Vortex

Moments locked in time, 
Blue sky withheld by the arc of divine...

Chirping birds hop around,
Green leaves brushed by the whispering winds...

Shadows and brightness intermix:
Murmurs of routine chore and clanking steps
Blur in the backdrop.

Passion needs to be redefined
For different shades of same
Camouflage in rusting rims.

A single glimpse 
Of a butterfly pair,
Of a fly coasting by your car's windshield, 
Of horizon changing colors through the day,
Of moon emboldening even against bright sunshine:
That which give you a moment's peace,
A moment's breath,
A moment's escape.

Evanescent hope traversing 
Through incoherent waves of imbalance...

Gripped in a tangled mesh,
You see the world walking past,
At a faster and faster pace.

Florescent colors,
Laughter and cries,
Silence and wails,
Juggle about in a circus
Of shallow lives.

A blinding giant wheel that numbs your senses of reality.
Caught up in a vortex,
Of past and future
The present dilates,
In incongruencies that make up most of your life.   

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

She easily slips in beneath your covers,
Although you’d locked yourself up,
Blanketed yourself 
To not fall prey to her…

Without approval, 
She sweeps in like the soothing warm wind against your cold skin.
Titillating you.
And places herself cozily 
Inside the auricles of your heart,
Interfering with the cadence of it’s beats.

But adamant,
She plants herself comfortably in,
Expands and grows with every passing second…

But
Her will, 
Her own.

As swiftly and noticeably she enters 
She leaves on no foretold day, 
In a moment, touched.
In another, lost.

A gaping hole,
A burning void,
You know she’s hit you again…

She camouflages herself:
In the golden horizon at dawn,
Till she burns red and leaves again.
Yet you look forward to find her,
And this time,
She’s spread across the dark expanse of night,
In flickering lights below and above.
But she flies away,
With no promises of meeting again.
But then in one sparkling moment,
You see her smile, 
In a human you just met.

She hides in covers of nostalgia at times,
Or in ephemeral moments sprinkled across the cosmic ocean.
She’s too clever.

Her will, 
Her own.
As she leaves you aching,
By her untimely escape
And you know she’s hit you again.

Happiness,
In sporadic moments,
Moments that happen,
When least expected.

Its best to accept 
As her will,
Her own.

Happiness: a warm gun.

Incognito

Flickering lights…
Secret shadows…

They prance about in a lonely street…

Wisps of smoke…
Silent gaze
That chokes your throat…

Splintered fires…
Hollow screams…
Muted monotony..

Sluggish sleep
Incognito dream of fantasies…

Chains clatter
Drugged walk of loneliness falters..

Black, the only colour…

Rusted locked doors..
Roads of a maze…

Slash of knife…
Coldness swiped…
A warm teardrop across the naked skin…

Rugged roads,
Screeching metals…
Dizzied fair of trade…

Gushed whirlpool of crushed identities…

Blue blood
Dripping through melting ice…

Starry skies and distant love…
Moonless night, no one to hug…

Cocooned wings,
Unable to free…
Open wings
Unable to soar…

Stifled breath…
Perspiring wet,
No one to save…

Glossed masks
Stitched smiles
Only too fragile…

Ticking brain
And chiming clocks…
Scarred heart,
Deranged numbness…

Equinox in balance…
The tap of water in ocean,
A lost drop
Bemused at its death.

Jittering pulses,
Muscles ripple….
Incontrollable poignancy
Startles no more…

Blinding flashes,
Head afloat…
Squirms of uneasiness
With hypnotic ego…

Clucking skeletons,
Jarred bare bones with no story to hide…
Sliding metal bars,
Misunderstood words slash upon…

Dreamy weavers,
Warp and woof…
Bright colours
Awake only to shadows of past…

Silky waves,
Smoothened talks
Only too fake,
Pejorative brittleness they fail to see.

Robotic stance,
Withered flesh,
Monotony redeemed
In virtual death.

