this is us part2

You send me poems with flavoured laughter,
and i long for autumn shadows where poetry
is more than graffiti on social media walls,
where its ferocity colours me faster than i can
name the hues, more vibrant than my vocabulary.

I sit down to write you a letter, the envelope ready,
To contain the breathlessness that needs must be
(Like those long nights blanketing our winter reverie)
trapping it in salival good old days-ery. but i get lost
in the history of the stain on my notepad, and the
feeling of home that is my fountain pen. By the time
i decide to forego salutations, always so formal, always
so empty, another sunrise taps at my window. i watch
distilled rays fall on the sheet, hitherto blank. Ink leaks.

when you get the post, would you know that i sent you
the best of me - a drop of sunshine, a smudge of home.
Will you hold it against me that my new poem is an ode
to silence, whose words have dug six feet trenches in my
heart, and found something there. i know that. for after all
these years, there is a new pattern in the way it beats.

Would you notice the stamp of a nonexistent post office,
in a country farther away than you are in my dreams.
I haven’t given a return address this time, though we
are closer than this skin to flesh, and maybe i will smell
the decay of poems that languish in your notes and spill over
into unsent letters,lying in the corner drawer of the guestroom.
Perhaps the pattern will change again. The heart will beat,
beat down on words, whose ghosts will find succour in frail
memories of you, going frailer by the season, and the blot
on my notepad will grow bigger, darker, murkier.

Then again, perhaps none of this will be our fate. And
the exotic essences of your delicious verses will settle
At the base of my tongue, and keep bringing me back
From the obstinacy of my frosty solitude. Inkless.
May your will be stronger than my fear. Amen.

about us

they leave it all behind.
your words,my scars,
(and the other way)
your hopes,my failures
(these remain exclusive)

My forgetfulness is only
the overwhelming memory
of all thats lost without ever
having been played.

it will not be long before
this house becomes dust
not long after we retreat
into impossible silences
and the whispers i hear
from across the walls
will be buried in textures
of pain and acrylic.

But when they write us
in their version, we will
be the stuff of happiness,
not perfection, but delusion
nevertheless.all that they
leave out, all the rest, that
is where you and i will lie
in the glistening truth of
anonymous resentment.

a place for silence

i know where this silence turns
for solace and even respite. To
conversations with those
who are not yet our friends
(who may never be)
and for that we shall always
owe them. sometimes one
needs that stranger, to play
a walk on part, not ask too
many questions, keep us in fear
of our reputations, or other
insecurities, that we admit
with surprising nonchalance
to be tastelessly clichéd.

Friends tend to understand.
And sometimes, thats exactly
what we dont need. Let there
be distance, judgment, roleplay,
illusion, and the magic of deep
shallows possible only in a non-friend.
here is to you, then. may there be words.
And may silences bury themselves
between the lines. For nobody to read.

secret santa

how does your silence find me
every time? it is precise and cold.
across summer evenings and winter
solstices. Nestled in what they call
the 'janus-faced hour'. When my laugh
pierces the entrails of a dull night sky
and leaves it grappling with glossy
smithereens of desire many light years
away, there you are,as sure as the north
star, my own Santa, always ready with
your gift of quiet. Its always christmas
with you, and i sit stoking embers of
unlit fires in non existent chimneys,
hanging an old sock that mother knit
before i was born, whose pair has been
long lost in the forest of carelessness
that life has somehow made it through.
sleeping dogs and snoring watchmen fade.
There is no snow. No reassuring breeze or
the pitter-patter of rain that songs are made of.

tight lipped nights burn into overcast mornings
heavy with the festive spirit of solitude.

festival of calm

you haven't written in a while.
and today as i look out the window
at a world lit with the glittering hopes
that festivals tend to string along,
i wonder about the darkness that
has left you in unbreachable silence.
you are that one house on this street
with no string lights, diyas or rangolis.
passersby would presume the owners
are away. Meeting and greeting. but
If they wait and watch long enough
They might catch an unsure shadow.

I have left a candle at the gate, and a text
on your phone.(it hasnt got delivered yet).
now i will wait for the firecrackers
to diffuse this quiet, that is far from calm.

the genealogy of a poem

There were days when a poem was needed
More than any other need, even breath
Or breath only enough for a poem.
Sore and bleeding from all the
Scratching, the skin felt rough
and cagey. But the hands kept itching.
Layers of skin peeled off
But no poem flowed.

Meanwhile,
The mind rattled in its empty spaces
(where words used to be)
with the sight of malice and entitlement
in a twelve year old who goaded her brother
to kick a younger child for daring to aspire
to the rich man's playground.

Ears burst with lingering voices of desperate men
telling stories of hope and "tempered grace",
only to be found hanging from their bedroom
ceilings when they were left to themselves.

Over time, you have accumulated pity
Where once there were poems
Guilt edged love out,
And the fear of loneliness wrestles
with the comfort of it all as daily recreation.
Forgetting and remembering
in turns and at the same time,
what you have become,
You hope words can fix this.
that time can repair what you
Have wrought upon your dreams.

But what pain deserves a poem
And what poem deserves this pain

There were days that you needed a poem.
And there were nights when a poem needed you.
But all you had at the end of the day was a requiem
for an unwritten poem.
And there were mornings you woke up to
the smell of smoke that reminded you
of the electric crematorium
(Though there isn't one for many miles out.)

flight of freedom #4

What rages within you
could have been love
had I not reached in and
discovered Russian winter.
(Who am I to complain –
vapours of liquid nitrogen
cover my own frostbitten heart.)

How far have we travelled.
To now find ourselves out
of our depths, without sight,
hope, or sensation. Frozen.

May the warmth of un-expectation
thaw out the blaze that engulfs us.

Until spring then, Godspeed, my friend.