Sunday, June 12, 2016

Excuse for Rhyme

A black and white face
with slant little gaze
tugs at the heartstrings
in unusual ways
and croons a new ballad
of soft purple days
tinted with twilighted rays that'll lace
my prayers with the incense of grace.

My lines that'll lilt
with such juvenile rhymes
on which neither muse
nor cupid now shines
are fit but for irrelevant sighs.

So gather your tickets and fly;
I who just deal in sarcastic words
will neither lose sleep or cry.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Longing

In the silence that clings,
I wear your words
like a scarf around heart
and brace for unwelcome winds.

Choirs of our trees are in mourning by now
and blossoms are in indefinite strike.

I've left your address to migrating birds
whose elegies in south
will bring to your heart
the fragrance of my fallen leaves.

Be gentle when you listen to their lines,
my veins I've lent to their notes.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Other Shores

I know there are circles my friends
where you cringe to be joined to my name.
A misfit for so long, so well
I wasn't saddened or stunned
to know of your intents concealed.

Yours be the dances and drinks.
Yours be the groupfies of joy.
Chosen, I only could make
a grey little corner all blurred.

Unwell in brightest of lights,
I'll flicker as I do
in a dim little niche
and offer you a chat without guilt,
provided you call me at least.

Zen-like I walk along quays
and gaze at the untiring waves,
which yet sing of stillness of change.

What service in bringing too close,
currents that are meant to diverge?

So I float to the rhythms of heart
and leaving apart old sullen ways
search for new kindred points
glimmering on yet unknown shores.


Sunday, February 14, 2016

Confessiones Ignorat



When the canopy of illusion is lost
The torrents of truth batter hard.

Ringed by the circles of distrust and scorn
And titanium shackles of hypocratic oaths
I am lost in the dungeons of solitude enforced
With too little light in my view.

I know I have built up these walls
But hoped there are souls that’d feel
A thrill for all they concealed.

All that remains are fragments of a soul
That no longer hopes to be heard -
Only the whispers in corridors of self
That roam through the chambers of skull.

To a lost friend:
I know I’d breached your trust
With deeds that cannot be undone.
If only you dared to forgive...
O what wonders we would gain!

To a classmate:
If only you knew the power of a call
And reciprocal gestures of faith!
In all of your trials I stood;
But lost when you found your bliss.

To a mistake:
I pity that the best of my past
Is tainted with your brittle words,
And antics of operatic stunts
That still keep on scratching my walls
With signs of desiccated pleas.

Memories in dialogic mode
Mingle and mash up in medleys of loss
And open up a canvas of inadequate lines
That yield only angles of shame.
But here are no great blessed eyes
That’ll scan my being to the core
Or with visions of multifoliate rose
Will uplift from dust my constricted soul
To rivers of sanctifying waves.

Here on the shores of waves warring rocks
I search for a flute that’ll calm all its rage
And gasp amidst currents untracked.

To another lost friend:
You were right when you said
I have too much that is locked
And too much with no access left.
But why didn’t you dare to batter them down
When you found all the hammers that I hid?

I know I am not sunshine on plains
Or a plain little frankincense dawn:
But aren’t there those who’ll warm to a chase
And pick up the gauntlet I left?

To an admirer:
My moralistic self is too much of a bore
And can be all brutish at times.
But still do I feel
The pulse of your dance
And marvel at the honesty I missed.

Bogged within rooms full of too many in masks
I’ve cowered behind armours of pose.

 An extended hand is taken to be cut,
A soft spoken word as sign of distress,
Modesty in speech as arrogance imbued
Lost within books as narcissism rife:
Such are the ways of life in this world
Which only knows opposites of good.

Yet on the overcast mornings of spring
With birds all aflutter in trees,
I gaze to the horizon of light dappled clouds
And feel in my breath a moistness of breeze
That blows from the seas to my shores.
And all of my cloaks of loneliness and loss
Lift up and leave with lightness of dust
And awaken the prayers I was taught:

“Let me be free within expanse of light
All beneath canopies of sky
Let me be free within branches of leaves
And atoms of dust and grass
Let me be free from vanity and lust
And all else that gnaws at our heart.

Let me be free from the nets of this world
And search for the peace among stars.”

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Dastaan-e-Kashmir

A TRILOGY YOU WOULD LIKE....

Poems in Prachya Review