Friday, December 6, 2013

The First

That first Santa surprise
The first of your many white lies.
The first chalk dust on your shirt,
Your first gold searching in the dirt.
That first kitchen experiment gone wrong,
The first wet-haired bathroom song.
Those first bouts of envy green,
Skin wounds and hurt unseen.
The first five days' mood swings
The first spring shower that love brings.
This is not the last poem I would write for you,
Wanting to be,
The first of your everything,
The first of your everyone. 

Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Aubade

Black waterfall on your snow capped neck
Long white arms
Measuring my love last night.
My tongue that gauged the inches on your body,
And colonised your breasts with love.
The morning coffee has kept me awake,
Your kisses last night,
Kept me alive.
Between those white sheets,
Our black souls found new maps.
Your giggles ran across the room,
And street lamps trickled in
The curtains.
Little by little your soul lay bare,
Then your body.
When i unhooked your past,
Your tears
And then Your bra.
My fingers like little feet
Crawling slowly to school,
Traced your body.
The valleys, the hills
The untended gardens
And let loose the
Disheveled storm cloud of your hair. 
As the morning went to the tea stalls
And the city brushed its teeth.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Dooars Chronicles No. 4

Everything here is in little postcards.
The greens, the tea gardens, the neat cliffs
All captured in a frame,
No grains on the film
The aperture perfect
And the exposure just about right.
The birds caught in flight,
Little hamlets in a distance
Twinkling in suspension.
Even time seems to be bound
Within motionless trees,
And villagers walking to and from from markets.
The same time you wanted,
The same time that for me,
Rushed like a mountain stream
And for you remained stagnant and corroding
Like boulders in the desert.
:Like middle aged housewives at the market
You would bargain,
Haggling for time,
Maybe a few more weeks,
Maybe a month,
And I always,
Lent you Time,
Without charging any Interest.

Dooars Chronicles no. 3

These poems seem beautiful
More so in your hand,
Your fingers gift wrapping my offerings
Little by little the words you would read
Will stick to your heart
:Like twilight sticking to the last leaves.
Slowly they will flow inside your vein
In your blood,
Like two bodies exploring each other.
Soon enough your nights will smell of this parchment
Soon enough your afternoons these fonts of blue.
Let these words melt when you utter them,
In the solitude of heartache evenings.
Little whispers carried across
Afternoons where traffic melts into tar.
These unintelligible words,
Muttered under your breath,
Hidden from prying ears,
From iron book of customs
From deafening silence of laws,
Words which become white flowers
On a grave,
Paying homage,
Refreshed every time you speak my name
So the dead lives just a little longer.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Dooars Chronicles no. 02

There are bridges between you and me
That do not connect you and me,
Bridges which separate you and me
bridges which burn you and me.
Bridges that drive wedges,
And create chasms between you and me,
Bridges which rattle,
When I profess love
Stand for a million miles between you and me.
Between this end and that
The spectral presence of your past resides
He walks slow,
He walks steady
Pulling you away from my love and me,
Time ticks like a bomb,
Time which he denied,
Now your past like a reeking wound
Festers and stinks between you and me.
You say you need more time
And I give you more love,
For nights like these
Are made only for you and Me.
When you are fast asleep
In a world without you and me,
The night refuses the dawn
To smear, with longing, you and me.

Dooars Chronicles no. 01

For if you desert me tonight
The stars will blink like impoverished bulbs
Little by little the green of the hills
Will mourn and grey.
The tea- pickers won't work for a week
The night train won't run through this tea- garden
The rain won't twinkle on the grass,
The cricket's will observe a minute's silence,
The woodpeckers will rest,
The village lads will all be regular to school,
The world will trun without much noise,
And the sun will burn without a crackle.
The moon no longer will grumble at dawn,
And the forest refuse the smell
Of the first rains...
For if i don't hold on
The nights will not be the same in this village
Young girls discovering themselves
Will shun the mirror
The way you shun my eyes
To find yourself in them.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

CHARULATA

Soft pillows for comfort, a queenly bed to sleep in. Staying awake night after night, traversing continents that seem to have stepped in between her husband and a cup- of- together coffee which once celebrated greater togetherness. Possessive and whimsical like a torrential downpour. Eyes glued to the cell phone screen, ears plugged deep into a silence of a peaceful ocean. Heart, as bustling, busy, thumping, squeezed- like the clothes the washerwomen torture on the ghats of an ancient river. Maybe a deep black below her eye-line- a blue in her heart, some greenery at the sight of your prize not in touch for a week, some grey when he does. Some yellow jaundice in your words, some paleness of the moon every night.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Day Dreaming

