Shall we pretend? ...

Let’s pretend 
that someday I will run to pick up those flowers
that nestled in the dust
even before the monsoon rain would touch them.
Let’s pretend
that I know magic
that I can fly
and I can talk to a frog
and the chair is a ship.
Let’s pretend
hidden beneath the memories
and lost between the leaves
someday
I would be able to
sleep peacefully;
And let’s pretend
a river will stream through my room
and my room will become a garden!

Sometimes ...

Sometimes 

the lump of a grief

that was stuck in your throat for long
will help you compose a poem;
the lines will come out like a dancing butterfly
words will descend from everywhere,
from the right and the left, this way and that way,
upright, with head held high
like a fresh bout of summer rain and
will melt your sorrow
drop by drop
silently, peacefully,
without a movement, no stir
no wrinkle, nor a stain!
And there will be
just those remnants of a season gone by
like the lingering wetness of some past tears.

Slowly, eventually

The azure sky will promise an equal light,
no beginning, no end, but
an equal music, and
only then you will reach a spotless holy
Freedom!

I am ...

Dear One, you are so weary!

There are creases on your otherwise firm eyebrows.

Come, gaze into my eyes

I might be the woman you want to look at.

But dear One, wait! Before you think

I am the woman with whom you want to be, and

before you want to drown yourself

into the depth of my eyes,

Realize, I am no metaphor, nor a muse,

neither a promise;

Look at my hands, a bit soiled and

 the tired lines below my eyes;

find the bruises and the blisters on my feet,

my smile, inside which you want to hide your trouble

 is not a poem, not a sonnet

but a courage that tells the world to bring on the grunge!

I might be the woman you want to touch

dear One,

but understand, I am neither a prize nor a grub,

not even an apology, not your excuse;

recognize that you make love to the

skin and bones that might have dirt on it. 

You make love to hair, nerves, veins, sweat and tears.

If I am who you wish to love, dear One,

Let me be human just as you,

share my best and the worst

take every single line of my sunshine and my eclipse

Let me create a universe for myself, for you, for all

Let me build the world as I wish to.

Don’t forget that

I am born to create, to build.

And then, 

if the walls crush down

or the sky grumbles, hold my hand

I promise I will never let go!

E-mails ...

And she thought she won’t be able to live without you!

But strange is this thing habit!

Now she has this ashtray full of burnt words

that she uses in her mails

in her poems.

By now

She has made love to emoticons far too many times

She has fallen in love with them far too often!

Now instead of lying her head against your chest

She writes metaphors,

sends letters into the space

Earlier, she thought she has lost you

and she got scared out of her wits! 

So quickly

mindlessly

 she was trying to hide you

among those rhyming images,

which is almost the same

For isn't hiding about losing

from the vision?

Hope she realizes soon

that all she is left with

are her poems and those smileys

the horoscope of her tousled yearning …

 

When nobody else is home, hold my hand …

When nobody else is home, hold my hand …                                   
 And it all started that way

in secret

inside the dark

when no one was around

when no one could see.

Those beautiful promises,

that deep ‘forever’ tone

all, away from the world’s eye

and no one should know.

A rare bond of love,

Strong as the morning Sunrise

but to be hidden as a nasty family secret;

A relation vibrant as rainbow

but like those kitchen cockroaches

that hide in every nook and corner of the drawer and the drain

and scurry out powerfully in the darkness of the night.

We collected each other’s shoulders, knees, palms, eyelashes;

In those fleeting moments

we collected them and tried to build an orchid

in which we tried to grow in,

molding each other, like an ivy wrapping

but there was no Sun-ray, it was already the dusk; 

 so, we could never fit in like that unsolved jigsaw .

 And people say love is beautiful. It is divine. It's the truth!

Strange!             

                                                                                                                                                       

Moon ...

Full moon,
At lonely night
When autumn cry
I will climb up to you
To kiss
Or not kiss
May be just to hold
Or laugh by
Or listen you talk
And then at a deep summer night
I am searching for you again
While crossing the field
I will stop by
A while
Looking for you
Across the way
Round the next corner
Between the mind and the voice
You remain
Minutes of moments come and gone
But the dream is forever the way it was!

For one who died last night …

I think I know how you felt
at that time.
Wasn’t it a pale green hallway,
where windows offer no reflection
and the door doesn’t promise life beyond?

I think I know it all.

looking at the photo of a dead stranger

I feel I have known it all.

You could not chase
the elephant away,
It was probably eavesdropping.

but pretending might have had helped for a while

 until you remembered

 that elephant has big ears.

Until you were married,
you never bothered about the plural space. And then
the birds in the binoculars settled in a cage.

You got your marriage certificate photocopied.
The marriage became a metropolis –
you and him its anonymous citizens.

After you left
for the land where no one dances in the rain,

He must have found worlds

full of memories

long after you’ve lost it.

You lie in bed,

A strange sickness in your bones

pinning you

eyelid to toe nail.

As I share a heartbroken

cup of coffee with the man I have fallen in love with

holding hands yet realizing the ocean
between us,

I feel I have known what you felt then.

I sent you all my prayers,

you returned half,
attaching a note:  You need these too.

He asks if I need to be held.

 I am not sure. Not anymore.

If comfort is disloyal

can a roomful of grief

ever have happiness?

I know how you felt at that point of time.

Like I often do,

You too must have stepped out of yourself

and wanted to observe her,

She,

Who has perpetually walked,

casting and recasting herself

to be with people, who

had accepted and rejected her

at convenience,

As you sang with her

cried with her

standing there, observing,

It became too late stepping back into yourself again!

And I sit still

by the side of the television news

looking at your dead photograph

I more dead than you

I think I have known how you felt.