ఆకాశం లో నా ఈ చిన్ని చిన్ని ఆశలను అరేయనా?
అలవాటు లేని ఈ ఆనందాన్ని గుండెలో బంధించనా?

ఈ రాత్రి నిలుస్తుందా నీ కళ్ళలో ఒక కలగా?
ఈ కవిత కలుస్తుందా నీ చిరునవ్వు లో ఒక పాట లాగా?

We lived for the silence at sunset, varied
layers of love covering us with companionship.

Your profile against the golden circle and the
smile that pierced the encroaching darkness
still reach out and twist my insides
after all these seasons, after all these storms.

Why are you not here?

Did I not wash your eyes with my love?
Did I not speak your words as if they were mine?
Did I not capture your beauty in my tears?

The thirst of absence remains, the hunger
of distance grows.

Memory climbs the castle steps,
we rode yellow through virgin snow.

You kissed me by the window
and frowned at my frigidity. So
I placed my smile in your palm and
asked you to apply it to your lips.

Remember?

We lived for the silence at sunset, watching
the encroaching darkness swallow our shadows.

గుండె లోని ఈ ఘోషని గొంతు చించి అరవనా?
కనికరం లేని ఈ కష్టాలని కళ్ళు మూసి చూపించనా?

ఆరంభ శురత్వమే కానీ అలవాటు లేదు ముగింపు
అందుకే మొసలి కన్నీళ్ళ మధ్యలో మిగిలిపోతుంది ఈ మనసు ఒక మొండితనము

The clouds hang in the sunless sky like fluffy pink pillows.
The air is still between us. I smell you between the smells
of growing grass and blooming azaleas. You are curled up
holding my hand between yours. You can feel my little finger
move slowly along your stomach. Textures are teased out in
an exploration of tender territory. I lean forward and run my
tongue along the back of your neck, through gleaming hair
and salty skin. The still air between us suffers, squeezed
between shivering bodies. Your leg slowly slides along mine,
miming a language in movement. I let the light of dawn flow
across your freckled forehead and pool in your opening eyes.
I wait for the breathless breeze to surround us and then blow
through your hair. I bend over and touch your lips, soft like sin
and flecked with spots of red teeth marks. I close the gap with
my lips and lazy light struggles to escape their locked confines.
The careless cries of birds wash over our aroused senses. We
sink into seconds and stretch them along our sinuous spines.

Silently, dawn parts from us like a jilted lover. The yellow overseer
is riding in on her familiar coattails. The brittle business of another
day awaits his grim golden gaze. You leave too as morning moves
her mundane face on us. Fie! A perpetual interrupter of intimate
auroral moments is here yet again to erase the early spoils.

The Dust Brothers - This Is My Life

III.

The night is near, midnight rising on my forehead. Over
yonder is your answer. I’ll not yield. I’ll not give in. This is
my life.

Static sweeps through the air, a wall of white inside
and outside. Meaning is lost within. You remain
silent and I slip into the stream, carried away by
the current to the opposite country.

II.

Woken by words. The day breaks on the shore
of my black and white dreams. These are times
of virtual confidences. Cute little smiley faces and pidgin
expressions bridge the gap of postmodernity. Curious
is the life of an outsider looking in, counting connections.

I.

The neon faces march through
the rain, a procession of familiar faces
marked by history. There is a D and here
is an S. Here is a T and there is a V. The light
bounces off the rain soaked pale skin. Questions
pop and burst. We are all enemies of intimacy, content
to vomit across the distance. A fake smile here and a meaningless
scrap there. Caught in the fear of green. Idealism has chosen
euthanasia as an easy way out. Beg for my life, must I?
They fight for dents in metal. Here I live with darkness as a roommate.
Lies abound. Tears survive. Hate is here.

The day after, a judgment in the hands
of one who does not care.

Who will call for the flashing red light?
Who will light the yellow flame?

రాలుతున్న కన్నీటి చుక్కలు చెప్పగలవా రామాయణమని
ములుగుతున్న ఆలోచనలు చెప్పగలవా మనసు ఒక మూగతనాన్ని

కూత వేటు దూరం లో ఉంది ఒక కోరిక
మార్పు వస్తుందా? కోరిక తీరుతుందా?

I’ll kiss the moonlight falling on your breasts this night.
I’ll wander through your hair in search of lost whispers.
I’ll swim in your eyes to the far shores of fervent love.
I’ll smell your skin and distill that special scent of sunshine.

