She'd swooshed by on her skates.
He'd seen her in her reflection that day
On his car’s rear view mirror,
For the first time ever.
The new neighbour, was she?

That very night, for the first time ever,
Both happened to be on their respective rooftops.
The clock had just scaled eleven.
Now that they’d seen each other,
Tonight's coincidence sufficed to make way
For a rendezvous every night, thereafter.

He’d often be smiling his sheepish smile,
Panting for breath as he’d reach the terrace
While the clock would strike eleven,
A few heartbeats later.
Oh, but she would often already be there,
A teasing laughter on her lips,
A childlike smile in her eyes.
Relief followed by exultation in his heart.

And so, they’d be standing a lane's length apart,
United under the zoetic starry sky, every night hence.

You’d wonder, how both were somehow convinced,
That the other still believed
This nightly tryst
Under the sky's roof to be a coincidence.

She'd light cigarette after another.
He'd pretend
To be caressing his pet,
Fast asleep.
Or some such silly thing.

How he’d wish the whiff of smoke from her cigarette
Would drift across to his terrace.
He’d imagine the wafting smoke
That’d emanate as she’d part her lips
To be a peek into her coy desires.
And many such cheesy things.

They hadn't exchanged a word till date.
Oh but they'd exchanged hearts that very first night.
She didn't even know his name yet
She'd wonder if he knew hers’?
'Has it ever mattered?' she'd think.
'I'm better off not knowing her name!'
Thinking a name could define her
Is to be silly', he’d think.

She was at his door one evening,
To hand over a letter,
Mistakenly delivered at her home.
Or so she said. Something he'd happily believed.
She'd slipped her heart along with the letter,
She later happily realized.

The ensuing night lingered
Six and a half cigarettes longer,
The first time ever.

Fifteen evenings gone by since
She wouldn’t be seen.
He stayed for a brief bit on the sixteenth night.
Disappointed less, worried more.
Did she feel this silent encounter
Of their worlds had stayed silent too long?
Words could never suffice, didn't she know?
He went down to his room ruefully.
Oh but she’d reached just the terrace at that instant.

And they thought coincidences could only always favor them.

A few evenings later he saw her.
Not veiled by the sepia-tinted street lights this time.
Nor in the crimson blush of that evening.
Decked in bridal finery
The vermilion vows on her forehead
Staring starkly at him like an exclamation mark.

And you thought coincidences could only always favor us,
Seemed to be the rhetoric she was throwing at him.

That night, his tattered heart
Writhed in dead wakefulness on the rooftop.
Even now, he looks across
At her absence, a presence in itself.

A drop of dew
Pristine and brand new
Landed atop a blade of grass.
Though tempted by the wind's song,
Balanced itself on the blade's tip,
Strove to not trickle down
Lest the grass strand would lose its crown.
Birds stretched and perched
To take the morning's first flight
While the sunlight wrapped its
Arms around the earth & sky,
And the coy dewdrop glistened anew
In the multitude of a million hues.
Reluctantly, it began to bid
The grass fraternity adieu
Evanescing into vapour,
To accompany the wind
In the search of another grassy patch

We’re the generation that
Validates its existence through memes Everyone can relate with,
Gratifies itself through likes,
Swiping a nod of 'count me in'.

What happened to the times
When two strangers would connect
Over nothing but a smile?

A poet cannot afford to be afraid
Of, and before writing something,
If she/he lets the fear grow,
The poem is born dead.

You're welcoming the future with open arms
As you shrink from your own reflection.
Lost in creating that Utopian vision
Of the future
Which you think is waiting to walk up to you,
When all you have done
Is to run to the past for solace,
And away from it when you were you realised
You'd bore enough.

Before you soar off on the flight of dreams,
Dreams you're afraid to call your own yet,
Watch where to your thoughts sway
Amidst the sands of time.

Soiled in fear, brandishing courage
They march on
To the cry of left-right-left
A far cry from the rhythm of nature,
Like horses wearing blinkers,
The uniform not quite merging
With the throbbing green-brown landscape,
I wonder, if they ever wonder,
If they’re chasing their enemy,
Or plotting an escape?
Do they know,
Whom they’re trying to hide from?
The men on the other side, or nature herself,
Committing an unnatural act as they were?
Or,
Is this a twisted version of
Survival of the fittest at play?
The soldiers retreat into the jungle
A flying bird on its way back to its nest,
Eclipses the setting sun for a split second,
They mistake it for a military plane,
Take aim and witness the giant shadow
Shrink to a fluttering blob of life
Writhe and then lie still,
As it landed on the ground,
The sun sets in this unnatural setting of
Survival of the fittest.

