Like you were never gone...

The tall glass of white wine,

Standing in my eyes,

The cafe, your favourite in town,

The bus stop, the walk,

The midnight pavement talk.

It’s for real.

But I look into those eyes and become

One with your dreams,

Standing on the boundary

Of truth and illusion.

The moment melts away in the darkness

Of the long night,

Fades away in shadows

Growing longer by the day.

A blur now, the memory finds

A home in the alleys of my mind.

When I close my eyes

You come back to me

Like you were never gone.

Black City

Black city I

You have been used, abused

And exploited by your own.

Mistreated and humiliated

By those who’ve been inside you.

Raped and assaulted

By your own pimp,

And even by those you’ve fed

Your own milk and those who reached

New highs by stepping

On your corpse-like remains.

Yet flooded in tears, wounded by arms,

Slit into pieces, into sects and segments

By those who’ve grown up in your lap,

You crawl to them with open arms

And give them your last breath—

To those who took away from you

And never gave back.

(June 30, 2009)

Black City II

To the sweet sound of horn

I dance, no spot to hold

My foot.  Work, work, everywhere.

I sell my feet, for you to build your tomb.

I wake to drills, and sleep to shrills;

Every season, a new reason

To cheer the falling apart

Of me, the machine

And the rich fat mansion.

I come to feed my womb,

An ant stuck in a hive of bees

I’m stung, hurt and crying for help

But the Lords just raise their hands

Bringing me down on my knees.

Surrendered to laws,

I cut my children to pieces.

But save them from the lethal water,

The guns and bullets of their father

And the hopelessness of the air.

Then they build me wings to fly,

Tracks to race and barns to feed my soul,

They show me height, only to cushion my fall.

Dying to live in a paradise sold

I survive, I dig myself a hole.

(April 17, 2010)

Black City III

The Sith whispers

The darkest scene on the brightest star—

The fashionistas, frugalistas, the arc lights,

The beefcakes and social butterflies.

The stars, the sons

And the moon-lit heights.

All shine, no glory,

They wrap their story

In a bubble of lie.

It’s no star wars, no heroes,

No Jedi.  Just a shadow

Of the old, gold era of a galaxy of hitchhikers.

There is no sign of truce, no peace

No freedom fighters,

No idols for mere mortals,

Pawns in the hands of democracy.

Pawn, the twenty-first century soldier,

The winged horse with an idiosyncrasy,

The habit to look for a white queen,

A mad-hatter. No Alice,

You just see red and see clean,

Don’t weep for the coming of the Gods.

Pray for the return of the dark lords.

(April 17, 2010)

Words

I try to mumble

but my broken tongue and paralyzed lips

Fail.

Can every emotion find its way

into the world of words?

A world with confused grammar,

Punctuated sentences

And organised paragraphs—

from one chaotic world into another.

tangled up in the “rules”.

I try but the wild insane overflow

Of feelings speaks in tongues

Alien to you

and powerless against the wall

you build around your senses.

I wish you could fly you blind

Filings with stray dreams

And build a nest inside

The heart of the one

Who can’t understand

the language of love.

Fireflies in rhyme

Those crooked unstructured words,

Bound together by pure nickel

Sing in your eyes.

Shine in the darkness

Of a silent poem called 'night'.

Broken strings mend,

And the lines dance,

On tree-tops, in a breezy lullaby.

They discover a home

In the distant whispering sparks.

Sparks carrying love notes

And flying into the open skies,

Writing a lyric,

A sonnet, an epic

Of a million fireflies in rhyme.

Stillness

Stillness I

Stillness can be unnerving.
It can toss up a few dead feelings
And bring them back to life.

It can take you back,
Sometimes to a rainy afternoon
When you and I lay down next to each other.
I stretched my hand and tried to touch your finger
I heard you say something
Now I don’t quite remember what.
but I remember I closed my eyes and felt the kiss
Even before you came close enough
For me to feel your heart beat.
When I opened my eyes,
You were still fiddling with my fingertips.

Sometimes on a rainy afternoon
In an idle moment of unusual calmness
I close my eyes
And listen to the rain touch the ground,
Sense some drops running down the shed,
Some caressing the trees, the leaves on their way.

I imagine the pictures as my ears
Wander off to the sound
Of a speeding auto,
Distant voices and shouting children
And I wonder if they are playing a game of muck football.
And then all fades, bringing the music
Of the downpour back into foreground.

Stillness II

Stillness stirs you,
Makes you see things
You wouldn’t see with open eyes.
It pushes you to follow
The footsteps of your heart,
Tells you to find yourself in being lost.
Makes you feel longing,
Makes you feel your own breath,
And makes you seek the company of your own soul.
It tells you that sometimes it’s alright
To have nothing to do but think,
Or sit around listening to your own heartbeat,
Which so often stays drowned
In the noise of things you surround yourself with,
Just so that you feel alive.