Malignant laughter stain
Cloaks of everyday chore…
Echoing shrieks
Nightmares dissolve into reality.

Dissipating rumbles
Creaking windows….
Forced resonance
Disarraying spins…

Knotted redundancies
Loose strength and shred…
Overpowering  glaze of betrayal
Blind innocent eyes…

Expansive whiteness
Sheathes you in thoughtlessness…
A moment unrealized
Hours lost in search of it…

Incognito

They prance about in a lonely street…

You and me,
Strangers in the labyrinth we weave…

Incognito

To our dreams and ourselves,
We keep running in this self-made maze,
Only to realize it’s a circle in the end.

Incognito

To the exponentially expanding cosmos
We pretend to live.

Incognito

We are, to life itself.

Reincarnation

Dazzling damsels light up the street,
Puffs of smoke encircle to haze.
Shots of tequila down your throat,
A forbidden thought resurfaces.

Zillions of unwired restless fragments
Buzz across your tired eyes.
Flakes and ashes rain on you,
Yet, you remain placid.

Consciousness and thoughtlessness seem to fuse
A weird mirage of tranquility
Though desperation lurks deep within.
Like a parasite, it consumes you : its host.

Many a rugged miseries,
Slash you through whilst you whine in pain…
No one to hear your qualms.
And no alchemist bears a cure.

So futile, you begin to wonder,
If tendrils that hold your life together rot away with time,
Or become stronger to keep your fragile pieces bound :
A stronger apparel clogged on.

In fleeting moments of laughter,
Or in stabilized fixtures and dilated pupils,
Were moments of life defined…
Plethora of ambiguities cloud your mind.

Bullet holed walls start to cave in,
Premature thoughts start to fade.
Crashing screeches, voices aloud
Only such a peripheral mould.

Vows and ties break down,
Promises : a flimsy word.
There seem to be multiple shades
Encapsulated in one.

Hidden by outer realms,
Heated furnace within awaits to perforate.
Time stretched, time spun faster, time warped
And yet you remain unaware.

Scintillating dots in air,
Hover in a cheesy mimicry
Befuddling your little brain…
As shadows of past begin to reappear.

A lost track and a wrong decision bloat into prominence,
Incompetence and loneliness reigns.
Silent stupor whips you through
Numbness begins to crawl in steady.

Caged are your thoughts and imprisoned is thy soul
By rebellion that despises sanity.
Darkening horizons diffuse your identity
Into a rugged maze.

Whimsical winds seep into you,
Turbulent roars heighten with uneven breaths.
Language falters to communicate
Momentary perplexities you face.

Colours retreat to land of no-return,
Sounds retrace back to their origin.
Recurring phases of the same,
Unanswered : they seize you several times.

A passing silhouette draws you in
Playing with your numbed wits.
Fate and you tacitly agree
To no hope in such a drugged fallacy.

With eyes shut, you see no more,
Ears plugged, you hear no more.
As soliloquy thoughts turn mute,
Neurons short-circuit no more.

Tornadoes and El-Niño currents of yours
Subside with only a memory of a nightmare.
As rays of sun slit across the sky
And golden horizon encompasses you :

You reincarnate as the bird with powerful wings that soar,
As the ubiquitous air breathing life to all,
As the rain that enlivens the soul,
As stars which enchant melodiously.

Life

Was life an arduous journey to a pre-known outcome,
Or was it a never ending wait, for it to begin…

Was it: in forgetting our ultimate fate,
Or was it to realize the beauty withheld in the little beads strung by a weary thread…

Was it a cycle, of birth and death, of love and hate, of an induced contrast essential for everyday living,
Or was it to realize the tranquility in omnipresent transience itself… 

Was it to fill pages of diary in secrecy, yet wanting to be heard and understood,
Or was it to fake the world from your inner being: hiding an identity you fear to lose…

Was it in, lost moments of past you yearn for, or prediction of future: an arrow of time that you could never comprehend,
Or was it a forced fallacy to maintain a perfect harmony…

Was it constant search for unanswered questions,
Or was it inherent to question and seek…

Was it just to satisfy the overtly flamboyant senses,
Or was it complex: that which satisfied every emotions absence…

Was it a synchronized time machine that would move back and forth only to die a certain day,
Or was it mystically enveloped in magic that guided its work…

Was life a foretold tale,
Or was it waiting to be unwrapped by our own hands that mould….

