Mushroom

They held me in their strong green arms
The Queen of winter, her scorching charms
Atop a brown and yellow porch
Promises of fever were openly served
Enthralled by sinister raptures rehearsed

Higher I grew than the honours they wore
Never would they speak of tales of yore
They worshipped the temple of doom and malice
Beneath a Jewelless sky I stood
Watching their whispers in wind and a hood

Atrocious oceans were crossed in a day
Delivering the robes of blood and decay
Splashed across were bolts of mist
Tall and thick was that ugly shroud
My loved ones had sent me a mushroom cloud

Faraway

Weeping upon the waveless lake
My sun, I miss your restive calm
That weaves unease, solace and decline
Your other side is so weak and sublime

Slithering in my darkest hour
My moon, I feel your poetic pale
Yearning to appease a rose awake
Following every step you take

And in between layeth the blue
Beneath an endless black and white
My umbra and scarlet move astray
Your yellow plagues me faraway

Song

She will outblind them all
As she tends to her costume of malice
In thickening night, with her strings of pall
For her pride precedes her downfall

Alone she stands in the palace lawn
Where windswept chambers mock her song
Like a rare orchid so fragile in bloom
Waiting for her nauseous dawn

Green

Grey are my choirs of dissonance
Crimson is my swollen earth
Pungent is my ominous black incense
That marks the damage done by my birth

Distant are my violet whores
Where heavens never shed a tear
Pink are my farthest shores
My pictures of distaste are near

My broken king, savour your brown
White is your only turmoil
Soft and Green are her luscious lips
That kiss me through the velvet soil

Return of the Regulator

Reminds you of Warren G? I still can't find that audio cassette. This field has been barren for quite some time. It's because those rockets stopped hitting on the inside. Once again, the urge has taken over me. I've had enough fuel to stoke my flames. Burn baby,burn!

Moon

Today, i attended a funeral. Not in my family, but then, what difference does it make?
They put him on the pyre to honour the sun. I saw his eyes, half open. His sky was white. His moon was black.

Magic

Under a pearl studded sky and a purple moon, they sat, wrapped around each other as if two recidivists clinging onto the only thing they had ever managed to steal. The reticent lake had never witnessed something so placid. The dew laden night flowers blushed with envy for they knew no neologies. Cession had a new meaning. The dark night watched as they poured more caresses.

My gleaming eye in her necklace reflected a stare of primal regret. My magic never worked on her. His did!

Would you like to place an order?

Woke up this morning with a red eye. Rubbed it more, like I always do. My fav kurta is not ironed. Will be late again!!

Skipped breakfast too! How mom wakes up in the morning to prepare all that for me is a fact I take for granted. Reminds me of the days when I used to get up at 2.00 am to chew salted groundnuts for dinner with a bottle of fanta. Everyone at Domino's knew me, be it for the trademark 10 rupee tip to the delivery boy or my phone number & address that they knew verbatim. That used up scooter which took me places in search of a decent eating joint only to stop at the dhaba next to the Bus Terminal where roadways bus drivers and conductors used to eat. A few constables could always be found yelling in their familiar Punjabi accent. The only place in jalandhar where you could get a 'tawe di roti.'

It's dull in the office. Bright colours but a gloomy environment. Same worn out faces in front of their bright computer screens. I never used to be an indoor person, but somehow, time managed to change that. It’s fun reminiscing all the bygones. Not always though.

So, there's too much going on in her life right now! What is too much? How do you quantify it? How does that make any difference? Or does it change the way I look at her? But why would I..look at her? Or change my way? She's fond of me. No, she isn't.

Atonal Tapestry

Endless prints on my skin
just like patterns on the ivy
unbridled at dusk
adorning the threads of my silken dreams
cradled in the arms of pearly hope
breathing my velvet vapours
beneath an erroneous sun
that dressed me up to paint me down
a naked gem art me
with a crooked mile to walk through red september
watch over my turquoise sky and orange birds, please!

Wing

The bright flower-print frock

Was wrapped and kept behind two wooden doors

She would open them every now and then

Stand in front of her mirror

Trying to shrink herself to its size

Her reflection smiling back to her

She flew with the breeze back then

Just like a candid butterfly

With wings of gold and an eternity to explore

Through a pair of sparkling watchful eyes

The dusk would rest in her bed

And the dawn would wake with her.

In the same flower print and long wavy hair

With her fragile self spread across her soft bed

With legs crossed and some pulp to engrave

She longs for just one more chance

Her little hands and vast blue sky

Another flight, and one more wing.

Mist

Beneath the Cedar's stare
stands the darkest hour
watching the bruised moon in silence
with jade woodland eyes
enrobed in the blackest velvet
she pours the meads of asphodel
and the invigorated skies weep with new-found life.

