An Ode to Shahid

“The world is full of paper
Write to me”, Shahid said.
But can I revive you
In mere words?

The broken flowers
That flew down to me from your land
Will they retain
The smell that must have
Lingered on your fingers?

There still lies
An empty cup at my sill
You promised to fill it to the brim
With stories of your winter mornings
I watch it struggle to contain
Droplets of the treacherous sun

An unfamiliar tune
Still meddles my head
From your rusty harmonica
I trapped that moment in a picture
But let you go
Will a letter help me
Get rid of that song in my dreams?

Under my breath
I still whisper in your tongue
Those names you taught me
How do you beckon a lover?
I wrote them over and over
But the door isn’t answered anymore

The stories are undone
The songs unravelled
The flowers, brittle, broken
I did write to you,
As an ode to Shahid
But the mail has lost its way
In the foggy nooks of time
Perhaps memory will show mercy
And rescind the leftover quiet
That renders my mourning
Asunder.

Imagine...

Imagine, cradling your babe
Gurgling at the sound of the twilight birds
Laughing at their ruckus,
Dancing to their songs
And suddenly going blind.

Imagine, walking across the street
To soothe a neighbour's incessant wails
At the loss of her only son
To the bullet gone astray
Your eyes stinging in the teargas
Your walking on the red snow
Only to find
That your own lies there
Riddled with a nation's hatred

Imagine, a chance
To run your fingers
Through your loved one's hair
Under the frozen cherry tree
From your childhood
Hand-in-hand
You take her along
Through those memories from yesteryears
Little did you know
That you would soon become
Nothing more than a memory, yourself

Imagine, walking out of home
To buy milk
For abu's morning nun chai
He has always liked it prompt
But you left him waiting
Never to return

Imagine, knitting a bonnet
For the little life within you
That could never be wrapped
In anything more
Than your cold, lifeless body

Imagine all of this
And imagine it to be
Every day, every hour, every minute
Of your existence
Stuck with that pungent odour
Of the charred remains
Of your ancestral house

Can you smell it yet?
My collective conscience is ablaze.

Coherence...

I shall write to you,
When the words drizzle
On the parched lips
Of my forgotten parchment...
And the train rattles
Over the rickety bridge...

I shall wind you up
In long, seamless sentences...
Our bodies in synchrony...
Your thoughts, enmeshed
In the barbs of my desire...
You shall provoke in me
The art of melting free...

I shall douse you
In the downpour of letters...
And you shall emerge,
Drenched in my coherence...
While your afterthought
Gives my language,
A new meaning...

Till then,
I must satiate myself
With tracing the outlines
Of your memory...
As I rest my pen
Restlessly.

Mincing Goodbyes...

Today, the morning is different.
The hoarse crow
And the distant rumble
Of construction
Remain constant.
The aromas of condiments
From my neighbours'
Still entice my hunger...
But the skies are awash
With ashes
Of a life, well-sung...

It seems like you've finally heard
Of my goodbyes.
The breeze tells me
You can't whisper one back...
...so you wish to sweep me off
In your torrential embrace...
And light up the wet crevices
Of my corridors,
With the lightning of your sighs...

Just so you know...
I can hear you cry...
As you incense my skin
Transforming your longing
Into goosebumps...
Just so you know
We must try to get by...
While I walk away
Frozen,
Leaving me behind...

(To my beloved city...)

The Resurrection...

I'm seething in your mind.
Your fury is in labour.
I await
The unleashing that you put off...

The cracks are growing.
And I can see you look
Through the crevices
In the door,
That you shut on me.

I sang the last song
Solitary.
Like no one was listening.
But echoes, they travel...
Your ears
Will not stop ringing.

And whenever you'll look
Out from the window,
Peeking through
The curtains of denial

You will see
How my whispers
Explode.
And the din shall be
Unbearable...

My spectre,
Too stirring
To ignore...

[Dedicated to Rohith, the scientist, activist and poet]

Post-its in my mind...

I need to write.
I've not spoken
To you, in a while.
How have you been?
What have you seen?
How many songs
Did you not sing today?
Which tree
Is your secret keeper?
How long
Since you looked up from the phone
And saw
Unmediated reality?
Is there any?
Will we ever know?
Will we look into
Each other's eyes
And see content?
Will we seek it?
Will there be a moment
In time,
When you and I
Will coalesce
And believe
That you are
What you've wanted to be?
They're just thoughts
I've been having,
Pondering away the futile...
While you were looking
Through the mirror,
Waiting to let out a sigh...
So tell me,
How have you been?
Where have you wandered?
What have you seen?

Of Smells...And Stenches...

