaster
Than all stars, brighter
A tale infinite, eternal,
Our love, celestial.

You'd find the curtains lightly dancing
to the tune of that song,
to which we'd bashfully waltzed
the first time you had held me,
You'd smell the musk
Spreading its wings in the air,
That you once said, drove you
dizzy when you were around me,
You'd find poetry singing softly
Behind the veil of silence,
Reading aloud my verses of love,
Calligraphed on the bare canvas
Of my skin, in Urdu,
Curving and turning shyly,
For you to trace with gentle fingers,
Right to left, misra to misra,
Sher to sher,
The beher of each caress
Matching the stirring of my breaths,
Culminating at its pinnacle,
Into a ghazal, your ghazal,
That would, with demure grace,
Take form and calmly embrace,
The raging fire, the desperate uproar
Lashing at my parched, starved soul.

Red
Is unabashed,
Glorious and proud,
Pure and sensuous,
Sure and loud.
Don't wear it!,
They whispered,
It's the color of sin!
It's the truest shade,
The very hue of life that
Runs beneath my skin,
I said,
And embraced with love,
Unblemished Red

What's it like when you live with your soul
exposed bare each and every day,
surrounded by betrayal and deceit,
you cannot help being yourself.
Everyday you're let down by some,
lied to by some,
yet you give them your only weapon,
your only defense-
yourself-
your clean, unadulterated self,
that fails to fake, fails to hide,
that reveals its true colors
no matter how hard it tries.
You know they're not real,
and you think to yourself that you
do not care, you'll forget,
even if you don't forgive,
yet indifference is a lesson,
someone like you will never learn-
can never learn.
Because you keep your soul
exposed to the environs of this *****, ***** world,
Your soul is beautiful, it is crystal
inspite of breathing in this tainted, tainted air,
So, even though your truthfulness,
your blatant genuineness exasperates you yourself,
be proud that you are who you are,
because the real ones,
the misunderstood, the outspoken, the clumsy ones,
are the best there can ever be.

I watch him move as if in a trance,
Engrossed in another world,
In moments like this I
Don't dare disturb
Him out of his spiritual reverie,
His hands doused in color,
Working on the canvas in a rapturing frenzy.

He is a spectacle,
The creator of perfection.
He knows just the right shade
To bring to life his vision,
He knows...
He knows it all,
Mingling fine detail with vague mystery,
Crafting beauty that enthralls.

While I...
I fumble and struggle,
To pick the right words,
To describe him,
My fixation, obsession,
My muse, my craft,
As if he reduces all my poetic prowess
To a bundle of nervous childish follies,
He, the master of his art towers over-
Me, merely a humble slave of his fancies.

My heart,
Is a jigsaw puzzle composed of
Pieces of souvenirs from wherever
Life has taken me

Sunny mounts of happiness,
Dark troughs of gloom,
Blind alleys of secret memories

Punched out remains
Of the parts that I gifted to
Those special few

Uneven buds added on
To the surface, because some gave me
Pieces of their hearts too

Marks of where it was trodden on,
Scars that show its
Brave, healed face

With pins of guilt and remorse
Studding it in memory of how
It also became the cause of others' pain

That's my heart. Not so pretty,
Not perfect, not pure,
Yet it sits in my chest, beating away
Patiently, as if entirely sure
That any moment, its wait will end
Of someone who'll admiringly
Imbibe all of its stories,
Ease away all the tense knots,
View in awe all its glories

And let its inadequacies depart,
Completing them with closeness-
Smoothening their unevenness-
By merging with them,
Heart to heart

I wondered
What was that sudden empty feeling,
When I turned to realise that
Oh! You went away already, leaving
your absence to stare at me
Through the diamonds of our wedding ring.

Nestled in a cosy little corner,
Blooming out from an old branch,
The newest offspring- young,
slender, fresh, entranced
By something never experienced before,
Unfurled himself in joyous glory,
And absorbed the single sweet drop
That drenched his welcoming body.
The other leaves chuckled lovingly
And the birds chirped at the display,
The entire tree rustled with glee watching
The little one rejoice on his first rainy day.

As the redness of the skies envelops life
As the day stands on the brink of dying
As existence knows that, it is time to retire
I know that it is time to step into my world.

The shutters of shops go rattling down,
The chirps of birds cease, with them heading off to the nests of comfort
The honking of cars grows louder, as the desires to go back home increase
But I am restless, dying to go, in a world away from where I live.

That world houses my being, my real self, the real “me”
I am in control there; no one restricts my expressions,
No one perturbs me with hypocritical rules, ideals and regulations,
But for the wind, which comes in sometimes, to blow in those moral handcuffs-
Which are weak, but they hurt.

