The night gags my mouth
seals my lips
blindfolds my eyes
ties my hands
and chains my legs۔
Then they come beating drums
And announce the advent of dawn!
And order me to dance
And order me to sing!

Then I reached
the peak of wisdom
I shut off my mind
I switched off the engine
of the plane of imagination
and came to a halt.
Descending down the mountain
I became a seed
and mixed with soil
it rained thereafter
and I grew a lettuce.

It was an ocean
no,It was a desert
wait a second,I was both.
What happened,
one day the ocean
looking around
took pity on the parched baked sand
and quenched it's eternal thirst.
The desert satiated
sang a song to stars and moon,
and vanished from nowhere.

You are like a grain of sand,
that sparkles in morning sun
in the middle of my palm.
You grow through the day
in a geometrical progression
1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 16........
and when the sun sets beyond the horizon
you unleash the desert upon me
fold upon fold dune upon dune
stifling, suffocating me till dawn.

That look of yours
Oh stranger
reached the depths
of my soul!
The depths
I never knew
ever existed
there before  .

words are
like birds,
they descend
on to my lawn
in droves,
chirp incessantly,
and fly away
even before
I pick up
my pen.

I was good at numbers
I was called to count dead
I was good at loom
I was asked to weave shrouds
I was good at tilling land
I was drafted to dig graves

And then
we parted,
going our
separate ways,
if we were
to meet today
crossing a street
or buying bread
in a store;
what would
you say?
What would
I say?
A smile,
a touch
on a hand?
A spontaneous hug?
Or just
a cold stare?
Look!
What it has
come to at last!