​You pledged your affections to me that day
As you snuggled up to me.
And nearly everyday since,
You'd sung me to sleep.
Your strength was the kind,
People like me couldn't be afraid of.
Because I knew, you'd use your might only to protect me.


You fell in love with me before I did
And I couldn't wait to fall for you soon after -  
That's how lovable you were.
That's how worthy of being loved you made me feel.
I think of that day; and today, and realise that
You've been the most loving
And the most fearsome person I have loved.
I wonder, how can someone personify
Both love & reckless anger at the same time?
Is it a twisted version of your love for me I see,
When you turn into the control freak that you do?

You say that some birds cannot be caged,
Their feathers are too bright.
You nearly caged the very bird you had freed
In many ways with your love.

And I am the bird who doesn't want to
Fly away from what had become a cage for her
Now that the door is open,
Because she'd fallen in love with her captor
Way before she knew she'd be terrified of him some day.

No doubt it is our existence, thoughts, feelings that give rise to language. What we fail to notice is that many a time, we experience utter relief, or are thrilled on discovering a word that mirrors how you felt at a certain time, a meaning you relate to. And many a time, the relief also comes from a feeling of ‘normalcy’. ‘Normal’ enough to know that someone, somewhere, felt the same way some time, and the feeling was deemed important, common, sane enough to be granted admission to the dictionary.

[A conversation between Light and Darkness]

  Light said,
"We're adversaries, maybe.
But I've come to see the possibility
That you are my shadow after all."

Darkness dawned, and said,

"And I thought you could see everything,
For you were light yourself.
Am I merely a fear, of your and mankind's?
[They think you could have no fears, either.]
I am, Nature's nocturnal rhyme.
I exist, for you cannot make up for me.

An ever unraveling mystery,
I am humble, for I become
What the world makes of me.
You make the world see,
Little do they know,
They see the world
Through the colours You colour them in.
I make them face fears,
Away from illusion-ed complacency,
With my silent presence giving them company.
From mere empirical sight,
I have given rise to vision/ imagination in them."

Darkness continued -
"Oh, I am not here to seek pity.
I'm sure they wonder,
Why some-one like me,
Has existed as tenaciously as you.
I am not to be sought,
I am not light years away,
I am the recourse within.
Truly, I had underestimated myself for long."

Light flickered a little,
To glow anew in realization, then said-
"I am the spotlight,
You're the impactful dot.
I comprise the glorious endings,"
Darkness beamed and said,
"I am the prompt to the start.
Dawn and dusk are but a
Celebration of our synchronicity."

Light chipped in to continue,
"I begin to see things in a new light,
For I have acknowledged you,
And that is our victory."

As they say
Words fall short to describe experiences.
Photographs are still pixels away
From being a reflection
Of one's memory -
A refracted reflection,
Of the experience itself.
So what about hopes
To capture, treasure memories for this lifetime?
What about people
Who love to imagine,
And spend their lives
Living on memories
Of those imagined sights,
Scenes, smells and people?

A guest uninvited, that gust of winter wind,
Thumped, seeped and snuck
Through the window in my room the other day,
Seeking shelter in my room, maybe?
Did he guess someone was up still,
From the embers in the fireplace
Shining through the window sill?
Making him feel uninvited
In his own season,
I closed the window,
Drawing the curtains on his misty face.
Back in my bed, a while later,
With toes peeping out of the blanket
Doing a temperature check,
I stepped out into the backyard.
Walking upon the dried up leaves,
Looked up and saw the sun curled up,
Beneath the blanket of clouds.

Nearly scared a kitten almost asleep,
Feigning pretense to stay awake,
I’m guessing it decided against
Venturing to catch another prey today.

Let the ink draw out the poison
Or does it feel like you're
Willing to lose blood to lose poison?

Words fall short.

They, you and I.
Are?
Interpretations, opinions,
Fears and convictions,
Likes-dislikes,
History and anticipations,
Of life.
All, save the living of it, maybe?

A song heard months back in time
You mused over the major & minor,
I'd pondered over the rhyme.
Each of us
As convinced about its presence.
Winter tastes different in my memory.

Epilogue:
You must choose between
His bespectacled vision
And my retrospective conclusion
But you must know
Which you chose
And why.

If Thoughts Were Audible,

Would you try to catch & make
Every fluttering thought your Bible,
In your craving
To come face to face
With that one thought
Which would have the answer
To what is the question,
That has gnawed at you since birth.
What if you bumped against
Hitherto infrasonic tremors
Of a morbid sigh or curse,
While hoping to tune into
A blessing or yearning,


Would you consider yourself
The ****** of the Panopticon
Or a prisoner of it?

