Final whimper

This is a poison that we live, 
running high and dry on potassium air.

A psychic ward put on high speakers 
blaring a maddening high-pitched trance.

The city of stones turning into claws,
sharpening them a little more each day.
For years, humanity has raped the land into a whore, 
after the acid rain, the scars reveal themselves.

Machines drill holes on its skin, 
sucking the final drop of blood.
under the sun, left to dry into ashes
bone by bone, 
plate by plate,
they grind against each other, 
turning into dust.

The red eye is burning
and we don't have enough water to quench its thirst. 

Now it's just a wait for the final whimper 
and the tremble will send shivers down the spine.

Poetry

Why do you want to cut my voice,

sculpt and blunt the edges of my words, 

put me on a dais and call it poetry.

For me, it is an insatiable hunger, 

an unstoppable urge to puke, 

a unrelenting desire to pee,
That's what is poetry.

So don't lure me with your intellectual masturbation,

or rims of news prints that goes down the toilet everyday. 

I don't want to be a sensation,

don't tie me in your definition for success.

I don't need a white shawl
or a hanging bag on my shoulder to look the part, 

I'll never look the part, I don't want to look the part,

a torn piece of jeans and a full sleeve shirt is all I need.

Let me be a bit gibberish, incoherent. 

Let me stammer and stuttered my words to you, 

without any form or structure. 

Rhyme or rhythm. 

Lucidity or logic. 

Just let me speak.

Broken Burnt Bridges

Sometimes memories shine like sun
through the window of your heart,
transient hope jumps,
flapping its wings before falling
like this dark night that best defines us now.

Your fear of loss made me lose myself,
now you stand across the bridge,
burnt and broken.
A sudden waft of breeze brings the fragrance of friendship,
fanning the dust that is piling over the pages that we wrote once.

You had ventured into the valley of flowers,
looking for orchids,
two winters later you still stood there,
waiting for them to grow,
alone and aloof.

One such night, I dragged you away.
That night it rained and it has been the same ever since.

Now sometimes when rain brings rainbows,
I search in them the colour that best described us,
and mind scribbles verses that never found voices,
wailing guitar tunes which never could fight the tides.

Then one day you turned away with your moist eyes,
across the bridge, I watched in despair.
And all I can do was wait.

If someday,
you return to this broken bridge,
you will find me here.
I wish you do,
we will cry together
and talk about the futility of love and life then.

A rocking cradle

Slow chugging of a train,
A drowsy afternoon with arid air,
Broken walls, children, garbage pool,
Trees with limbs chopped off,
a barren field where kids weave a cricket story.

A temple with a saffron flag turned into a brownish red, 

like decomposed blood left to rust,
dozing off in the regularity of pungent sights of squalor, 

you drift.

A sudden thud of roaring engine breaks the reverie,
green replenished lands fill colour to the window, 

two electrical wires follow you through out, 

narrowing but never meeting.

A boy runs to take a quick single,
a train zooms past the frame, 

hawkers sell tea and samosa, 

a man cycles alone in a newly-laid piece of land, 

some buffaloes graze under the balmy sun near a small pond, 

we zoom past a crossing,

motorcyclists, passerbys, rickshaws wait for the train to pass.

Two black moles and a quiet smile,
Fading into a black hole and an endless drift,
We call home.

They say the endless maze leaves clues,
Doors no one cares to find,
Leading into a dark tunnel of memories,
Before you go blind.

Here time play tricks,
A slow slide show of last withering breaths.
Fight it, never commit.
Reprimand.

You stand at a distance,
Waiting for the night,
Before you bury it under the stone,
Slipping a fragment of yourself like a seed into the mud.

Call me cynical.

It won't bother me.

Google has already proclaimed me one.

I know I am not the first and won't be the last.

Everyday millions of people are trying to cure their skin with fairness creams, splurging in brands to cure their social status, governments finding ways to cure the economy by taxing us in new ways, while we run after CA professionals to cure our poverty.

Sixty nine years has passed since India's independence,

but still no cure for hunger,

that plagued our food, water and now air.

Who will cure this cancer?

Neither morphines nor Bullets will do.

Mirtaz at best will put you in a stupor.

Sometimes, I find this euphoria inexplicable.

