Category: Poems

I’ve written, so, a book for you
Of all the things I want to say,
But cannot say before I go,
And cannot know if this today
Will prove to be my last today:
A permanent just-yesterday-
he-sent-another-rhyme-you-know.

The book will tell you, not so well,
Of why a kid with shaky hands
Attempted every full moon night
To pull a bucket steady, right,
Despite the fear of reprimands,
To free the prisoned moon inside
Without it rippling down the well.

The book will show you, bit unclear,
Bazaar-view of entreating fears
The boy evaded every time
He washed away the cowdung slime
Beneath his father’s slippers, shined
The very morning through his tears.

The book will…Bloody buggery!
The book will this, the book will that –
The book’s a wish to fix a past,
Revisioning a story-me
Who never had a chance to be
An anything of any art
Because he never had the heart
To rise above his self-pity
And do something for somebody.

A headache born of thorny prose
Of maddening meandering
Of arduous ambiguity
Of words sesquipedalian,
Interminably labyrinthine,
Unhelpfully unpunctuated,
Unduly unparagraphed,
Is not a midnight malady,
But cognitive hypertrophy,
A coveted high-par trophy
To stud, with pleasure, in my crown.

I want to draw the air tonight.
The air that smells of petrichor.
No, not the air that smells of rain
Caressing down our garden’s floor.

I want to draw the air tonight.
The air that wears the cloud cologne.
Before the rain, before the earth’s
Intoxicating pheromone.

I miss his musicality –
Unmetered. Yet melodious.
Enjambments jambing broken lines.
A man.
A child.
A tree.
A rope.
He leaves you hanging:
In suspense.
Permute.
Combine.
Somehow.
Make sense.
Your mood dictates this poet’s pens.
He trusts your most macabre mind.

They say she walks in bangle chimes –
The ones they found beneath her feet,
The ones they swear she only wore
The times her lover came to meet.

They say she comes on Durga’s day
And walks the roads till Kaali’s night.
They say she chooses whom to haunt
And whom to grant the curse of sight.

Of course, the ones who see her, die
Before they get to tell their tales.
But, every year there is a death
With tiny marks of fingernails.

Some say they are just lover’s nails
You buy per hour with gambled cash,
Until you run your luck away,
And back you go to picking trash.

Some say they must be puncture marks
From spatulas of boiling highs.
But most agree they are her claws
And shake their heads with heavy sighs.

This year, already, two are dead,
Though no one knows if she’s to blame.
The corpses bulged in beating rain
And drink from losses in the game.

Go, wait for every cloud of rain.
She comes to you in shroud of rain.

Her eyes are childish, drizzling glee.
Her smile’s maternal, proud of rain.

She doubts the poet pouring books –
Why stay in, disavowed of rain?

Go, lose yourself in Sufi winds.
She finds you in the crowd of rain.

So silent is your gratitude.
O Misra, sing aloud of rain.

I found a poem lost in time
Inside another book of mine
I wrote but never read again
Because I lost my head again
Inside another valentine
I thought was then forever mine
I loved but never saw again
Because I found my claw again
Inside another text of mine
I wrote to her around the time
I turned into a beast again
Because I do, at least, again.

I heard it baying by the pool
And stoked the fire with a flute.
I blew some rising, smoking chords
So it could see, and smell, and hear
Foreboding in inferno come.

I heard it baying by the house
And stoked the fire with a bone.
I drummed some rising, smoking chords
So it could see, and smell, and hear
Cremation in inferno come.

I never heard it bay again.
I’m not the only one with tricks.

They fight with fists, with wrists, with heads,
With words they picked in sties and sheds,
With pails of milk, with bales of hay,
With nails that grow from day to day.

They fight in gangs, they fight by self.
No call for truce, no call for help.
They fight to play, they play to fight.
They fight with not a qualm in sight.

And then they hug – no smile, no talk.
They wipe their blood and sweat, and walk.
To cows, to sheds. To pigs, to sties.
And all is well till one more dies.

An eyelash, candles on a cake,
A dandelion, steaming steak –
I blew on all, I wished, I wished.
All evenfall, I wished, I wished.

Why tears blur my sight again,
If all will be alright again?
Alright is just a mothers’ myth.
All night, I wished, I wished, I wished.