Would the nail-biting curiosity
Of groping the trail
Of fragmented thoughts
From all (how many?) corners
Make you lose your own 'stream of consciousness',
                         as they would call it?
Deaf now to your own mental utterances
Would you (n)ever speak again?
[Since,
Your eavesdropping mind
Would already know
What the other has to say
As would he, about your thoughts
Before either uttered the first syllable.]

Or,
Would you start thinking
About what to think first
And what order to place those thoughts in, next,
So you could fool your mental trespasser,
Sending him off to a parallel trail of thoughts?
But of course he would be able to
Hear through your strategy
As he would also know
Of that moment
When you decided to
Guard your own thoughts.
But the question is,
Do you have any left, now?

A numb stare is reflected
In your mental neighbour's eyes
As you both confront
The fact that
*Deaf people don't have
Songs stuck in their head.

For science and art
Are but two interpretations
Of the one infinity,
Called the Universe.

Illusory as this corporeal existence
        may be termed,
I am too glad sifting through
[This imagined existence of]
The interspaces of Time and Space.
Don’t need to be interceded for
To a space-less place-

The echoes of infinity
Tingle me, weaving infrasonic waves
Of life around me.

I can catch up with salvation
Some other day;
I'm here. Soaking in
The sun's tickle tingling me awake
The wind's whistle cooing on a dull day,
The patter of rains as it sings
A new rhythm into play.
A dog's wagging tail at my caress,
Smiles from faces familiar-unfamiliar,
Or a dance move I'd been tugging at to perfect.
Lapping up a home-cooked meal
After a long day, curling up in my bed.
Celebrating joys with an exultant jump
A high-five or a fist-pump,

Celebrating life more
Than fearing death.

I - Choose to forget,
Choose to remember
Things from my life's history
So as to think "That's [my] Life.", someday.
And what If, Life chose to forget me one day?

How do you define something that always escapes us,
Something which we sense only by virtue of its anticipation?

Curiosity (at times),
Turns out to be nothing but a tale
Waiting to be deciphered and interpreted
In a new way each time

For without the other, neither could exist.

Poetry is that one excuse for me to say things aloud, (at times, only to the piece of paper or the blank screen) that I couldn't have, in another conversation with another person, or maybe even with myself. Reading poetry reminds me of things I may have thought about and left midway, long ago, maybe because I didn't dare go beyond that point, besides numerous other reasons. The interpretations are perhaps the most interesting aspect of it - I end up interpreting my own compositions in newer ways, when I come back to them weeks later. It's almost like a form of meditation for me because when I ponder and write, I am amazed at how a fifteen minute scribbling exercise alters the way I see the world, almost like discovering a new colour, as it were. Poetry is simply, gazing with love at those corners of life, things, people and ourselves, that sunlight is often unable to reach.

I have procrastinated for months
To eventually write this poem today
Ironically, this time
The poem to be penned
Was meant to bring to an end
To my pet peeve of procrastination.

I thought my writing of it
Would be bring me face to face
[Oh, no. I am behind time and Procrastination is ahead of me.]

With procrastination.

I am
A question mark
Slouching, lurking behind the wall
Waiting to stretch out
Into an exclamation mark.

There’s vengeance gnashing its teeth
The anger, blindfolded,  
Flagellates at my insides
Churning out a fresh helping
Of supine decay,
Feeding its crippled existence.

I shrink at the sight
Of fingers pointing at me
To then direct wobbly steps  
Of melting courage
To be able to peer at
The faces behind
The exclamations
Of accusations aimed at me.
Till I bump against a mirror,
That, I had thought to be a window.

My palms scramble for strength
Clamped on to the mirror
As I slip on to the floor
I hope the aches will
Numb me into sleep,
Till I wake up
To fidgeting arms and feet,
As the glass ceiling above shatters
To reveal in mockery
A mirrored ceiling right above,
Which I had thought to be the sky
Before I had entered the room.

As I brushed off
The six week old dust
Off the mirror the other day,
I was happily taken aback to see
Myself a tad bit prettier, after weeks.

Funnily enough, I had made
The mistake of believing my
Reflection to be me.
Introspection's a better mirror,
I reflected.
Why does one look into the mirror everyday?
To remind himself how, or rather who he is?
That opaque shard of glass
Could never encompass
The zoetic surge of thoughts
That have gushed forth from me
Since the time I have existed.