This urge to puke, to smile and whine.

exhausting it must be,

flipping through hundreds of websites and apps,

buying clothes and jewelries that you will never wear,

debating over fictional heroes and anti-heroes,

fictional villains and vamps, 

living a fictional life, we call our own.

When will this fiction end?

Way out

I feel pity at my growing ignorance,
Each day I forget a bit more,
Past and future never enticed me ever,
But now even present fail me.

Life is a misnomer for slavery for most,
Those who can't feel it, don't know it yet.

I remember my Mother emphasizing on rote learning. 

So mornings dawned with repeating the lines time and again.
"Moral science lessons are best learnt in mornings," I remember once my Class VII teacher said.
While I found solace in nights. 

Breaking the numbers, 

keeping away sleep by tying my ponytail to the wall hook. 

Now when I find those lessons drowning in the ignored cesspool of human frailty, 

I remember those nights. 

For years now I had bartered words with numbers, 

hoping they can help through my insomniac slavery nights.

But when words too resembles a circle, 

you know it can no more heal the scars. 

So what do you live with? 

Could you walk back to the past cradle?

Does it even exist? 

Or you start running naked through the concrete highways on the wee hours of a Sunday, 

hoping to break the shackles of slavery?

Or you accept the mummification,

waiting to rot your way out of this life?

Oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

It has been raining here for months now,

all crops have been destroyed,

I can't stay here for long.

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

Another year has passed by,

the river has almost devoured my land,

That guava tree under which we had aamsotto once,

lies in the river's belly now,

your footprints too lost in the mud,

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

Often in wintry nights, 

I sit near the river's mouth,

I see your boat tearing through the mist,

like a painting against the drunken moon,

melting into the milling clouds.

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

It all now seems from another time,

the land, the river and the moon

Ten years ago, I had seen you on a stormy night,

draped in a sari with one end around your waist,

when I had taken a ride in rain.

I wonder why I didn't ask your name?

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

The charging river is drowning my hopes,

The lonesome night is slipping time into a stupor,

I too am sinking slowly in a night of my own,

only a Bhatiyali song from you can set me free.

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

Society

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Not a drop of forgiveness will escape your heart,
you epitome of perfection,
your self-righteousness bemuses me.

You who speak of backbone
but have those termites eating your blood,
look at yourself,
peer inside your closet.
you will find corpses,
who died many years ago,
smothered by your burden of silicate dreams.

You who preach of evangelistic sermons,
look at your pride that fuels your Utopia.
You who want to dance
in the misty waves of an ever-eroding development dream,
blinded by the hollow ego of illusionary time.
Take a while and taste the rain,
its tears born out of penury and pain,
don't let it drain down,
in vain.

You who still dream of an Elysium,
and fight over Jesus, Allah and Ram.
Wake up from the seductive slumber,
No miracle will happen,
To our rescue, no Angel will come.

Its time to lit a pyre in our hearts
and burn all vanity and pride,
Lets learn to love and forgive,
and walk hand-in-hand,
side by side.

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We are all islands.
Floating in in an endless ocean,
tracing the contours of our flaws,
like graphs of an endless table,
breaking numerous times by the gust of wind, 
haywire, as far as eyes can gauge,
melting every moment a bit more
when the sun blazes its eyes,
freezing in an endless embrace
when the icy breeze sing lullabies,
hand in hand across the sea.

In winter,
lies our salvation to an endless sleep
that will sow that seed of hope someday in our dreams.

Someday the dead will return from the shadows,
like the Bryophytes in Canada, sprouting after 400 years of death,
darkness will flood the artillery of every breathing soul,
melting like night from the roof tops,
dripping like paint from the walls of our existence.
The white walkers will rise from the bottom of the fathomless sea,
drenching sea ice, crystallizing the globe.
A division bell will echo in the distance,
against the shrills of a wailing snow
rising like waves
lashing the face of earth.
All that will be left is to run,
soaking in the last remnants of light
that escapes from the weight of clouds
and run.
Run till there is blood in our veins,
strength in our limbs
and hope in our eyes.
Run for the mountains,
the guardian of our survival.
soaring against the laden sky,
we will run,
climbing till the last tree
the last branch,
the last leaf,
the last inch of earth
fall.