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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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....