Till when
Shall heaven,
Decay
Within mass graves,
Under the drunken smell
Of apples and blood?
How many
Shall remain,
To form a people,
To dream in fetters,
To die in letters, 
To bear the brunt
Of our cartographic lust?
How long
Shall we fool our reflection?
How often
Must we wash our hands?
Will ablution chip away
At this rusted sanctum,
And cleanse us
From the stench
Of a charred identity?
For my veins,
And thine,
Have enmeshed like vines...
Frozen. Still.
Through the travesty
Of time...
And when we tend
To the clots...
Sit down,
Take a pause,
We shall trip over
The undulating bed
Of coalesced bodies...
And the riddled milestone
Shall finally ask
Is it this?
Is it this?
Is it this?

[Title of the poem inspired by a Children's book written by Sara Joseph and illustrated by Koonal Duggal]

Of Interstices...

I'm unspoken.
Caught in the crossfire,
Of unruly songs
Broken free from the strings
Of an ill-tuned guitar....
Coming together, bonding
And a din.
I'm a doubt
In a half-gulped murmur...
Held back
From being let out loud...
Even when you sense
Me, throbbing within...
I peep through the leaves
At the sun-kissed chatter,
And ponder
A surreptitious emergence...
But the stars relish
Their gravity,
On my disquiet....
And I'm shackled
Like a breath under water,
Grappling
For an unstrung gasp....

The Remnants....

Untended,
I laze
In your backyard...
Watching the world light up,
As the day switches off...
And that's when I smell the night.
Stealthy, young
Relieving...
I never realize
How long I've waited,
For this juncture
To arrive,
Until the crickets greet me
Again.
The conches and the muezzin
Are just wrapping up
Their daily differences...
The clattering of vessels,
A beckon
For the last meal...
Each so invested,
In doing away
With the quotidian,
For a listless shut-eye...
But the hues
Have only just begun,
To transform
My encapsulation...
Into a riotous palette,
Speckled by a game of hide n' seek,
That the fireflies
Never seem to lose...
I'm basking in the conversations
Of branches and the breeze...
Hooked
To the tales of their travails...
And as the night begins to speak,
My chaos falls asleep...
And the day becomes a spectre
At the doorstep of darkness...
While I thrive,
Like a sigh
At the lips of peace,
Flirting with the remnants
Of madness....

From The Lair...

I'm dry.
The ink has seeped
Through the loopholes of sanity,
From the fabric
Of my rusty imaginaire...
I eat dust
At the forlorn windowsill,
Where the dawn once sat
For a solaced chat,
Over a cup of ginger tea....
I shrivel
In the unraveling
Of the summer's rage,
Quietly wishing away
The moist token
Of last rites,
That the Earth pushes my way...
And all I long
As a solitary respite,
Is to be a song
In your head...
One that you shall hum,
Despite yourself,
And resuscitate
For a day...
Only then, shall I lie
With uncensored peace....
In the musty grave
Of your last page....

Of Language...

Let us write
Onto this vagrant night
Songs, that ran through your hair...
Arm in arm with the wind...
While your eyes
Blistered the fields,
Dousing their drunken gambol
On the nape of my neck...
Let me lace your fingertips
With promising letters,
So poetry slithers
Off my waist,
When you trace your whimpers
Across the arch of my back...
Let us break into
This stoic thunderstorm...
And seduce the bolts
Into manic euphoria,
While I litter your breath
With tastes of tales,
That skidded down our beings
Into the drain of desire...
And undo the abyss
Of language
To feed
Our festered silences....

Sometimes...

Sometimes, you're left...
On your own
To be strong,
To hold on...
To catch the glass in times,
When it tips off the edge...
Just before it shatters
Into a million little pieces...
And then sometimes,
It grows
On you, and within...
Like unruly weeds
In a postcard garden,
That you never managed
To uproot.
Like vines of the wildflower,
The branches of which you tugged
But which seeped,
Into your walls...
You thought you could cut them
And throw them off to burn...
But you knew
You'd meet them again,
After the next autumn...
'Cause sometimes
You know,
You have to let it go....
You have to let it grow,
In your not so perfect garden...

Teetering....

I cracked them open
Before they could hatch...
And now they drizzle,
Around my waking hours...
Like an angry wasp,
Lured
By halogen hallucinations...
Claustrophobic,
With no window in sight...
As I become 
The wandering spirit of a star,
That is haunted
Even in death,
With a heap of faith
On its own role
In fairy tales...
I'm the wisps of lightning
That sunk her teeth
Into quicksand...
And never returned...
I'm the forsaken moisture
Trapped in asbestos roofs...
While they ran ahead
And danced with the sea...
I'm your bottled butterfly,
Waiting to smell
The only three days
I shall live...
Release me
Before I teeter,
And fall without "forevers"...

