Category Archives: Poems

Highways 2.0

Morning chirps mock the muddled mind
Too many whys and unresponsive echoes
Lonely dawns and lost dusks

Change changes nothing.

Pine spines cover the terrain in rust
Rocks peep from behind the trees
Road twists every fifteen metres
Mould settles in every crevice
Trees ambush the trails
Toes and peaks talk
River disappears

*

Playing peek-a-boo on dividerless ways
Giving right of way to defence trucks
Chasing tail lights
Approaching the pale bare horizon.

That city seems desolate
Just worms there.
And the cruel lit up sky.
Relentless. Sleepless.

There’s no one waiting.
With parallel dimensions lost
and effort becoming isolated.
Highways lead nowhere.

I have become less of me.

Wind

The silence of the wind is an enchanting absence.
recurring consistent soul-consuming

The change of seasons is an illusory anticipation.
atrocious unfulfilling life-denying

The colour of the sky is a blurry vision.
sooty sulphuric eye-scratching

The flower of the tide is a dusty heap.

Sweeping the tree only by a violent surprise
The wind is no longer in love with the leaf.

No, You Don’t

Do you know the real me?

A charade of childish apprehensions
A flicker of hearty laughter
A cornucopia of silent deceptions
A bundle of sighs
A glimmer of fatigued vision
A string of desperate forevers
A clinging for new tomorrows
A hope from the depths of hopelessness

You do not know the real me.

Would you?

Let me ask you, please?

What do you do when you know they know how you feel…
Know that all has been invested
And has been revisited
Reiterated and reassured?

What do you do when you know they are crying softly…
Know that they have shut themselves
And has been irreversible
Indelible and irremediable?

What do you do when you know they don’t wish to be around…
Know that they have asked you to back off
And have become tired
Troubled and turned down?

What do you do when you realise you can’t write anymore…
Know that all has been bared
And has run unheeded
Understood and undermined?

What do I do?
How do I stop this from closing in?

A different kind of a forever

There’s one.
An extremely precious one
Sparkling
Envied
Possessed
Locked up
Till eternity but not acknowledged
Nor remembered
Unless
To make a statement
Perhaps
Like an heirloom which stays
Forever
Is summoned occasionally.

There’s another.
Like that little piece of jewellery which everybody recognises
That favourite tee that always fits
That lipstick shade bought every two months
That hairstyle chosen for every occasion.

Isn’t there that kinda forever?
That’s the forever I want.

Aghast

Outrageous similarities in lives lived at distinctly different times
Shared, not just as they intersected
Shared, at a different level altogether.
Unknown by at least one
Unravelling to another
Everyday.
Unspeakable parallels
Undeniable truths
Surely they are, right!
Am I reading in a bit too much?

It shouldn’t unfold in the same way
It should remain forever hidden
As it would have without the commonality
In my heart.
Buried.
It wasn’t required
Reliving the chaos through the life of a beloved being
It is undesirable
Perplexing
Disturbing
Unparalleled.
How can this be?!

Sigh, Again and Again

Remnants of an abandoned shadow
Desolated Deserted Deciphered
Haunting dark memories.
That itch, exactly where, nowhere.
The flight
Exactly where, nowhere.

Those loud loud noises
Voices from the heart
Amnesiac longings
Transversing on crests and troughs
Loss at both ends

And the gist
A hyperbole
A sigh.

Oscillations

Life’s not giving me alternatives
I feel stuck
They talk about me
I have become a myth.

Life’s moods are sine waves
I feel the drift
It’s being impulsive
It’s taking me with it.

Life’s as I think of it
I resolve to shift
I’ve gotta stick
I will make it.

Conversations at three feet above the ground

Ecstasy in tapping n toppling bottles in shelves
Sketching stories in air while elders chatter
Inching closer to the screen with every incomprehensible talk around
Focussing on the littlest the tiniest possibility, still or alive
Revelling in myriad pleasures unaware of the rest
Settling in a corner with the craziest of imaginations
Reciting and reiterating just to familiarise
Reshelving when not allowed, reordering when not desired
Following a fantasised order unaffected by facades
Deciphering the world one at a time

These little people
Unsullied
Unperturbed
Unfathomed
Unique in their beings
Just stay that way, alright?

Us

And then we came closer
So close we could not see which is which
I went too far
Too far to realise
There was nothing in it for you
Just a distraction, a deviation perhaps.

And as you realise
No length of time would bring your steps back to me
No stretch of tears would make you stretch your arms for me.
My words too insincere
Not worthy of being dignified
My longings too frivolous
Not worthy of being considered.

What could you be looking for
Who knows how long how far
Would you come back
Why are we drifting apart
So apart we cannot see
When
Why
Where

And here I am
Alone
Afraid
Again
Backspace has the key to my mind
I have nothing new
Same stale statements
Old, already known questions
Exactly the same conclusions
Just regular things
Anxieties.
Repetitions.

Looking for ways to navigate this loneliness I come back to you
Back to you repeatedly.
The kohl cannot contain me
Just melts at your thought
Your words do not leave me
I hear just you, overwrought.

The precincts of my being are struggling
World shrinking eyes straining
It is taking away our bit
And altering the scheme of things.
Breathing on bits from possible sources
Living on reports of events already happened
Where am I?
Who?
Why?
You must have forgotten
You cannot be away.
You must have tried
You cannot be less occupied.
I see you smiling, faintly
I see you gliding, stealthily
I wish I could see you with me, occasionally
Here. Near.

This way is all a bit too flamboyant
I grant you to take me for granted
Just do it aesthetically a little more silently a little more deviously.

And yet…
A belief.
Undying.
This would slide.
Just another phase.
For I know
You are mine.