Long Halts...

Blank pages stare back at me
Empty walls start to collapse.

Abundant letters of knowledge remain afloat,
Like blurred mirage of that which seems to exist…

Swiftness slides pass,
Deluding consciousness to static naïve realism…

Brightened periphery, 
Overshadows the hollowness within…

Secret chained words resist speech,
Scarred soul tries to break free…

Juxtaposed with preposterous confusion,
Of wildering thoughts and emotions…

Poignant stagnancy,
A malediction against drifting time… 

A frozen past jailed in memory,
Prances over present disharmony…

Maligned by unexpressed emotions and resistant thoughts,
No door remains to be unlocked…

Armoured glory in hopeful recitals of inspiration,
Yet crashing incompetence mauls over…

Toxic drugs lose their effectiveness,
Leaving behind crumpled ashes of inexistence…

Lights aglow too bright,
But darkness moans a louder call…

A moment of resilience and a charming excitement, 
Too micro in the infinite void space…

In the waves of starlight gaze,
I sway,
Deluded in monochrome of silence,
Serenaded in an incongruent state…

Slit through mortal flesh...

There are moments,
When something passes right through you….

And leaves you startled…

Was it just a passing moment,
Or a knife slicing through you….

You seat yourself in a corner,
The ground beneath, the only support…

Fragile transience gives you hope,
The same which took away what you held some seconds ago….

The wavering heat waves of future and past 
Interplay to form an inconceivable amalgam….

One that leaves you startled…

Your friends shout out your name,
Your parents try to shake you to consciousness,
But you are lost away,
In a perplexed island of volcanic thoughts and dreams….

What you have is lost,
What you lost is what you yearn…

The wait is torturous,
Everyday, you shove into shallow waters
Deluding yourself into presumptive contentment…

And then the hole inside burns,
You need the ground beneath to stable your wavering thoughts…

Sometimes it crashes….

The world within,
And the world outside….

Sometimes the strong cover of yours,
Melts into an underlying fear….

Fear of being faded
From your true self,
Fear of being faded 
From yourself…

The changing realities shape into mazes
That entrap your free soul,
Silence only speaks more of what you lack…
Every tear, drops into another ocean of despaired souls,
You find yourself crucified 
Between the mortals of day and ghosts of night…

There is no identity in the smiling faces of daylight :
Momentary and transient,
There is no identity in the mortified souls that crib,
More permanent and overpowering… 

But you fit none… 

You try to seek,
What the rest never saw,
Only to realize it was already too crowded 
Your heart reaches out to excel,
But sometimes its all too alone…

Engulfed in a world 
That understands too less,
Or understands too much…

There’s a carved out space
For something that isn’t there,
There are moments you forget about it,
But there are moments when that something passes right through you…
And you realize where you are lost…

Sometimes it’s too hard to take in,
What you should and shouldn’t…

Indecisiveness gnaws the clockworks of neurons,
The empty space within reaches out to your throat…

Twinkling light of hope,
Leaves you in darkness which only lights up at moments…

A tunnel too long,
A road seemingly endless,

A walk too meaningless…

You keep trying nevertheless,
You keep walking and searching nevertheless…
At times too robotic,
At times too caged and restricted,

But at times too glorious
That blinds you from your struggle…

And even your torturous step becomes one of your own… 
Every breath of yours, flowers the untread path with life,
Every walk becomes one of your own… 

The world shall laugh,
The world shall cry,
The world shall stare,
The world shall ignore….