Losing my way inside the archives of the British Museum. After concert backstage with Darren Hayes. Black coffee at the table where Auden would sit. A cold night of longing in the Tundra. A Masai ritual and a community dinner. Autumn evening in Vienna. A Christmas Mass in Transylvania. A standing ovation at a poetry reading. Seeing a flash-flood from a hilltop. Sitting by the grave of Ghalib, his couplets in hand, waiting, invoking Assad to rise. Singing the club Anthem at Stamford Bridge. Wind in my hair, Shahid Ali in my veins and Jhelum at my feet. And, hearing an old love say she missed me all these years.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Night-time Sky

Like the silence which greets the news of a death or unexpected joy
A silence pregnant with possibilities,
 A virgin darkness and an attraction of the 'out there',
 Little stars winking from another time.
 The moon, the bored queen of a kingdom of frivolity and mirth,
The vast blackness- 
The blackness of human heart. 
Silence, that which precedes a storm, 
Or that which exists in space 
Between two armies just before the battle trumpet is blown. 
Home to so many dreams, 
so many corridors of better existence. 
Sometimes a fleeting aircraft molests the purity of that void. Sometimes a shooting star crowns its sanctity.
 The stillness, 
The mystery...
Just the pure joy of existing as nothingness.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Random Musings No. 3: Like I Want You

I don't want you from the pages of the poem
I'd write for you.
Or from the black ink,
I scribble your name with.
Nor from coffee vapours 
I sip at night.
You are more,
Much more. 


You are not the raindrops
I let seek refuge on my face.
Not even the bouts of loneliness
I suffer when you are away.
Neither the smell of grass at dawn
You are more,
Much More.

I want to see you like a woman on the streets,
Handbag on one shoulder,
The world on another. 
A strand of your black hair
Running down your face,
Like molten lava
From a newly erupted volcano.

Little beads of sweat on your neck
Goosebumps when i touch your skin
For I want to see a woman with doubts
Frowns on her brows
UN-ironed soul and soiled inners

You are my woman of late nights
And early Mornings.
Of staffroom gossip
Of secret longings.
In sunshine,
On lonely moons.
Woman in a music store
And amongst the tombs.

Random Musing No. 2: RAIN

Incessant rain. Like a nagging child. Like the pricking of the thorns of jealousy. Angry words pouring like a thin film of white all night long. Maybe God's scorn, swear words in thunder and lightning embellishing the abuse of water on earth. Trees assaulted, slums mocked. Some distant Beethoven crawling out of windows- the notes made more poignant, sharp, sad by the rain drops on asbestos, on muddy lanes, on tarpaulin protected beggars. A poet hunting for words rests awhile. The rain and the wind howling outside- like Nature mourning some dire calamity. Add to it, the swaying of the trees and you have souls exposed to a death in the family. A first death, hence sharper pain. Pain...burning, torturing, liberating Pain.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Random Musings No1: WORDS

Writing: As Catharsis. As Righting the wrong and Writing the Wrong. The sound of the nib rubbing and struggling on a virgin sheet. Even the tiki-taka of fingers on the laptop keys, the pitter-patter of the rains. Reigning on uncharted, unclaimed New Lands- Inscribing chronicles of pain, fear, happiness, victory. The sheer pain of living and the joy at the prospect of dying. Words, the armor of the soul, the weapon, the crown, the parting letter all brought together in a harmony reminiscent of a solar eclipse.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Muse in White

On the borders with barbed wires
Stands a girl in white,
Hair flowing, eyes glowing
Little hands, on disputed lands
All morn long my heartache song
She sings and smiles.

So when she smiles and asks,
Is it me? Is it you?
I smile and say,
Such heartbreaks are few
For she on her guard,
With angry glass shards
She twists in my bones.

Cruel woman
Cruel gasoline bonfire
Harsh fences of barbed wire.
Your eyes-- the depth of a mine
Your lips-- ruby red sea line
Let me hold
Your morning dew
Which vanishes with sunlight.

She locks herself
Night and day
Maybe once smitten
Maybe once bitten
Her China jar soul
And a heart of gold
In the trunk she hides.
Time she bides,
As the seeker knocks and goes away.


The Armor of God
She wears all day
For frail is a word
She would hate to say.
The seeker curls,
Her fingers in hers,
Whispers his love in made up verse.



 Her cheeks aflame
Words' fire glows.
The light on her neck
A deep mole shows,
It calls for touch
It calls for thirst.
The seeker when he moved
She knew she was loved. 

Thursday, May 9, 2013

To A dirty Woman

Your shops change with twilight
In every lane a new sunlight...
Like red blobs,
On white sheets after an act of love,
The bindi on your forehead burns.

The days I've drowned swirling in wine,
Clink like ice when your lips meet mine,
In your clothes my banknotes brush,
In my veins new rhythms rush,
Naked as hunger in a refugee camp.

