Words and only Words

Those broken-winged words are crying again!

I can’t tolerate these nagging sobbing sounds. I plan to shut them out.

those hissing serpentine vibrations get muffled as I close my door.

But I can still hear them outside. They all have gathered below the staircase.

I can’t even get angry with them, for I understand their plight.

These words, they tell me their stories. The other day, one of them
 was hurled against the wall along with the coffee mug

whose stain is still like a modern art against the whitewash.

These words, they have fearful stories to narrate.

Some are terrified of the angry lover who abuses his beloved.

Another escapes when the drunk husband throttles his wife.

Sometimes they are thrown carelessly on the doorstep

 by a son who is fed up with his old mother’s illness.

Those from the little lad who hasn't been comfortable with the neighbor-uncle's groping hand,

yet no one pays heed, sob the strongest.

The words that have come from the strangers are still consolable,

as they understand that one can’t expect too much from unknown people.

These words, they come to me in the middle of the night and cry.

They don’t understand that I need sleep

 to get up tomorrow, to go to work, to smile meaninglessly.

I creak open the door to see if they are gone, and

they all climb up to my feet                                                

Words after Words

Some like a woolen ball

Some like a wrap,

One after the other,

all those talk

and conversations,

Piles of them, hoards of them. They all come to me.

A few lines for/of Hyderabad

Togetherness...

We went out to see tiger, deer and peacock in the forest.

You had waited for a long time for this day.

Among the abundance of nature and the swinging car ride

and the sparkling excitement of your young eyes,

Hyderabad is an enigma with its rocky exuberance.

Even the orange colored trees lined up to go to the

water that fell into the dam. We were happy.

He kept complaining about

his office

about India

about the traffic.

We learnt:

His office is bad

Life is bad

Traffic is bad.

I kept nodding affirmative, you fell silent.

The sun became rude and the ride bumpy!

We came back

and he complained about

not seeing tiger, deer and peacock

and we learnt: forests are bad.

Later you and I discussed the deer in our chests

It makes noise

And lying on bed we heard it clearly!

…………………….

City and I ...

Dearest City, you and I

had been busy with other things

involved in the urgency of our work, but

now, away from your touch

my eyes long to see the Imli tree

under which I had buried a fistful of my

loneliness and a slice of my secret joy.

Dearest City, you hold the word ‘home’ for me,

the home that I carry like a liquid in my eyes.

So, would you accept my desperation

to put my memory in your time?

…………………….

Words about you ...

What if the paper flies away from under the words?

Words that dance in your roads, lanes and by-lanes

and sit and watch the flip-flop of the water of Hussain Sagar, and

the Buddha standing tall in the centre, already captured in my tattoo;

words that sleep and play among the folds of history, tucking the zari bordered sarees of the queens from across

the light and sound of Golconda Fort,

and words who often tend to hide behind the layers of the rusty Charminar !

Fearing if someday the paper decides to escape from under these words,

I have put a heavy paper-weight on its chest, in the centre.

Now the paper can’t escape. It can’t move. Because

It doesn’t breathe anymore.

……………….

Identity...

City, you are I, and I am you.

My forehead is your courtyard where the pigeons

eat the scattered grains every morning.

Your summer and your winter

are my ear rings.

My pierced earlobes are the

nails on your walls that developed a crack

because of the hammering.

My varicose-vein legs are

your trees that fell in the storm and

lay like unclaimed dead bodies.

Both of us contain mud, clay and

throbbing life in our bodies.

City, you are I, and I am you.

…………………………..

Untitled

They shut me up in chores

My butterfly-mind fluttered

I felt a war in my head

Only to realize that the wide open window

is just a painting on the wall!

This too is about pain

Coleridge, you fever bird
You sang out last night!

As I lay closing the day like a book
 groping for a bookmark named sleep,
you sang your grief.

 Why do you cry like one possessed?
It makes weird sounds against my window panes.
A moist breeze blows
I wiggle my toes,
rearrange my sheets for warmth,
my insomniac eyes long to watch your dream.
Every now and then, I tap my veins
to eavesdrop and hear the throbbing of my blood-flow
checking for a rift
through which a giant tree can grow
building a nest for your Albatross.
Your opium eyes sprout wings, beat on my breasts
 and I become a giant tree
building house for those lost dreams ,
comforting them to creep and climb my body.