I rub off the dandruff

from my hair,

and think that this is

the closest I’ll ever get to

watching a snowfall.

If only,

a semblance of.

She Who Was Called The Myth

(For Emily Dickinson)

There seem to be a lot

of I’s,

which may be one

of the things we share,

I’d like to think.

Writing about ourselves,

to ourselves,

and why not?

‘tis our closest subject,

and why write poetry,

if one is to make shit up?

Even though when you

write of dawn

I see the night,

somehow,

we may be closely mapped

on the coordinates of time

and space, I imagine.

Did they call you a

bourgeois bitch

when you shut yourself in,

hoping that the walls

of your room will not let you

shut up in prose?

Did you, at last,

feel freer with wood, paper

or ink around you,

than you did with people,

out there?

And in death,

did you, after all, realise

that your verse will remain

alive for me and others

to feed on?

I can never know, for certain,

what was inside your head,

only knowing what is inside

mine. 

Untitled

We are all lazy asses here.

Waiting with our daily cups of chai

and a stipulated number of

cigarettes,

served in makeshift routines

having more late than early in it,

to drag on to make

something of our lives. 

We are all so bored here,

waiting for something to look forward to,

after having walked the same roads

and looked at the same faces

and heard the same music,

that we raise our eyes

 in unison,

to look at the hurried woman hurl

out of the almost hugging doors

of the Metro.

We have all grown thick-skinned here,

waiting, even while

leafing away to degeneration

like an autumnal tree,

incapable of accepting

that there will be no spring,

ahead.  

Long Stares

There were only silences,

latent ones,

like those in Cohen’s songs

Of which words make

poetry of their own.

I stared into space

conscious of the silences,

somehow not complaining.

Then he wrote.

Empty spaces filled with words.

Lonely words turned

to conversations.

And I stared into them.

Words written to me, for me,

had a rhythm of their own

But that wasn’t enough.

So I stared further, longer

for it to turn into music

for he, like me,  was enslaved

by it, the weight of words

turning too heavy, without.

And like any other conversation,

this too, ends.

Back to silences.

You don’t listen to Cohen’s

music particularly, do you?

He has the words,

all I have are long stares.

Surface

In the moment between two pieces of music,

A moment in the middle of glimpses

falling from one direction to another,

A moment of hesitation,
or reconsideration,

You may see beyond the surface

-beyond the glass, that looks like mirror-

You, who says truth is folded in layers,

You, whom poor laymen call poets,

or the veneered society calls philosophers,

You, who are always willing to romanticise ideas,

to translate them into ideals.

Did you see that woman impregnated further

by an unpleasant force between her thighs?

Did you hear her shriek, silenced within the

walls of the bedroom and a marriage certificate?

Did you see the shame on the little girl’s face

when her sheets turned red,

and she could no longer touch the plants,

she had sown the seeds of?

Did you understand her mature realisation,

years later, that someone else’s seeds were

more important than hers?

Did you see the pubescent boy driven hysterical

Over his attraction towards another boy

(the same hysteria that follows a crime of passion)?

Did you feel his dignity shredding and

settling into those layers of truth,

while sucking off the school Principal

to prevent any ‘trouble’?

But oh poet, do not trouble yourself.

There are no romantic ideals here,

or layers of truth, ‘tis but a mirror

that will reflect your own self,

and you, in no degree, are to blame.

‘tis only the surface and
no scope of seeing beyond it.

Untitled

The holy smoke rises
high up in the air,
for it seeks to convey something to
the Invisible power above.

My eyes start burning
with the fumes of all that is
thrown in the ornate hearth.
The fire turns furiously red

as if the spirit in it seeks

to transcend to the other side.

I follow the smoke

that is now coming out of my mouth,

with the similar aim of communion

of the self and the sacred.

The sky turns dark

as more smoke seeps into my lungs;

the fire slowly turning dead.

And the barren earth cries

with all its grass dry,

from heat and smoke,

and all the uprooting,

that supplement the business

of Faith and transcendence

for the holy power, 
deceiving.  

Afterthought

                                                                                                                                                                   
In the end

as the night passes me by, 

after all tangible interactions

when the sky is blinded, almost with a 

sullen emotion impressed on it, I get out

of my cocooned bed to the world of the Wild

where the stars become my blanket, and the smoke

my intoxicating perfume, and I pull my head back to let 

the sleep like reverie take hold of my consciousness,

that lets my life unroll, while I wait for the art of psychedelia 

to show me the reflection of what I seek; just like you wait for me 

to unravel this burlesque, but in that moment how everything succumbs 

to the one entity- becomes Entirety- like the flames consuming all that is surrounding

And all I see is my fragmented self in the directionless movement of the wind,

its pieces all dancing along in different directions, like siblings

separated at birth; and before I reclaim every piece

my fingers start burning, the reverie breaks,

I bid the insects a good night and

return to my cocoon, leaving

yet something else in

the wilderness.