There I lay open,
on the examination table,
all my parts jumbled
like a bad biology puzzle.

My separated eyes
leaking blood
into my upturned palms.

My grey and white matter
mingling with the filtered contents
of my drooping kidneys.

My shriveled testicles
in the company
of my jaundiced tongue.

My constricted anus
ignoring the abuse
of my screaming lips.

My enlarged liver and my enraged pancreas
creating an identity crisis for
my depressed penis.

My sunburnt skin sloughed off
and arranged in small piles beside
the mutant glow of my bleached teeth.

My adrenals exchanging high fives
with the spliced end
of my sexy spleen.

My pretty green gall bladder
tangled up
in the chilly red of my arteries.

My throat cut off in mid sentence
leaning against
my fragile funny bone.

And there in the center,
my vacated heart,
still pulsing and dripping,
waiting for deliverance
from an unsatisfied question.

Where did the ends of our worlds meet?
In the shallow landscapes of our palms?
In the hardened furrows of our foreheads?

Where did our conversations go?
Into the shifting winds of our swollen egos?
Into the languid spaces of our memories?

Where did the lights of that night disappear?
Into the moonlight shivering on the edge of your spine?
Into the allergic depths of true love?

In an instant
I’m plunged into
the old roaring of words
that fell from the soaring heights of
our eyes
to land like rainbow colored mist between
our toes.

So we looked and
found each other
again,
our respective fate lines
tied in a knot.

——–

I miss you
still,
kissing our memories
on quiet evenings.

——

My hands
crave you,
moving through the air
of their own accord
drawing your diagram.

——–

Your absence
gives shape
to my
loneliness.

—–

Our lives
keep diverging
like the lines on my palm.

Leave this hour behind
inside me
like a signature of your smile
on the blind tips of my fingers.

——

The fog is thick between
the dust colored sunshine
and the fading smell
of last night’s jasmine.

——

Waiting across the hall
is anger accumulated
against the unchanged
arc of intimate history.

—–

Memories are rust colored
in the hour glass harmony
of moments flowing across
the gaps in remembrance.

——

I’m here at the end of the rainbow
watching the heavens wheel across
the arch of time

marveling at the clockwork precision
of the universe and the unchanging rhythm
of moving time.

Walking
one afternoon
on a path that led
into thick bushes
I came upon him,
fully formed
and bright.

Wings tucked in
on the edge of a jagged leaf
he sat
contemplating perhaps
the great drop
below.

I approached quietly
with
my viewing box
and
held it up to my eye.

He swam into detail
like a boat nearing the shore.

Off white wings
divided by
bright orange lines
flecked with silver.

Two thin tails
parallel
like the latitudes
pointed away
from his striped body.

Beneath the tails
two threads
that dropped away
like anchors.

He and I
waited
there in the bushes
surrounded by bird call
and the distant beat of a fast flowing river
until suddenly the branch above me moved
and my shadow fell across him.

He rose in an instant
on those wings dipped in silver
and fluttered away
before I could take
another photograph,
before I could
introduce myself.

The beast rose within
to smash the mirror of memory
that hung on the
low wall of self loathing.

—–

Watermelon dreams
stain the skin of summer
as she smothers the city
in her blazing yellow shamiana.

—–

A gap in the stars
A full stop out of place
The twisted sky falls apart
The world sleeps.

—–

A sudden hush descends
on the neon painted night scape
washing the empty gullies that
sing cement colored sonnets.

—–

There is a shadow on her lip
as she stares out of the moving window
watching the traffic glide
between her screaming fists.

—–

They were watching TV
India Shining in their eyes
broken, battered pasts and totalitarian presents
erased by a clever copywriter.

—–

Death begins with doubt
inside corners
that inhabit our shadows.

In these arms I gather
the loneliness of your dreams
as you curl into my corners
lost in a shapeless geography.

In these arms I gather
the trembling lips of dawn
as she awakens you
from night’s deep dark abandon.

In these arms I gather
the wet whispers of your hair
as they slither between
sunshine and shade.

In these arms I gather
the invitations of intimacy
that traverse your tongue
as it explores a new vocabulary.

In these arms I gather
the songs of your breasts
as they breathe between
your heart and mine.

In these arms I gather
the essence of ecstasy
as you arch your back
over the bridge of my fingers.

In these arms I gather
the tenderness of twilight
as the light sinks
into the night behind our words.

In these arms I gather
the silver stars in your eyes
as they search
for stardust in mine.