I'm sure, the mirror pities
It's own lack of identity.
Manipulated by reflections
Of a myriad kind,
The mirror manipulates us thus,
Mirroring us and itself
In another way.
They thought this opaque shard of glass
Could contain the infinitude within us.
It has only mirrored the illusions
We projected each time we looked into it.

I am only distanced from myself
Each time I seek to find myself
In that stagnant pool of perceptions.

Thieving through the multiple strains
Of voices in the room,
Eavesdrops that one conversation with relish.
Looks out the corner of his eye,
Winces at the eye contact.
Curbs his laughter at the
Joke for he wasn’t expecting it.
They gesture to him
With a frantic wave of the hand,
He lets out a curt smile to/at them,
Walks on,
While they wondered
Why he was smiling to himself?

When should I write?
When boredom gets sculpted into motivation?
When a distracting thought
Bothers me long enough
To make me turn to it instead,
With ardent concentration -
Thereby perhaps making it
The topic of my next composition?

Should I risk completing that sad poem
I’d been working on for a month now,
When I’m in the best of spirits, today?
Should I try and imagine
What being happy sounds like,
In an unfamiliar milieu of words
For the sake of completing my poem,
Hoping it’ll lift my mood too?

Should I scribble away
The cold downpour of tears with
The harmless, vicarious vengeance of my pen,
The one thing I half-guiltily hold dear
When my anger endlessly battles with helplessness?
[Or are they not worth being written about,
As many tongues would simultaneously utter?]

Must I write in a state of ecstatic frenzy?
       Or could I have to leave that precious thought
                                   Annoyed, hanging in mid-air,
                                            When a trifling rush of new thoughts
                                                  Crashed my way, making me forget,
                              Why I was holding the pen in my hand,
                                               after all.



                                                      Epilogue:
                                               I think I must write now to find out,
                                               Before the ink of my existence dries out.

Sometimes I think the situation's wrong
To then severe the blame from myself
Almost as though it were a part of me,
Thinking absolving oneself is a crime in itself,
All the while.
I discover a retrospected, yet un-inspected wrong-doing
And tug the blanket of blame over me,
And that's when another blame game
Conspires to defeat me as it calculates
The next mortal embrace
I shall make at the count of fear.

Stuck in the rut of
The (so called) dye-mentioned reality,
You walk past your oft-mentioned
Thoughts, fears, cravings, yearnings,
Learnings, ramblings and musings
Squeezing them into
[You say they were two-dimension-ed?]
Shadows that remain there,
Brain-dead,
They play havoc now
As their amoebic infinity
Spreads like an endemic,
Ending your sanity, morality, duality.
They were meant to save you either ways.
Don't you complain them thoughts of sadism yet!

There are days
When I walk out of the studio,
Disappointed with my performance,
Because today fear, not dance,
Made me finish the steps on time.
I can't mug up steps at the flick of a finger, you see.
I admit I have been lazy about self-practice.
I bet no one dances as beautifully
As I do in my visualizations
And some days I do amaze myself
As I perform the routine.
But when fear cripples me,
Paralyses my arms and limbs,
I wince at the instructor's polite rebuke
I knew it was coming.

The song is replayed,
Batchmates cheer
I wake up
My passion frees me
As I leap into the routine with a
5! 6!, and 5, 6, 7 AND. . . !!

She'll disappear behind the velvet drapes,
Then sneak into your room one night
Throwing light on secrets that
Your mind had been keeping from you
As you taste them
Through gritted teeth, during nightmares.

She'll only show that frozen, calm exterior,  cold as ice.
But she'll bring your emotions to boiling point
As she tugs out tides of emotions shooting out of your heart,
A clenched fist of emotions bursting at the seams till now.


Who knows what secrets lie on the dark side of the moon?
I can tell you,
She'll be out of sight for a fortnight
but not out of your mind,
And she certainly can hide secrets even though she's so often in the spotlight.

The moon lulled itself
Into few second-long naps,
The winds whispered the smell
Of the oncoming rains
As ants did a tight-rope
On the tree's sleeves.
The dog pricked its ears,
Each time the tiny hurricane
Of dried leaves whirled round.
The spider attempted to balance itself
On the maze of its own making,
As the web threads strummed
A happy tune
In response to the wind.
The lull before the storm,
Was becoming too much of a bulk
For the clouds to bear,
Before a slant of water droplets,
(Some drying midway through
The atmosphere's layers,)
Stamped their arrival
On the parched layers
Of land, leaves and minds.
Streaks of lightning
Conducted a survey
On the distribution of downpour
Clicking vintage tinted photographs.
The rains slowed down to a drizzle,
The insects buzzed through a banter,
The moon tried to
Sneak through the clouds,
Surprised at its reflection
In a puddle on the street.
The morning wakes up
Smelling a misty presence
Of the (previous) night it rained.