I’ll bargain with time to arrest your smile for a moment more.
I’ll write sonnets about the silken depths of your belly button.
I’ll travel across seven seas to capture the song of a skylark for you.
I’ll reason with god to transmute your laughter into wine.

I’ll bathe you in the light of dawn every morning.
I’ll force the four winds to dry the sweat on your tired brow at dusk.
I’ll play the lute to let the angel of sleep embrace you every night.
I’ll sweep the sky into my arms and drape you in blue.

And as you sleep in between my arms
I’ll lay awake and watch you smile in your dreams.

Semen stained skin
covered by old sheets.

The night hung between us
like a forgotten conversation.

Her breasts under my hand.
Her lips against my thigh.
Neatly shaven and pleasantly rough.

She slipped her tongue into my mouth
like a newspaper sliding under the door.

The sheets rustled and
slid. Desire surfed along the
rising curve of our tongues.

The night traveled down
again behind our eye lids.

Held between her hands
I sighed. Under the sheets
fingers explored fertile valleys.

She pushed me under and fell
over me like a familiar song.

Moist and molten we kissed. Lips
exchanged names written by tongues.

She moved over me. I was caught in her song.
She rode the bridge and waited for the chorus.
I joined her as the music peaked and together
we felt the words come crashing down inside her.

The sweat stained night settled
into the folds of our skins as we
fell asleep inside and over each other.

The nausea of a future undefined
permeates my body. Every pore,
every strand of hair is drenched
in the curious smell.

Appointments break, promises
slip into past tense and will power wilts
under extreme caution. The heroes of
my life waver in geographical isolation.

A complete silence floods my mouth,
cleansing conversation and curiosity.
Rinsed of emotion I drift into dark corners
and watch the world laugh in my absence.

Sunshine is for lovers, grey rain is my
weather of choice. It smothers pain
into a dull but constant ache. A reminder
of all that was lost and will be now destroyed.

This cave is shallow but dark, the sun is busy
kissing young couples. I’ll close my eyes now
and follow the lives of people precious once
through mediums virtual and wicked.

Sudden spurts
of intense noise
breaking the barriers
of a hesitant voice.

Distant faces
mouthing unformed words.

I stare at the Earth.

                    Empty seats.
                    Rhythmic beats.
                    Green grass.
                    Invisible mass.

A dog barks
at the faceless stranger
striding-
along the tainted slopes
of a dead man’s hopes.

I stare at the Sky.

Songs of innocence
and birds of pain.

Weakened by pleasure,
He
      Smiles-
                Gratis. Impossible!
                                         Unheeded warnings.
                                         Unending torture.

In the end-Unity.
Welcome to
           The Great Vacuum.

In these arms
I have seen
A million dreams
Separate as solitary streams.

——

The glitter of love
unmasked under
the harsh glare of
closed choices.

——

Broken sentences
strewn across the
distance between us,
a mental minefield.

——

Yellow notes on the table,
reminders of the past,
living on borrowed time.

——

So silence
is your weapon, waking
sleeping demons.

—–

I need to fall out
of this spiral
that leads nowhere.

The morning mist rests on her brow,
her eyes are fresh like the grass on which she lies,
her cheeks are coated with the colors of dawn and
her lips murmur a faint song about flowing water.

Mottled shadows whisper on her stomach
sliding down that smooth expanse with the breeze.
Her hair is splayed around her head, a crown
of black for this angel of a misty morning.

The slope of her neck is open to the sky,
inviting the gods to drink her heavenly scent.
Golden leaf shadows walk across the curve of her breasts,
the trees lower their branches to see her sudden smile.

I’m lost completely and utterly
in a beauty not often found on this mortal earth.
The hourglass of immortality might empty one day but
the memory of this spring morn will always sparkle in my eyes.

Nine Inch Nails - Just Like You Imagined

Beat and Rhythm
bridging
my flashing synapses
in fine murmurs
with
The Universal Sound.

A subsonic seduction
of my anachronistic soul.

Crash and dash.
Dash and thrash
of
benign beats
united in a single sample
of melancholic madness.

Observe-
my molting mood
vomiting words, drenched
in the blood of stoned emotion.

I opened my eyes
and saw

Architectural fires
burning
Penalized prostitutes
posturing
Colluding writers
prospering
Seminal science
degrading

I closed my eyes
and saw

God being raped by
Gigolo politicians

తనివి తీరని ఈ ధెహం
అలుపు ఎరుగని ఈ చూపులు
కదులుతున్న ఈ కాలాన్ని ఆపగలవా?
కరుగుతున్న ఈ ఆశలను కలపగలవా?