But your life is only your own… 

Of the dreams you seek,
Of moments that pass,
That will enliven or distraught 
Is after all, your own… 

My life, my own…

Secrets of my life,
Bounded by the pages I write,
But free by the ink that flows… 

                                                         

The Road That Spoke...

I stared at the road while mum and aunt talked about an old woman’s life who’d visited our home the other day… 

The same road the woman had walked all her past years, 

The same road that witnessed her through the happier and worst of times… 

The same road that breathed the life of so many other people… 

A kid’s excited run towards home,

Or of one running away from an abusive household unable to bear the burden of another feeding mouth… 

A clerk returning home on the 1st day of the month, happily carrying samosas for his family with his monthly wage,

Or of a drunk man in the dark hours of night, wailing and crying for the ones he lost in an accident… 

The same road a young couple walked laughing and sharing stories,

Or of an old widowed women seen as a mad woman just because she talked aloud in the night thinking her lover’s spirit would hear her out… 

The same road traversed by a rickshaw puller whose hands strained and sweat trickled but kept silent while he pulled the burden to take off his,

Or by a thief who tiptoed slicing through the silence, who’d now found an easier life… 

The same road where an innocent heart shaped into a crude one with the harsh difficulties of life,

Or of an insensitive soul who’d transformed into an enlightened one… 

The same road that hid its different shades beneath the grey, 

The same road which had pebbles both round and coarse, 

The same road that spoke of a million lives…. 

The same road that spoke of all walks of life…. 

The same road that spoke of every walk of different lives… 

The same road to that’d push you to run past, 

The same road that’ll invite you to sit and observe….  

And as if the road spoke,

Of all the voices that treaded its bareness… 

Every step, 

A recorded memory…

Secrets locked in delusional simplicity… 

Amidst the infinite voices I heard,

I heard the old woman’s faint prayers…

Her struggle through the only one life she had breathed,

But content in her memories’ constant companion… 

The faint prayers with a fainter smile…

Spoke louder than all the voices I had heard…

Overwhelmed…

My eyes changed since then, 

They never wore the same shade of black…

The horizon now stretched…

Every walk wasn't just my own… 

                                                          

Faltered Walk...

The silver dark rain
Unleashes the drama of unrehearsed speech…


He lies in a corner,
Drenched in unending rain
Of words that he tries to shield
Of a friend,
A foe,
A stranger…


Their eyes pierce through him
Like bullets through naked skin…


He tries to flee
Yet stumbles with blurred eyes, unable to see…


Fear that consumes 
His brawny stand…
No friend,
No foe,
No stranger
Hath told he…


He wriggles even in the bright sun,
Its blaze burning the weak heart…


His self-induced leprosy
Of deluded darkness…


He tries to fit in
With a friend,
A foe,
A stranger…


But his soul lies
Buried in the coffin of the cold graveyard of silence…
His mask wears off through the day,
His sleep, a nightmare
Bowed down by his iron wrought heart…


The morning would only
Wake with chained legs 
To everyday monotony…


He colors his mask
With gold, diamond and silver…
That only gleam to invite eyes
Of a friend,
A foe,
A stranger…


His naked heels hurt,
With every walk on roughened pebbles of earth,
Like invisible scattered uncut glasses…


But his shoulders never tired
As he compared against
A friend,
A foe,
A stranger…


His sandcastle of lust, greed and pleasure,
Glistened till it lasted,
Till the tide of life
Swept past the man-made idiosyncrasies…


His soul was long drowned 
Into the inconceivable ocean bed of dust…


It was only when he lay,
On the death bed of mortality,
No friend,
No foe,
No stranger came…


And gazing out of the pale window,
In the last moments he saw…


A little girl play
With flowers that smiled to daylight,
Her laughter that swayed with soft wind…
He saw what he had lost…


His dead soul afar,
In her curious gleaming eyes
That embraced every song that nature sung… 


Every breath was her own,
And of no friend 
Or foe
Or stranger…


Her free spirit glided through the open blue sky,
Collected raw pebbles of earth as if her own…
Danced in the rain
That stole her fear away…


Her bold determined strides
Across the green carpet of earth
Made him realize what he’d missed…


He’d missed living...