I make love to your skin of gold,
Once or twice to your unbathed soul
Someone's weekend off your thighs,
Off your breasts someone's eyes,
Alone in the shower you scrub and rub.

Hello bitch,

This Friday evening,
I'll search for dimes,
In your abandoned mine.
I will tear you,
Not fear you.
With your nails that scratch
My words will match.
My rhyme will go,
To and fro,
Like your naked treasure,
And all my pleasure.
I will drink once done,
Love-- a fugitive on the run.
All night long,
I will play this beat,
For the one who stood,
At the corner street.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

For a Woman Across the Seas

You lit up yesterday's gloom,
Warming the hearts of many.
Somewhere from Africa a storm was recalled,
And it slowly coiled itself within me.
Your laughter played hide and seek
Crackling here,
Sparkling there.
Every corner of the room,
Was an open landscape,
Lit up, by flashes of lightning.
Your careless eyes,
Wandered hither,
Rested thither,
Like a traveller in an unknown city.

The Seine slumbered in your cup,
The Danube twirled in mine,
And stories flowed,
Like when old friends assault
The walls of the tavern with their tales.
There was something about you,

The sun refused to go down,
The moon too shy to wake up.
The traffic somehow wasn't loud enough,
The train couldn't wait to enter the platform.
Your skin glowed in the twilight
Like the eyes of a maiden in love,
Or a lost sailor at the sight of land.
Those sudden moments my fingers touched yours,
I knew how the men in the caves
Made fire.

We flew past our ruins,
We drove past our past,
With every tick of the clock
I knew it wouldn't last.
You are the riddle I wouldn't solve,
The poem I wouldn't end.
The morn that wouldn't dawn,
A letter I wouldn't send.
You are the storm I would ride,
Or the secret I would keep.
The bottomless depth I would gauge,
And yet take the leap.

Being with you was
Drinking verses of Khayyam,
Only better.
Tasting the first rain of the monsoon,
Only sweeter.
The Danube rose in revolt,
The Seine slept in peace,
Knowing that a man without a country 
Loved a woman across the seas.











Thursday, April 11, 2013

Silence

I love it when you write silence,
In an open field, I go on sowing word-seeds on it,
Crops reaping love,
Teaching a thing or two 
To the once self- assured spring.
Like a marauder upon a hapless tribe,
I script my own story.

I love it when you write silence,
When on a white bed sheet
We act out what we never speak.
Your words rant and pant, but your lips do not move.
Like conversations between the dead
In a graveyard.
Words which wound and make love,
No last twist of the knife,
No kisses raining love.
Just the sheer fulfillment and joy
Of the waves paying their homage to the shores.

These blank spaces that you whisper between us,
A universe or two,
Unpopulated with little towns of
Stars, meteors or comets...
The emptiness of a war ravaged village
And the blank mute stare of anger.
Your silence seeps slowly in my veins
Like serpent smoke rising from burnt houses.
I get to write so much in them,
Make love all day long.
Our clothes fighting with each other on the floor.

I apologize, I demand, I Crave.
Your silence is so fertile,
Even on days when your soul
Is the fisherman praying mid-storm.
And i hold onto every blank
Every sigh,
And i put them on paper.
They weep, laugh, smirk and frown
In blue, black and red.
And when the pages flutter
The winds smacking them for mischief.
Every sinew of your soul
Speaks the symphony of what remains unsaid.
Like the only bird in nighttime forest
Or the first heartache of adolescence.
Your silence...so Loud
So Acute
So Forever.

Monday, April 1, 2013

I Won't be Ordinary

I was born for great things,
Not to be shriveled up in dusty overcoats... 
Not to be a familiar co-passenger
To a host of clerks,
Playing cards to office.
Not to know the names of small
Stations by heart,
Not to steal glances at the sleaze 
Hanging from spat upon walls.
Not to watch others win lotteries
And marvel at someone else's
Pre-Troy Ithaca.
I was born for great things
And rhyme will take me there.
Words from a poet's wine cup..
Words crackling in some Devonshire fireplace,
Or thoughts hanging from an old portrait.
Playing hard to get,
Behind webs of spiders and politics,
In a fatwa issued bedroom in Kashmir.
I've rode into the valley of death
And i have liked what i have seen.
Ordered a Che cocktail of blood and sweat,
In K.F.C where no one sees..
The weather forecasts of a revolution.
Possible thunderstorms
Maximum temperature: A Burning Cuban Cigar
Minimum temperature: A cold kitchen of an out of work miner.
To have my scratched out,
Abandoned scribbles
Be the uprising manifesto.
To love the love of Paris,
And if betrayed, build another Carthage
And have Dido perform an aria
By the only shores of my burning world.
I am destined for great things.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Lest We Forget

Lest we forget,
Carved in war memorials remain,
Yellow rose lives nipped in spring
Tired feet walking on shores
And hearts beating on bunker doors
Arteries bleeding June grasses red
Their names etched on grey stones,
Lest we forget.

