Who the **** are you
To control the destinies
Between me and her?

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

You exist in my fabric of imagination.
My every cell throbs for your presence.
My fingers long for partners to intertwine with.
My mouth opens up till the poison air drinks it dry.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

The parsimony chokes like a
Heart-shaped balloon tied at your throat.
The guilt, the grief.
If I could meet you just once
I wouldn’t say a word.
I’ll grab what’s mine
And leave you hollow and empty.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

I am so drowsy,
The air envelopes me now.
There’s no escaping.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

My head shivers from all the thoughts
Swimming without clear destinations
Clashing their tentacles to produce
An inky, brutal conclusion:

My ex-aunt is pure evil.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

All world’s a stage, men
And women are mere players.
Shakespeare told me so.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

Stopped here just thinking
Of you, the power of you.
Consume me wildly.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

Light lands like a wreath,
Illuminating my thoughts.
Calling for you, you.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

From all tiled corners they eye me.
They are still, very still with ceramic poses
And values. I round them and gaze

At the jaundiced and sea-coloured beings.
Their silky clothes and gold ornaments
Shawl them rich, like an afterbath of milk.

These godfolk are a myriad: elephant-headed,
Lotus-chaired and the crescent-haired one that
Stands bluely with a coiled cobra necking him.

They annihilate me with their icy stares.
They almost know the refusal
Of my belief system.

A ring of fire-dews burns in front of me,
I bless myself. a little vermillion eye finds itself
Deathly in between my brows.

The bell is being whipped in fatal threes.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

I tell her it is
Rage that fuels all my poetry.
I might be wrong now.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

I am no longer interested in your fallacies.

No matter how hard you debate
Justify
Shout
Demand
Prosecute
Investigate
Conclude
Cry

Y­ou’re just a child.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

The snake is hissing.
Its diamond eyes cast a sin.
Suffering begins.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

The man of my dreams
Regally feasts, then coffee.
Come here, marry me.

Shalini Nayar
© 2006

He sits in angle that is just perfect for me.
When I first see him, he rises his head to hear his friend speak.
I think he’s bored. Or engrossed.
It’s hard to tell when his specs don’t reflect back any clues.

It was the way he was in control of the situation.
Calm, disciplined and confident.
It was in the way he ate, it was the way he drank his coffee
And his eyes met mine.

What do you do next
What can you make out of this situation that’s beginning to bloom
How do you contain a beating heart that says
JUST KEEP LOOOOOOOKING…

He bows his head as if searching for the right moment to prey
When I wait and wait and wait and wait
And he looks up
And this time, there’s a slight smile dimpled on his lips.

I’ve got a feeling we both already know what each of us don’t really know for sure yet.

Shalini Nayar
© 2006

I miss your white glow.
The ethereal being that was you
Before He took you away, so soon.
The crash, the shriek.
Formulas stained with blood
And a crushed future lying there, lifeless.

I hold you crumpled in my palm
Seeing you walking with me,
And surrounding us is just bright white light,
Nothing else guiding our step.
You’re mute, but interested in me. I smile.

The trick in the calculator, the laughter
Afterwards. The letter you showed me proudly,
The kindness that was you, you, you.
No one can replace you,
Not even if you had come back alive.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

How can I ever hate you?
Crashing waves, over and over,
Like a group of cymbals clapping each other
Never reaching me.
You blend in with the wave, the sun
Lighting on all that is clear and sweet.

Down there, a heart blooms.
Stinging red and beating,
Roadkill that never quite died.
They’re stomping all over it,
Can’t you see, the damage,
The spill of black oozing from it.

Find a drum beat for me there,
A chord of bass flowing through the music,
The flawless voice singing “Are you in?”
And us, sitting there, in our own spaces,
(The sand with crab-holes, you fill them in one by one)
Bodies in the same proximity, head somewhere else.
Listening, listening.

This is the way it’s supposed to be.
Meant to be. The pitfalls eating us alive.
The morning glory saying hello again.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

The moment he knew,
A flower dropped on his head.
Love began to bloom.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

The colours seep in my throat
Coating it crimson. Staining the wells.
I fear it is a sign of things to come.

I want to feel them all, let the mixture
Taint my senses, each giving birth to a
New hope, a new promise. I long for this.

When I look inside myself, it is black and hollow.
How unpalatable. The newborn feelings orbit the pit lanes
Wanting to burst out in a flurry of colourful butterflies.

But, I hold them in. The fizz of anticipation dies out,
Bubble by bubble slowly retarding, as I tell them
“It is not time yet.”

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

It is time for me to shed tears now,
Those fragile dews that hate to mirror anything;
So afraid it'll come out misjudged.

There is beauty somewhere in this:
My tears and sighs that fall hard, protected by your
Own brand of freebie umbrellas.

Unguarded, you tried to flee from this misery that diluted us.
But haven't you learned, love, that there's no use in running away?
It'll catch up with you like a manic breeze.

I knew long before, that this crossing was laid out
For you and me. Those white flecks don't mean anything;
It is how we cross that matters.

It has become morose now, this road. Too wet and unhealthy
For both of us to roll on. But I see the possibility
That lay ahead, that mild flicker of hope under those shared umbrellas.

That frailty that subdues our world,
It's only a vicious mind-game the weather plays.
Look how the clouds blacken and groan, the acid drops coming to reign.

Shalini Nayar
(c) 2002

A chance for these pills
To swim, to coat, to worship
My battered system.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

Do you think it affects me? It doesn’t.
Its spindle tail hisses me a warning,
Stay away before you poison her.

If the cave we dwell in forms quietness,
Despondency, ego…who do we have to turn to?
Who would save the last remnants of abiding love?

These are not trivial things or questionable matters.
And yet the ties are inexplicably shred torn apart
By asking Who are you? and What do you want?.