The early morning sunlight
slips past my shadow.

The woods are alive with the sounds of spring,
flowers breathing in the new sun, and
leaves drinking in the dew.

Earthworms are busy chewing soil.
Woodpeckers exult in their exquisite precision.
White rabbits scamper in and out of their burrows.

I walk between the drowsy trees,
shaking sleep out of their branches and
digging deep into the softened earth.

The does romp in the dappled shadows.
A sleepy bear yawns while her cubs snuggle beside.
A cool breeze is breathing down the branches.

How happy the world seems!
Waking up from the frost
of winter past.

So why this tightening of heart?
Why this narrowing of eyes?
Why this halting of hope?

Answers do not follow questions,
neither does past precede present
in this world made by women.

Time walks past me, robbing me of everything
that a surprised winter promised for the coming spring.

Green is the shape of her shadow
hiding behind the barn door.
A parrot whistles a love supreme.

——

Her letters lie idle,
Paris is past perfect.
Email is the new heart break.

—–

Clouds rose like eyebrows
as the sky went red.
Brown eyes weep her words.

—–

Midnight rises in
her gimlet eyes.
White lies live beneath.

Madonna - The Power of Goodbye

Woke up at 3
In the morning
A sad dream
Still in my eyes

People laughing
Colors changing
Faces dissolving
Music fading

We met last winter
under the eaves of a huge dome
amidst rushing feet and departing goodbyes.

There was snow in the air
punctuating the inky blackness
of the night that reintroduced us.

Three winters previous our last sighting,
around a table made of wrought iron
and filled with culinary delights.

In between time had traveled
many a mile on our foreheads,
some spoke of white love, some spoke of failed ambition.

We stood, oblivious of the human stream,
caught as we were in the history of our hearts,
counting time in seconds and not in years.

Suddenly, she flowed, into my arms, like a summer
breeze. Heads bent across, bodies clasped tightly and
hands exploring familiar landmarks we found each other again.

ना जाने क्यों ये बिखरते लमहे
गिरते है बूंदों की तरह
मेरी आँखों मे
शायद प्यासे है वो सावन के लिए

Sweet is the breeze that ruffles the feathers
of the future strewn before me.

She, a maiden of modernity beckons, wild and undefined,
stalking my imagination every night.

Who shall I seek on this night of bundled energy?
Who shall I find on these streets of mottled sin?

Wicked is the moonlight as it filters
through the alcohol haze grazing my forehead.

“Follow the herd, follow the herd”, they shout
through the vast waste land of education.

Which branch shall I swing by?
Which point on the compass shall I choose?

Let me revel as laughing light pours into closed fists.
Let me whoop with the delight of gods.

She beckons, her fingers lightly kissing my lips.
I settle softly into the silent spirals of her virgin dawn.

Each lie I tell them is another
slash of the knife breathing
inside the heart.

Each lie I tell them is another
tear waiting to roll down
a well trodden path.

Each lie I tell them is another
wall going up inside
cutting the daylight.

Each lie I tell them is another
stain on the soul
discoloring what was once diaphanous.

Each lie I tell them is another
day wasted in the pursuit of
a mirage called materialistic intimacy.

All this mock concern.
All this false hope.
My, my, I’m touched, but
where were you when the world went dark
and my eyes were hungry for light?

——

Hope is a dirty word.
Is it a coincidence then
that it is made up of four letters?

—–

This is a strange world
bleached of color and shadow.
Faces form a featureless grey picture
against the background roar
of burning bridges.

—–

Is wrath better than grief?
Is hate better than love?
Equal number of letters
forming mirrors. Which reflection
shall I choose? Which dress
shall I wear?

——

I’m made of stone;
unwanted tears begin to
freeze in my core
to reform frost lines
along old fissures.

—–

While you slept
a happy dream
everything broke apart
here. Will you gloat and do
your dance of triumph now?

—–

All it needs is one sharp stroke
and everything will end
forever.

i.
हमने देखे है लाख ख्वाब
आपकी निगाहो मे
मगर देखा नहीं कभी उनमे
प्यार की हसीन मुस्कुरहट

ii.
वो जो आवाज़ सुनी थी
हमने कल शाम को
आज पता चला की वो
थी आप की दिल्लगी हमारी बदसूरती पर