Meditative fly
sits in a lizard's bull's eye,
deceptive calm reigns.

The haunted place was a taunt to mind,
was wrapped in a different kind of silence
that felt more like an accumulated absence.

Absence spoke in the words
of disturbing silence
or punctuating meaningless sounds,
all of it choked and evoked a
formless presence bound in itself,
without any point of reference
name or connections,
all erased by some quirk
time played on the turn of events.

What remains is an eerie
absence pointing to aggregated loss
which binds the collective will to express
The ghost's relevance diminished
to mere nuisance, nothing more.
This ghost has no clue where
it belongs or where to attach
still it's a faint movement  between
the shadow of absence and a vague desire
to appear as  an apparition.

None other than him
matters here at the noon.
The sun is an out and out autocrat
the sky, he singularly rules,without
any apology to anyone.
He has banished all the clouds;
not even the faint trace of
fluffy, milky  white strands
seemingly unstoppable
till the far horizon.

This is when his hidden
intention to scorch all at sight
is at it's atrocious peak,
which would lead to his decline.

Under the low hanging sky
the earth parched dry,
is a cry for mercy.Sun now is
a roaring water fall of heat
waves lash one after the other.

The village of thatched mud huts
stand dazed, like it's women
in this ascending symphony of pain
not feeling any difference of tune,
this is what it always been.
It's a living miracle, it  still exists
fighting the vagaries of winds and the sun
not willing to collapse as dunes of dust,
which would have been a better solution.

The little girls from a school
the only secret this village keeps,
in midday break pour out
like ants from  hidden anthills,
scurrying to all directions, trying
to cheat the wind spitting fire.

A frail old woman, her skin
sun scorched,dark,
deeply furrowed and folded
a true face  of resistance
life capable of in the face of
the attack of armies of obliteration,
sweating all over, sits under a tamarind tree
all twigs and only few patches of weak green,
cobbling for a living, as if it is her day last here.

Roads keep on teaching us new lessons in violence,
rage is the law ruling the perfectly chaotic traffic
you are left to fend yourself in this murky waters
where killer whales celebrate the success of  blood thirst.

Men who don't properly breath are atrocious on roads
behind the wheels,they jump signals, break rules
as if their poor mamas made them promise to do all this!
a law  to send such cases to yoga class would do good.
But women with bad driving skills as their assets for life
are no less, in making our lives on each journey miserable

In a road where with impunity, suicide squads operate
your poetic musings, will have to stop, to remain alive.

Just then a police car with a roar stop in my front
authority makes me weary but the cop  behind the wheels
a woman, tells me the story of beauty than a cop's authority
on how beauty softens heat that makes muscles go stiff
She springs out of the cabin of the vehicle she is in
making ripples feminine and also ease in the air.

violence of the machines and the minds in controlling,
speed, broken rules and the thrill of chasing criminals
beauty which brings a change where it is out of place almost.

As I drift in to sleep, after a long drive safe,and few stiff drinks
in my dream's window she sits winking,'drive safe all through life'
"Good by my good cop"I whisper "be soft and right,authority is mess"

What is displayed as  reality, imagination or illusion
are stitched together cutting out from the same fabric;
how to make her aware all this is a  seamless shadow play !
She wants him to remember in vivid details, always
'a time that never ever was', but she brought alive breathing life
from bits and pieces she gathers from all three realms at will!

She isn't aware we are trapped for ever in an illusory moment
not there,vanished and gone already leaving behind a ghost
a past without a trace, trapped in the chamber of altered memories,
that hunts the  present, already  changed residence to the past!

A fleeting face to face,
serendipitous,
on a humid tropical evening,
was the first time;
it felt like a shower.

But our probing  eyes
must have known better,
they curtly demanded
one more quick look
as we passed
each other;
we were obedience personified!

Then eyes met eyes
many times by chance.
Two birds of passage
found themselves
preening feathers
on the branches of the same tree
chosen in an impulse,
proved so right!

You sit with your crowd
on the side of a long step
one on the flight to the cinema
a favourite spot I learn, later.
The arrow from your eyes
hit it's gleaming point where it should
with such sweet force
as I come down the steps
and I become  a falling feather.

At the shadow of the book shelf
I find you , a pigeon soft  
sitting at the table across me,
making our lonely hearts
speak in the eloquence
of loud thumps
in enforced silence.

But the true meeting
did happen in between--
in that expanding space
of sweet, sweet silence
within us blowing trumpets!

Your eyes were the keys
to open the door to that chamber,
through the keyhole of my heart,
love bled copiously from that impact,
like nectar, which I was
tasting for the first time ever.

I was a dense forest of untold desire,
Love embraced me as the roaring wild fire
The gleaming embers in your kohl lined eyes lit,
I wouldn't ever think of putting it out my dear
Burning in the sanctifying fire of your love
Chanting aloud the mantras of fire sacrifice:1
Wasn't it bliss itself; a new avatar our love takes hereafter.
The embers are still aglow in this forest's treasure chest.