If it goes on this way, I don’t want any part of this.
You can’t touch our souls and destinies. They are forever
Bounded by our fathers’ blood.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

Is this love then, this red material
Issuing from the steele needle that flies so blindingly?
It will make little dresses and coats,
It will cover a dynasty.
-Sylvia Plath, “An Appearance”*


Is this love
The crashing waves of scattered memories
That laughs and giggles along with my schoolgirl silliness
Only to be choked by reality?

Is this love
When every minute smells of you
Even as I try to immobilize my senses
My heart flutters helplessly like a caged butterfly,
That is wingless and beautiful?

Is this love
The aftertaste of bitterness
That lives on the edges of unpleasant dreams
When I couldn’t feel the way I used to feel?

So is this love then
A tapestry of escapism only our feelings can weave?

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

Faraway dreaming
Of another life, wishing
To be held by you.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

This aloneness has no morals in mind:
Only white emptiness and the black of it
Fall like hexagonal snowflakes with deer-horn edges,
Piling, tumbling till they fuse water. They purify me.

Love never made much sense to me anyway.
The mystic it is made of: the stellar parallax of it
Tempts me, a loveless woman, to its orbits of unknown.
Queuing kisses exit and de-exit from it like civilized people.

The moon is pregnant and partner-rich tonight:

Its stars of many flashes sing and dance
Thundering sky-melody comets,
As the world slowly turns.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

Next time a man says
He prefers a homely girl,
I'd spit in his face.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

while waiting,
a brown ***** stares.
unshawled, it barks.

the seat next to me remains seatless.

the tinted glasses slide without a sound,
painting a portrait of a lonely girl.
heart sunk, eyes preying on sleep.

Sylvia comes tip-toeing, and sits next to me,
spewing verses like a venom-spouting python,
encrusting and refusing to let go.

i see the tinted glasses reflecting back amnesias.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

Today I’m happy.
No fretting nor despondent
Just plain positive.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

I know you’re not here.
In some lush faraway land
There, you await me.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

Sepia thoughts fade to black in my mind.
The hope I held on to lies withering,
Rendering staccatos of asthmatic breathing
Like the dying lion of Lucern,
Shedding one dew of tear that takes
A million years to wet the universe.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

I would flutter around the wind,
Twisting my soul in all its directions,
Falling in and out like I do with love,
Hating, swallowing every single spit.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

Would you believe it
I am finally at peace
With my insane thoughts.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

The right frame of mind doesn’t discern
Right from wrong.
Only truth from lies.

I’ve learned a handful but the true mastery
Lies in unlearning the learned.
And learning again.

I constantly worry myself with
Unnecessary notions because I do not want
History to repeat itself.

You are there, and you will come to me one day.
And I will say to myself,
“There, it wasn’t so bad, after all.”

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

The ground stinks where you have slithered.
The saliva gum ooze suffocate the sand pores

Till they bubble up boiling like grand stew.
The shiny scales reflect back its annihilation,

Its menace to the things that it once used to own,
Once used to love.

Once bitten twice shy, they say.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

Save those drowsy looks
For after. You look so good
Dancing by yourself.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

I’d rather be blind
Than witness you breaking down.
It’d break me instead.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

There are nights where I’d
Feel your tongue slither with mine.
Dreams remain as dreams.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

I have gone through the
Holy Grail of total pain.
Nothing can hurt me.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

It’s always about the games we play, isn’t it?
Always about who comes out on top,
Who rakes in the most attention.

The eyes have it. They always have, windows to our souls,
How deceptively they can let a friend down,
How egotistically they can take advantage of a loved one.

In the end, how can you determine the winner?
Who keeps track of all the points you’ve raked in?
And most importantly, how can you tell a heart’s broken from the outside?

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

When you read my lines,
Above, under, in between,
Don’t ask their meanings.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

I think all of the
Stuff I write are just plain ****.
I hate what I write.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

Hear them rush through, the magic splinter of it
Cutting through the stars, clouds,
The roars of the leaves rustling.
It has been too long.
I don’t wait for you anymore.

Round, my love, the ring, the globe,
This whirlwind of things we remember of each other.
Round and perfect, it never ends.

What more do you want –
The bones, or the memories,
Piled up together in that hut,
Husk brown and wild,
Smelling like some wild beast bleeding to death.

The promises, the promises.
How I believed the words.
Exiting off your mouth like gold watches
Gleaming with fake glamour.
Lies, lies, who would thought I had it coming.

Mud-thick, they plop to make a scene.
This one, that one.
They’re all the same.

Your legacy is torn, just as you decided
To do away with me.
Taking her, the sister-*****,
Who held your heart before I began to.
Overshadowing the very being that drew
You away from me.

No remorse, love, no,
That’s not the right way to live.
This cycle, this viciousness,
Proud and naked like the night sky.
All round and fat.
They never end.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

These layers are inconspicuously
woven together with regret and some great loss
that has arched a cave in the sinew of your heart
beating anxiously, to not let the stalagmites stab
as they drip with every memory.

What was it about the electrical storm that mattered the most....
Was it the arrow through the heart?
Was it the bubbling of innate care?
Was it the act of sharing?
Was it the brewing of love?
Was it the sudden slip of all of those things through the cracks of your fingers,
like sand grains returning to where they belonged?

Do you think it's achievable again
This great cardiac wave that runs through your soul
enveloping the other person with nothing but unconditional love
or do they long to belong to the earth
where they never break and love flows like a wild current, stopping for no one?

Shalini Nayar
© 2014

No matter how much you deny it,
You’re just like your mother.
And so am I.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

Death cringes at the doorstep, saying,
“We’ve come to the wrong house.”

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

It’s funny.
I never knew the kind of power I had until
Other people recognized it first.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005