There are Times

When I am
Groping at the vapours                        
Of nothingness
Hoping to churn out
Life and hope from it,
(With a desperation
That makes me feel
As though I were
strangling emptiness itself.)

There are Times

When I wish with all my might
(Believing for just that dead moment
that my thoughts are powerful indeed.)
That the concrete reality
Would crumble and melt
into nothingness.

There are Times

When I remember
That it's darkness
Staring at me in the eyes
[Threatening me or encouraging me,
                                          I know not.]
And I shut my eyes
To crawl within
The cold comfort of familiarity
That I first meant to escape.

There are Times

When I seek to
Merge into a shadow
As the gust of Light,
Having shot out
From unseen corners and walls of impasse
Now straining its eyes at me
Sears and sieves through
The dust of opaque fear
Settled since long before I was born.

There are Times

When I realise, a truth
Shall not be uttered by me
Not the right time,
How do you set a time for truth?

There are Times

When I must not let
The truth run amok
Lest it wreaks havoc.

I attended a poetry session today,
Enacted by poets through their
Onomatopoeic, gesticulated gestures,
Clenched fist-ed, strained or wide-eyed,
Shifting their weight from one foot to another,
Like dodging their public speaking fears,
To the other leg,
As they tried to build
A rapport with the audience,
Through their words as they (the words) sifted
Through the folds of the air
To make a silent thud against
An attentive soul's solid, soiled exterior.

While reciting, looking into lit screens,
Scrolling up and down,
And trying to look for that line,
That trail of thought which was (most) perfect
Only in its untimely, chaotic, vague birth in that mind.
As the poets tried to familiarise
Themselves with their feelings
Presented on a fresh paper in
A font different from how
It had felt in that first gush of thoughts,
When they had probably first thought of
Penning down their thoughts,
Wise as they were to realise how
Precious they were.
Maybe they wanted to
Articulate their thoughts in written,
But ended up pinning them down.

While I try to figure
Which is the trigger
And which the consequence,
A battle breaks out
Externalities cave in.
Simultaneity takes on a horrid meaning.
Anticipation becomes the catalyst
Of a demon that I created
But know not *******.

I forget where my comfort zone lies
In the sphere of my inability
To face, to do things all these years,
Or the realm I wanted to leap to.
There's no single-leap shortcut though,
I've been crawling all the while
With my head buried in the sand.

Those bouts of doubts

Don’t suppress them, address them.
Don’t speak to them, speak with them.
You can risk brushing away that stupid thought
That suggests you can get away with an
“I was misquoted.” expression,
When fleetingly acknowledging them at a convenient hour.
For you can’t pretend to
Not have heard your ‘inner’ voice,
Over and over again
Till the apparently feeble voice confronts you
In rebellion, from civil unrest –
Of voices oppressed,
Probably a yearning plea sprouting into
A voice that crosses all decibels.

An encounter with words in life hitherto
Brought me asking yet again a helpless -
"Now, where to?"
For company was all I had back then      
An ebbing ebb of
Self-assuring words at times,
To a frenzied slew
Of words, twisted & few
Which sapped & gnawed away
My spirits into mute stillness.
Like no adversary had ever managed.
Then another capricious turn
To a voice of rhetoric that mocked,
At every occurring thought
In my breathing existence
Angry at what, I knew not.
Every mono-syllable I pondered over, or dropped.
Words plundering away words
I had uttered, memories earlier,  
Words I saw, heard, smelled, lived -
Were they ever in my favour?
Or was it a path, I ought to have taken not?

Those words had more life in them
Than I then did, let me tell you.
Now and then, a war of words with
The consciousness of words
They and I had created
A dialogue, now supporting, now doubting,
I had become a dilemma.

Words are all I had at all those times,
And they failed me when  
I needed them most.
They sought a different muse.
Conscious of their mistress's dormant existence
Stammering her way through life,
Were they teaching me a lesson?
To take ownership of my articulations
With courage, wisdom & tact,
That which I probably lacked

Here comes news
Within dreams, with strides taken,
With gestures, glances, I awaken
As I cross paths again with words,
Uttered - un-uttered,
Now knowing their worth
Breaking the slumber
of
Clenched fists,
Asphyxiating knots of syllables,
Scripting now,
Drops of ink
That shall make a million think.