Between uncertain unhappiness and the smells
of sunset and sorrow there was a space.
A no man’s land of abandoned heartbeats.
A no woman’s land without a horizon to kiss.

No sunshine ever smiled there.
No sounds ever laughed there.

It was my space; most private and most precious.
Into that space, she came riding in like an unexpected answer.

The hidden horizon came coughing through her hair.
The sullen sun started smiling through her shadow.
The lonely land began to flirt with her feet.

Was it an invitation or was it an invasion?
Or was it just a spectacular vision?

My friend, it was none of the above. It was instead an awakening,
an opening up if you will, to her coal dark eyes full of new vocabulary.
With an echo of her heartbeat hovering in my breath
I began to love once again the sudden heartaches of dawn and the lonely tenderness of twilight.

In these teeming billions
I’m just another tear drop
flowing down the cheek of mortality.

—–

Inside you
the dust has spread
like a common rumor.

—–

In these woods,
between birds and butterflies,
between music and motion.

—–

Away from the frigid wastes.
Away from the loudness of longing.
The slow turning of time.
The warmth of familiar water.

Peace at last.

Yesterday night I talked to a wall,
a brick red barrier off which bounced
my monologue like a bad mystery.

The words were stale, like bad breath
before a beautiful morning kiss. They
had been festering far too long in closed confines.

They talked about desperate, unsatisfying sex,
about violence weakened by desire, about the
arc of answers that dug into my dull senses.

The night faded into neat patches of Indian ink
but my speech continued with only broken
mortar as my mute spectator.

I talked about the insistence of innocence, about
the precious pursuit of politeness, about the mystery of your
marriage to mediocrity, about the mechanics of martyrdom.

It is difficult to define the direction of ignored words,
they have a life of their own, seeping into skin like sunshine
on nights when the world is weeping big fat whispers.

The thrust of my argument fell on the ears
of an unpainted understanding between three neighbors.
The bricks broke rank with their sleeping masters to listen at last.

So I talked to them about the angry appearance of silence,
about loneliness that surfaced like a sudden itch,
about moments that mattered most when you and I last made love.

The sudden fiery outburst of a flowerpot
next door
sharpens the evening with the smell of sulphur.

Rockets rise like resurrected gods and explode between the
wispy clouds
into red, yellow and green showers.

I remember lights from the past,
one time
father was sitting in the balcony and a rocket
came through from under his chair and burst upon our bedroom wall.

Old friends standing on the roof,
silken silhouettes
laughing about who lost how much nerve when it came to lighting big bombs.

The sudden blast of a hydrogen bomb is a primal kick in
the gut,
a slap of surprised sound that silences all speech.

That one word fell between us like a raindrop,
smudging the intimacy inside our eyes.
That one word fell between us like a punishment,
stifling the laughter in our love.

It was not harsh, no; harshness was still a distant stranger
yet to make our acquaintance. It was like a hailstone hurled
across a street onto a windshield. Our world cracked but
did not break.

I remember the earthy brown smell your hands
left in mine. The smell lingered like the smell of the
first rains on dry earth and mingled with the taste of temptation
in my mouth.

Curious the memories that rise to the surface
when the ocean in our minds begins to part.
We are not God’s chosen couple. That much I’ve
come to understand.

Still the bird inside my heart cries for the
rains to return. To bring back the season when
streams flowed in our smiles. To bring back the season
of opaque windows.

Yesterday, I went to a poetry reading where
a forgotten poet was resurrected. His history
made human. His work made familiar.

Srinivas, Sridala and Jeet put words and images
in my head, putting the feeling of creation
but not the tools to create in that empty space.

This urge to create, to write great poetry
is tempered by an inability to choose,
to pick meter over rhyme, or free verse
over silence.

I sit down to write something about you,
about the fragmented forces around us,
about politics and purity, about faith and fashion,
but the words just slip away into a space I cannot fathom.

Today, I surfed the net with a great suspicion.
Who are all these new Indian poets populating the virtual world?
What do they hope to achieve with their navel gazing and inventive wordplay?
Did they not hear what Jeet had to say?

In between, my mother interrupts, breakfast is ready she says.
It is fish today with chapatis, rice is not cooked yet. Little does
she know that I’m writing something important here. The state
of contemporary Indian poetry no less. Breakfast can wait.
The mumbled conversations of my stomach can wait.

So coming back to Jeet, with his distinctive shaved pate shining
under the glare of the tube light and a singsong voice which was equal parts hip hop and poetry.
What did he say you ask? All you poets and professors hear him well.
He said, “Poetry doesn’t sell, to make money write fiction.”
How true that is. Poetry, the language of silence versus
fiction, the language of finance.