Lest we forget,
The changing images on your laptop screen
Volcanic islands reeking tears of the earth
Crimson, yellow, scalding surfaces thick,
And the Monday morning blue of the Pacific,
Staring solemnly at the working week ahead,
Ticked in the log books of our memory,
Lest we forget.

Lest we forget,
The toffee wrapper glistens in my coat pocket,
The lottery winning joy for a Rupee
Hidden away like a Swiss A/c secret
Is the evening wrapped in chocolate
Our shy silence needs words,
And they fight the crumpled white of the pages
Lest we forget.

Lest we forget,
The air of your bedroom remains heavy,
A cocktail of your after shower lotion and a tired body
Your reclining form three metres away,
Like a declining sun after a scorching day.
Laughter flowing like a mountain stream,
Remained trapped in the cobwebs of your room,
Lest we forget.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

WORDS

These words which burn the page,
Would have scorched your skin
Starting like a mountain stream on your neck
Snaking its way down your hilly breasts,
And resting on some plateau.
Panting, out of breath,
Swearing until I've taken notice.
Little black scribbling melts away
Drowned by beads of salt on your naval
And a day vanishes in the dark of your being.
Squabbles with friends wiped out
The shove in the bus
The dirty look of passers by
Erased when the words kiss your skin. 
The room resounds with 
Little drops of buttons on the floor,
The hissing of clothes coming off 
And the whispering of the vernal woods.
With every inch of your skin
A kingdom won.
With every kiss,
A dragon slayed.
And when you drag me inside you,
A pilgrimage of sorts,
Visiting life...Creating one.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Sitting Inside a Classroom

Outside the glass windows,
The world waited with bated breath
For the lectures to end
And education to begin...
The tall pines swayed in affirmation.
Urdu alphabets adorned the black board
Like trinkets and earrings
Holding onto a bride's body.
Outside, the planned gardens and "chowks"
Brushed away the bullet holes
That had ravaged the air so long ago.
Words, drunk on longing and pain,
Moved slowly in the rose gardens.
Pricked by the thorns of the years gone by,
They bled nostalgic laughter,
And a mob of shared pain
Lost themselves in the Bazaars of the heart.
Like smoke from an unpuffed cigar,
The city slowly slipped through my fingers.

Having Torn A Letter

Tearing your last letter this evening,
Was the hardest thing i did,
Since i let you go last spring.
The words wailed, winding around,
The walls of the house,
And the logs in the fireplace crackled.
There were thirteen strikes when the clock struck twelve,
And the dogs barked all night.
A final 21 gun salute
To the words and the world
That was torn.
The man in the moon hid for a while
And the wind outside,
Observed a minute's silence.
These were words I had kept hidden,
Black inscriptions on coloured paper...
Like the green and gold of a year's harvest
Across the spring time fields,
Words that I had kept locked,
Like memories of parting,
Less painful with every passing year.
These words hurry and scurry across your street,
French kissing your window with the telegram,
"Winter has arrived."

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Regret

Let the stars speak of a different time,
And an unknown city sleep like the sea
Strangers will talk of their past,
As the night accosts them with its breath.
Your body is lit up by flashlights of a flash flood traffic.
Open your chamber of secrets,
You should know strangers guard them well..
Wake up the dreaming cactus with your laughter.
For all you know we would be
In different cities tomorrow
Separated by 15 minutes on the G.M.T dial.
And for all you know i would regret
Not touching your lips
And be spring to a leave-shorn tree...
You would not sleep tonight
A taxi will take you away...
Like a mother dragging her child
From the evil inducing candy shop.
Let the muted protests
And cries of longing
Blossom Leaves on that sleeping cactus..
Let the cactus sprout leaves
In the city of forever winters....

Monday, January 7, 2013

FOR SOMEONE IN DELHI

FOR SOMEONE IN DELHI

I so want to write about you
But I am so afraid tonight
Afraid the ink
Would reek of your blood
Afraid that the pages
Shall be crumpled
With your nails trying to ward me off.
Tonight the Gods
Lie stripped in the temples
Deaf, Mute and Ashamed
They hide behind curtains.
Silence is silent tonight,
Fighting for words
Inside an Intensive Care Unit.
Vesuvius...Wake up...
Melt our hearts
Burn the floors of Heaven
Let the Mayan prediction come true
Let God know
How long 45 minutes can be.