And with a faint smile and lightened heart,
He slept to reunite
With a soul long gone…

Crowded yet empty streets

The streets are crowded but the heart is empty… 
There are shouts and screams that scatter and buzz,
But the thud of the fearful heart mutes all noise… 


The city that was once welcoming with its intermixed cultures and societies
The one that seemed glorious in the shining sun…
Was only one face that she’d known and believed in…
Before the tainted glasses of crashing reality pierced through her…


A gunshot,
A rape,
A murder… 


Words that swept past her, like swift winds slashing through her…


Victim of eve-teasing,
Molestation,
Humiliated… 


Tears of uneasiness accompanies her every night…


Only because she was a girl ?


The city opened its doors of opportunities,
But came in the uncontrollable flood of indecent, immoral crowd….


Living between the golden beams of hopes,
And darkening reality,
She tries to gather herself,
Trying to make the best out of what she has… 


Her friends, 
Work,
Studies… 


Smiles and little moments of laughter and happiness, 
Fill her day and occupy her mind for good…


But every look out of the window,
Every stare that glances past her…
Makes her boil with anger…


An anger she tries to resist:
The fear that got irritated by its prolonged presence,
Now turned into rage… 
She asks herself, 
If she had the right to live,
The right to breathe peacefully,
The right to be treated as an individual…


Answers to which no one speaks…


The dance, 
The songs,
The life in interconnected lights daze her,
Her life is filled with her wishes and hopes…


But the scar of unsafe streets 
And mistreatment
Glows red time and again…


She lives, 
Trying to breathe 
Through the mist of uncertainties… 


The streets are still crowded,
But her heart is empty… 

Concealed secrets in the fogged glass...

In dark stormy seas 
Of disharmony… 
Drenched and shaken into breathless gulps of air…
Seeking for lost identity
Amongst the raging ruffled waters…


Blackened shadows of past engulf you  
In its whirlpool of screams…


Against the beset of growling noises and mocking laughter  
You shiver with piercing coldness…


Till all turns mute, 
And all is enveloped in stillness, 
You sit in fear… 


Hiding from the dark shadow that stalks you…


Your teary eyes
Look up to find that haunting strand of memory
Trying to search for you,
As it passes along the fogged glass in the moonlit night…


You are running away,
But aren’t free yet… 
You are trying to escape,
Yet every moment seems watched and counted… 
As though the devil awaits for the right moment to strike…


You cannot cry,
You cannot smile…
As your mind stays transfixed with elusive persistent fear…


Indecisiveness gnaws your brain,
Pain screeches through inner realms of complexities…


Unwanted unwinding memories scroll before you…  
And your senses jeopardize your existence to numbness…
You try to stand, recalling your identity…
But lost identity makes your knees quiver and fall…


You try to cup the mud grains of reality,
But they vanish the moment you pick them…
Dismissing your existence…


You try to walk,
But your legs seemed chained by the invisible hands of past… 


Life warps you 
In alternate presence of silence and scream… 
Congealed emotions diffuse into vicinities  
That shred the workings of a logical brain…


Tied and crucified 
By the weary unfortunate reel of events,

You wish to be born again,
Yet wake up to a dream within a dream…


Of separation bound by interconnected webs of disarrayed visions,
And incapacity to withhold your own being…


Reality fades into the dark cold night,
Stalking shadows imprint their marks on the fogged misted glass,
Muggy vapors consume your thoughts… 


You try breathing incongruently…
Which had been involuntary once…


You await the day of awakening, 
Removal of what your deluded eyes see…


Yet the light in you fades out to the growing murky stillness…  
Of inactivity and your defused resistance… 


Eyes close once more,
Hoping to wake up to the morning
Of fresh hopes and silent assuring promises…