There are times when you feel like
reaching out..............full length,
to grasp -
the ultimate;
something, which you will not like
to dispense away with
no matter who leaves or alights.

Somewhere, from where you will never waver
again -
an Equilibrium.

But most of the times, the best you can do
is to swish your hand and latch on to;
thin, slippery, lukewarm air, vanishing as a wraith
into a starless, roiled chasm......
and you are viciously abandoned
amidst the pungent whiffs
of the random metropolis.

Every night I lean against the rusted gate
of this modest rented apartment
and give a fish eye to the stillborn night.

I see a lean column of smoke from a smokeshaft
...obscure...far off;
reaching out......for the stars
cruelly dispersed by grimy draft.

I see the flickering, pale beam;
the solitary, asocial gleam
of the municipal  lamp;
reaching out meekly....towards me,
getting devoured in a frenzy
by the soft, persistent charge
of the relentless molecules of dark.

✽

And loneliness becomes admissible....
.....again