In between these lines
you can read all the meanings you want
because you have peeled off the paint
from our world of possibilities.

—–

All those evenings,
when the winter sun slowly sank
into your eyes, I waited for
your fingers to curl around mine.

—–

Dusk seeps into your eyes like
ink into paper and in that
gathering gloom I search for our former glory.

—–

As the rain fell between us
you picked up a pebble
and polished it with your silence.

—–

Turn the page over and look behind,
you will find stick figures holding hands,
imitation human beings, imitation love.

—–

The sudden attacks of nostalgia are the worst,
with transition comes a terrible clarity.
All that we wanted, all that we turned to dust.

—–

Once there was a dream that
took birth in the space between
two heartbeats. It now lies
on a stretcher covered by a white shroud.

They came armed with bulldozers and bulletins
onto our verdant fields and into our modest homes.
The government wanted to build a big dam,
arrest the mighty river and submerge our sunshine
beneath placid dark green water.
We protested, tore our hair and hearts
but the babus did not listen.
Progress is not pollution they advised.

The sounds of industry echoed between the twin hills.
The wall grew, inch by inch, a barrier for Bhagirathi.
Our fields, our homes swallowed by the rising waters.
Our tears traveled down the hills to pool on the plains.

Lives uprooted we moved to the hot and dusty plains,
(proud hill folk) we left the sickle and took up the hammer.
Never bound by the horizon now our imagination is
limited by the claustrophobic closeness of this crowded slum.

Up in the hills our blood will stop flowing soon. The Gods will
not be pleased by this arrogance. Their downstream daughter
is being widowed. One day soon the Lord of Kailas will descend and dance
destruction with Dharti mata and thus will man’s folly be finished.

(To know more about what is happening to the great Ganga in the mountains of Uttarakhand do read this.)

Twenty four hours. That is what you asked for
as the sun set behind the tree without any leaves.
A day to decide the fate of a lifetime.

You wrapped your hands around your knees and started rocking
as if some clock had already started ticking. Within us
sentences skipped scenarios in search of that perfect paragraph.

I leaned against the tree and watched the last light
fall across the furrows on your forehead. There was
so much history happening in that moment.

Half a day later you called me from a pay phone
as I was leaving the bookstore. You said you
wanted to hear my voice one more time.

There was something in the silence between your words
that made me stop at that corner we both knew so well.
People curved around me as I waited for you to say something concrete.

But the connection was lost. The moment walked away with the rest.
I stood there waiting for you to call back. To call me back. To pick up
the pieces that we threw away in a moment of madness.

Night came, two hands came together but the phone remained speechless.
I waited for a coin to clink somewhere and for the connection to be made.
But it was too late, you had taken the silence between us into you.

Our favorite book of poetry was open on the table, the pages skipping
through our little histories, through the seconds that survived.
There was no way to stop the movement of moments that mattered.

Every day that passes behind the calender
strikes a different chord in the long chapter of remembrance,
the winter that never became our season,
the kisses that never crossed our lips.

It is 6 am and I am sitting here
by the window and wondering about all
the steps that we walked away from when
the time came to hold onto our promise.

Dawn breaks her beautiful cover
in the company of blue light and
a stillness that brings to mind
that night in the back seat of a stranger’s car.

Go on, take a second to remember all that
we talked about as the roads slid by beneath us.
Remember the bright promise of your words that kept
me from taking the easy way out?

I tell myself that time never gave us a chance
for in the rush to get away we came together. And
when the night hurried away to hide behind the sun
you left for the comfort of familiarity.

One day, far away from now, we will
sit with a drink and smile at the stupidity
of hope. But right now the promises are too new
to ignore, too bright to shield this weak heart.

One way or the other the world will move again,
change will turn our heads away from a past that
will be left behind in forgotten photos and in
the vast wasteland of our collective memories.

But until then let me indulge that memory
where something caused your face to glow
under the faint light of the moon when you
turned to me and whispered those special words.

Outside my house the lone tree
is smiling with her crown of fresh
green leaves.

It was only a month
ago that she stood there, bare like
a curtain less window, looking
forlorn as the cold hacked at her
naked limbs.

Today, the sun is out and the rising
heat is enough for her to unfurl her
withdrawn limbs and embrace the
benign warmth.

Birds hide among the new green
and sing to the uncaring vehicles
that rush hither and thither, oblivious
of the spring symphony.