But once I stop that wind of limitations, I sprout wings…
To fly away with their help, and attain freedom!
Freedom from what I am forced to do, freedom from what I am forced to think.
The day has died, but I am alive, liberty at my disposal!

You might say that my world is nothing but a virtual game,
Made just by the cards of my imagination
And sure, this world falls apart as soon as daylight enters my bedroom window,
This light blinds me; it shouts at me, that my other self is short lived, as good as dead.

But though my spirit comes alive only in the dark, hidden from all,
Though my inner self lightens up, but not for long,
I am happy that I have the courage to at least release my true expressions,
I am happy that my day awakens, quenching all my needs…
As the night goes on.

We dressed her in delicate silk
And gave her glittering jewels to wear,
A crown with rubies on the top,
And flowers for her fragrant hair

We placed wings on her dainty shoulders,
Crystal heels on her slender feet,
We draped her in beauty head to toe,
Gave her the shape of all our fantasies,

So that when we picked at her flawless skin,
And tore off her silken gowns,
When we pulled at her rose-petalled hair
And her lovely stone-studded crown,

When we chased her into darkness,
As she tripped on manacled heels,
When we watched her try to fly but fail
With bejewelled wings that were too heavy,

We could baffle her, confuse her, fool her
Into believing it was not our fault,
For we had revered and worshipped her,
Could the devotee be responsible for her fall?

Oh not at all!

She was too beautiful,
She radiated too much,
She was too pristine,
Easily dirtied on touch,
She was too striking,
She was too bold,
To not be stripped off of all that glitter
And all that shameless gold.

Whirlwind romances aren't
Meant to be clung on to.
You ride the wave,
And when the peak is through,

You have to deeply inhale,
And no matter how distraught
you may be, jump instantly
With no second thoughts.

But I forgot to open my eyes,
When I did, I was all alone,
The ****** had ebbed and
You, my darling, were long gone,

Leaving me entangled forever
In this dark trough of gloom,
Where time is slow and evil
And the ghost of silence looms.

Whirlwind romances aren't
Meant to be clung on to.
I wish I'd remembered,
And jumped off with you.

Hectic, stormy, electric,
Piercing my insides like the
shriek of the fever-bird,
Fire, fire, fire within my being,
Melting my words,
Evaporating my thoughts
Into crazy whirlwinds,
Blurring lines, haze dissolving
the boundaries between
Sanity |  Sin,
Right and wrong,
Real and fantasy,
Mixing into a song,
Feverish, mad song
That longs, so urgently longs
To belong, to eternally belong,
To you-
The sole elixir, the only remedy
For my frenzied malady.

It would start like a bubble
in my seven-year old chest,
An ever-expanding ball of
doom, substituting my breath

I was a child, yet I knew death,
I would try inhale- silence
I would hope it would fix itself
but, when I'd try exhale- silence

There was ugly music though,
It rose as I forced my ribs to expand,
Jarring, polyphonic, cacophony,
Of airways brutally locked and jammed.

When a child learns to measure April
nights, with the hours spent in the pain
Of coughing through close-to-nil breaths,
And breathing through coughing again,

One wonders at the extent of the inhumanity
Of those, who are quick to discreetly say,
"Hush, do not speak of this illness to anyone,
It's no illness at all, in the first place!"

"And, here, take these magic pills and potions,
They're slow but will take away all her agony,
No no, don't listen to those white-coated liars,
You don't need puffs of drugs into her body!"

So I ate all those pills and
Drank all those potions,
And I stayed up those nights,
Waiting for their promised actions,

And I went to school the next day,
Groggy, breathless and sleepy-eyed,
Because not-being-seen with an inhaler was
More vital than the breaths of a seven-year old child.

Tired feet stumble back
Tingling through and through,
Legs so numb, sleepily complain
Of all the running they had to do.

Thirty hours of relentless work,
And only stolen moments of rest later,
The calf muscles I pampered all my life
Cringe and cramp and labour.

Oh my fatigue is palpable,
I can feel it in my heels
In the weariness of my soles
And my jaded tendons of Achilles.

The first respite swiftly comes
When my skin finally recognises
My soft, familiar slippers,
I sink into the feeling and I like it!

Then comes another wave of relief,
Gently easing those knots away,
When my pajamas caress my legs,
Draining out the pain of the long, long day.

I dive into bed, and sleepily wait
For my final portion of cosiness
Which comes when sleep lulls me to bliss.
Indeed, home is where the feet are happiest.