Exhuming the Human....

Tinges of sanity
In watery strokes...
Painted across a landscape,
Of what they proudly call
Civilization.
Where weakness is run over,
And incapability is blamed,
On that poor dog
Which had merely tried
To cross over...
For the world knew
It always stood
Unaccounted for.
Where the voices within,
Are being silenced
With strategy...
As imagination is carefully tamed,
By repeated fables
Of lonely survival...
And swarms of machines
Are joining the stampede
With priceless perfection...
So their stars can hear,
That the fittest stood towering
In the battlefield...
Only to look around
At the piles of lifeless dreams....
Which wanted to sing
On softer notes...
And I wonder
How all that we believed
To be music to our ears,
Has suddenly turned
Into a tasteless din...
Are we still playing parts
In the makeshift arrangement
Of humanity?

Upon Your Sleeping Eyes....

The noose of distance
Threatens to throttle...
Hearts enduring
A yearning...
Unfathomable, endless
Stifling.
As I dream walk
Into the freedom
Of your arms...
As I tingle
With the taste
Of discreet tears...
Their salts
Reducing my desire,
To whispering embers...
That smoulder away
Into the stealthy night...
Which steals your shadows
From my lashes,
Where I once trapped them
Hoping to weave us together...
Like melodies
Dripping in an aged wine,
Playing faint
On a crackling jukebox...
And I lay threadbare...
Naked
To the ruthless wind,
That gnaws at my bones...
Eagerly waiting
To drown my sighs,
Into its own abyss...
But I hold back
My trump card,
The kiss of dawn...
When the Sun shall blush
At your windowsill,
And lay the drizzle
Of my tired lips,
Gentle,
Upon your sleeping eyes....

Butterfly in Tatters...

A butterfly in tatters...
Its colours, fading away...
Like the fate of a tree
Banished by a storm...
Except blue.
Cold. Violent.
And I couldn't put it together again,
The butterfly in tatters....
I spent my tears
On your decay,
Hoping there was an answer
To your fragility...
But you
Ceased to remain.
I held you to the Sun,
I begged the Spring
To rejuvenate
Your glimmer,
That once was...
To seize 
Your shortlived destiny
With my helpless mortality...
But you, unperturbed
Lay there...
Unfastened, broken
Like a butterfly in tatters....

In Faint Remembrance....

Memories...
Do they tug at you
Like you can re-spin them
Around your hours
That lost their track,
Unaccounted for?
Does your shadow
Play a reminder,
Of someone you saw
But forget?
Is your palette empty?
Is the canvas chipped?
What ignites your rage
In a sea of calm,
What is it that you can't forgive?
Are there wounds? Are they raw?
Or have you filled them up
With the sands of your silences?
You stare across
Listless in wondering
What amuses your nerves so?
I faintly recall
Your shy laughter....
Did you lend it to them too?
Do words make the same meaning
In your version of reality?
Why do you hide
Behind the hedges
Of tampered security?
Is it tiring there?
Is it lonesome?
Have we taken away from you
What it took to be you?
Which one was you?
Then, or now?
I can hardly remember the difference....

Interwoven- VII

Tie your breath to mine
Before its warmth
Sweats off my lips...
And stain my skin
With your fingertips...
So your touch can tend
To my restless dreams....
Hold me to your bosom,
As we writhe, apart...
So our realities
Remain entwined,
Like pain
With a broken heart...
Write your name
With wisps of smoke,
On the wind
Playing in my hair....
And whisper your longing
Into the sails
Of paperboats....
Dancing in the morning puddles.....
For the darkness
That resides,
Beneath the creases
Of my eyes,
Aches to surrender
To a slumber again...
Where your folds blanket
My shivering soul...
While your clouds respite
My moonless skies...

I Leave Behind...

A speckle of stardust
Dancing on the lotus leaf...
And fumes
From an unfinished cup of tea...
An aimless stroll
Through the untold shower...
And a dawn
Under the canopy
Of home-bound planes....
The silent caress
Of the artisan's hand,
While he breathes life
Into mounds of clay...
A burial in the river
Of short-lived dreams...
A night unaccounted for
Whispered in tears....
Guileless confessions
Into endearing ears....
And songs of memories,
That shall ring 
Through the years...
All this,
And a smiling sigh...
I leave behind
In the glimpse of your eyes...

An Unkempt Plea...

Thunderbird!
Do not alight.
You carry in your trail
Unsettled flints,
Which this unforgiven night
Will not put out...
The Earth fumes
At your ephemeral illusion...
My heart perspires
As you open your wings
To this delirium...
Fall at my behest, you!
At least, lend your ear...
For I still stand
Wrought, in my doorway,
Waiting for him 
To return...