At the base of the tree is a shrub
planted by some forgotten city gardener.
It is in bloom now, bright crimson flowers vying
for attention from the many who walk past, uncaring.

Towards evening, as they begin to droop the
flowers are revived by a breeze that comes
out of nowhere. Tired but content they slowly close
their white pupils and wait for the evening to end.

One day soon
this heart will burst
and in the midst of flying flesh
you will discover all the words
that troubled my tongue but
never crossed my lips.

—–

I wish I could string
a necklace made of moonbeams
for the sinuous emptiness that is
your neck.

—-

The waiting in winter
still continues but
beneath the frozen exterior
a faint heart beat glows.

—–

One more minute
and I could have caught you
in my arms under the tree
where our lips first touched.

——

One heart beat at a time
I wish for all the beautiful things
that will never come to pass.

The words are caught
at the back of my throat
like phlegm after a bad cold.

I wish they could roll out like marbles
and spread across the slate
to give meaning to emptiness.

But this instant of darkness rises
within and smothers their meaning
and the benefit of sharing.

To choke their cowardly presence I
watch the world through the window
and marvel at the clockwork lives of others.

Is there purpose left behind principle?
Will it matter now that the end is so near?

This waiting for fickle deliverance.
This search for fading confidence.

The painful pointlessness of it all.

The descent into mediocrity continues
and the world slowly spins out of control
beyond the reach of my grasping fingers.

Hold that thought between
your lips. Let me trace its edges
with my tongue and tease out its intentions.

—–

In the hope of making sense
of your words left behind
the toaster and under the eraser
I try to remember
the gestures your fingers made
while your breath slid down along my neck.

—–

Will it matter now that the Eastern sky
is your new home and the winds of information
shield you from my words?

—–

To understand the difference between
your weakness and my need.
The cost is so high.
Who will pay for the renovation of this relationship?

——

I will look for a sign from tomorrow.
But tomorrow will soon become yesterday
and I will still be here counting the fallen letters,
watching the wind whip away the answers.

——

Tonight, I’ll walk to the river
and drown the silence
that hangs like a sword
between our eyes.

—–

The time has come to
remove the bookmark
and put this book back
on the bookshelf.

In my eyes
you lived
like a flower, flowering
only in my
daily daydreams.

——

I let them play
hide and seek
on my closed eyelids
seeking to believe
that their every touch
is a warm kiss from you.

—–

I covet,
I protect,
their mediocrity,
their patchiness,
like a jealous mother.

—–

They
do not affect me
anymore
as winter had
seeped into my soul
snowflake by snowflake
while I was immersed
in your silence.

——

I’m sitting
in the eye of a storm
watching the calm
waiting for reality to
unleash her sordid story.

Through the lines I walk by the shadow’s edge
in search of big things like love, life and a good liver.

—–

There were words that were left unsaid
between you and me that night
when the wind picked up your scent
and applied it to my brow like a balm.

Today, as I sip solitude’s bitter brew
I’m reminded once again of how life
wrote our stories. From lips we moved
to letters. From letters we moved to love.
And from love we moved to loneliness.

——

Empty is this page like the song
on the radio. I blink and the world
stops to let a tear trace its transparent
track down a dust scarred cheek.

——

The other day I found you staring back
at me from a tiny photo. That bright flash
of near perfect teeth that once used to
soothe the hunger of the darkness inside.
That white light of nights scented by your smile.

Isn’t it a wonder? This loss of laughter.
This desperate need for nostalgia.

——

This cold is a comfort for the abandoned.
In her icy embrace memory is transformed
into a fresh layer of snow, formless and featureless.
Those few who can forget are the luckiest. For
remembrance is a curse. A curse of the soul
left behind to mourn the memory of all that could have been.

And where shall the pale hands of time lead us?
For upon this day lies the pallor of gloom
soaking up the color and comfort of my life.

Did you dream of deliverance or did you dream of
death tumbling down your hair into the night?

Crippled are your tears by a whisper unspoken.
Tell me, tell me, what ails your spirit? Is it the angry
appearance of answers? Or is it the desperate defiance of my pain?

Yet, you speak not and look upon me
with serenity in your eyes and loneliness
on your lips while hope lies in torment upon mine.

Will you allow destiny to wander through our veins?
Will you allow words to work away the foul winds?
Will you allow distance to shorten the questions?

It is not a fancy that this heart of mine bears.
It is not a whim that makes my lips quiver.
It is not a tear that troubles my eye.