Suffused with deep colours of life
with no beginning and no end
her lips tremble to the first sip
from the rented porcelain
to forget and forgive
crisp leaves and ebony sing with her
the dissonant requiems of fainted hope

As the dawn descends
she lays on the silent earth
when the wind calls out her name
the daughter of disenchant
besieged in her fated marbled stone
waves goodbye to her red roses
and to her mist that stands guard.

Infidelity

Sat on the slippery rock and looked at the highs and lows of the eternal blue, pinioned, as if two lovers sharing their breath like a meal. The wet sand under my feet wanted me to stay. I took her hand and she taught me how to walk through her invitation. Her soft hands rested on my chest searching for all they could get. I closed my eyes and sank into her. Caressed her face and ran my fingers through her hair. We kissed hungrily.

I turned around and looked at a chapter. Infidelity, I wrote..."you forgot the black top that brought you to her", she said.

Fear

I sat on the rusted bench next to the bright yellow board with black paint, declaring its presence to me, asking me to look at it. I gazed at the wooden planks that bore the signs of punishment. They wanted to move, but they couldn't. Nearby, I could hear a tap coming to life after a few choked coughs. I licked my dry lips as I stood up and walked towards it. That's when I saw her. Three benches away, in the distance,Tall, slender. She held a small bag tightly to her chest, clenching it harder than a mother would've held her newborn. I watched in silence as she rested her chin on it. I forgot my thirst, for water couldn't quench it anymore. I decided to check out the books at the stall just to take a closer look at her. The floor where her feet graced the earth was wet with drops of water, yes, the salty one. I looked at her skin for scars of life. She had been beaten, said her nape to me. I slowly walked towards her and stood by her side. Her blank wide eyes stared at the 2 rails separated by rocks. Before I could speak, she turned to me and said "I fear reaching late just like u fear reaching early. I fear the gap between the train and the platform."

Naked

[The Curse of Unrest]

My finitudes basked in vast eclipse
bejeweled and well lit as the seed passed her fruitful lips
the restless skies were witness to her soft parade
of eyes shut tight and fingers coming to grips
drenched we were in red wine
with her blood red ones on mine

[Umbra]

An age of innocence in sombre velvet of bliss
a look that shot through the hay and the heavens amiss
every breath snatched between the death of birth
perched atop the fields of carnal abyss
stood the faded mist and flowers so jaded
Born was she, yet I was so naked.

Twist

Turquoise moon
Stain my ivy leaves
Hold thy seven autumns and my widow
Your wolves silent among my sheep

I am he that vanquished semblance
arousing spectres of forgotten portraits
Dance with my pale red statues
rest your dry eyes on my wet plate

"Smile with me,my pungent jasmine"
through cobwebbed drapery where I swoon
Weave me a twist that drenches my shores
under the horned diana, I dwell.

Rain

Through the shades of grey and white
watches a shadowed dimension so plush
that stirs the leaves of poetic solace
and whispers a verse to the robes of dust
Stigmata still stains her cheeks
atop the parapets where lonely she sits
naked,she sways to the feather's fall
in an overthrow of the soft woven light
Small prisms, like a parting gift
sniff orchids that opened after dusk
feed on her wide spread grin and wait
for it's the fall of the uncaged

Traitor

Two pairs of jeans hang on the cabinet that houses my books, cds, cassettes that I bought back in jalandhar. Some empty DVD cases which have been opened more than a dozen times on a weekend peep out as if looking for their occupants.

Me and my brown chair, legs crossed next to the monitor, a keyboard with half the alphabets missing due to continuous typing, my long lost airtel internet bill, a webcam that's indifferent to my presence, a dark-chocolate wrapper with some fragments of brown heaven stuck on its edges, pairs of socks that don't stink anymore, a towel that wipes my black heart every morning, a bottle of water to douse the fire in my belly, a headset to bring the distant ones closer, a recently used black marker - xylene and toluene free..it says!

I wonder if i'll ever need humans.

The first breath

The curtain falls when she leaves the stage

Tranquility…She gasps! But the void prevails

Through the corridors of malice and pretense she walks

Where the dark effigies once wrote a paean on the peach pillar

And temptation weaved a labyrinth of sins

Unchained doors celebrate her arrival

To open, they close her wooden edifice

The departure of her white mascara

Trails down her lucent gown

Whilst the fragrance of her jasmine vapours stings the air

She turns around to look at the scars of faith

The regal baits of flashlights call her

Her hand atop her mired feet

Her emerald eyes and pink sunshine

A carpet so hoary, a dais so high!

Coalesce

Through the diaphanous curtains of mist
On the deserted road he stood
Gazing at his insolent parallels
Aloud, his Embodiment of impudence watched.

The leaves silently fell
To cover the trail of his footsteps
A path unknown he walked
For nowhere else invited him.

He spread his arms wide
And hugged his perpetual solitude
He was searching for solace
Midst his countless contusions

He wanted them to macerate
To subside and depart
But only if he knew
He was walking towards them, more of them.