Shades of Love

Light and dark
Cast like a shadow, I stand before your lamp
in a room with many walls of perception.
The light, I see it burning in your eyes,
and the darkness in me disappears.


Creation
Creation is
when the water of your faith
falls on the tender roots of my heart
buried under every granule
accumulated over years that I spent
looking for a love I never knew


Lovers
Many times I write of imaginary lovers,
lovers I never had, lovers I never knew.
lovers without a face, without a trace
and sometimes I write of you.


Longing
In the hour that your breath became mine,
a moment encompassing
those years lost in time,
I still longed for you to be mine.

You

There is a beyond

And you are the only one

In this world

Who can take me there.

And there are worlds inside of me

That I can see through your eyes,

The worlds I have been blind to

For years. 

New Eyes

Legs folded, you sit

On the mattress.

The bulb lights half your face.

There is the other side

That I have been blind to.

Your words show praise

For a woman unknown.

Your yogic posture deceives me

And there’s more distance

Between us now than the space

Between our breath.

I know I love you

But your eyes

Drunk in love

More often felt

Never understood,

For someone who would

Be replaced next Sunday,

Changes something inside me. 

Creation

Creation is
when the water of your faith
falls on the tender roots of my heart
buried under every granule
accumulated over years that I spent
looking for a love I never knew.

Diamond

Little sister don’t be sad,

fly by

the bright blue sky.

Once the clouds are gone

It will be your sunny day.

And little sister, when it rains

out of turn you know

that a mystery is about to unfold,

and your eyes are about to see

that at the end of it all

the night will be beautiful,

studded with diamonds.

Things

Old Red bag,

tickets to a movie,

and to cities with distant names,

that restaurant bill

with the delicious soup,

long shut, replaced by a coffee shop,

the t-shirt with invisible holes,

the coaster from the garage pub,

the book with yellow pages,

with aged poems,

the image of a dim-lit night,

the creased photo of you and me

almost forgotten,

now stare at me.

Berlin night

I can jump the wall

and walk hand in hand

up and down the dancing hall,

with you, happy and high

and forget to remember you

when the night is gone.

Four strange men

I The Spanish fool

Sitting in the empty space

On the left side of the bench

In the autumn cathedral garden
Is the Spanish fool.

He touches her nose-ring,

Hair and hand,
Praises her beauty hoping

She has no other man.


Too fast, too cool,

He’s trying to get there too soon.

A photograph and a number

He thinks that’ll get her.

“An old trick,” she says.

And walks away.

“The park’s got many more!”

Smiles the Spanish fool.



II The Baget man

“I love baget!”

A Tunisian way

Of stringing together strands

Of broken conversations.

“I make 500, 600 every day.”

“I speak good English, no?”

He says, smiling, and the dimples

Stretch into the burnt lines on his palms

–a tiny price for extra hours

And fruits of freshly burnt cents.

I try, but only half understand
As the sound from his lips

Drowns into the music

Of the harmonious piano.

Playing for those

That are lost in translation.


French, German and Arabic


He tries them all, only to learn

That there’s just one language,

The one that’s no more necessary.


So we dance in the empty bar

Moving to bring

Two distant worlds in line

With words that no longer are
An obligation to building castles in the air.

Then stealing a rare moment
From his laborious days, he tries again.

I love Bagets!”
“I love making Bagets!”
He looks into my eyes.

“But those Bagets very cheap.

You very expensive Baget.

I love Bagets!”

A Tunisian way of saying 
‘I love you’.



III The French souvenir 

Billy Jean on the piano

And the man from a French
Souvenir shop.


The rose from a Bangladeshi

Flower vendor—

The cold of the rainy night.

The ‘I love Paris’ lighter,

The Indian clove cigarette,

The smoke that smells of us.

The things you said

The words I didn’t.

And the moments that were lost

In a picture you,

A picture me,

A picture of us.

From Bonjour to Bisou

And Good night to see you.

Just words of the French souvenir,

Of Billy Jean still beating my heart

And the petals still dancing inside
A notebook from a long time ago.



IV The Israeli night

There’s difference between a Berliner,

Four vodka and berry shots.

It’s the distance between the lips

Of an Indian dance and an Israeli song.

He speaks of Tel Aviv
Of Palestine and Israel

And his small town somewhere
Far beyond my dream.

I, of Indian summers

In the cold of this night,

Of Mumbai rains and the little

Joys of my life.

The night’s no longer cold.
Melted in the heat of clasped hands

And the warmth of the dance,

It turns bold.

When the music’s over

Our lips will sing to the tune

Of passion where our divorced

Worlds will meet in peace.

I find love

I feel you like I feel the sunlight
On me when I close my eyes.
And I find you behind the one
(Amidst a hundred doors), I
Choose to open.

I feel you like I feel the rainbow,
In the invisible summit of rays and drops.
I find love in serendipity
Of the words yet to be born from
The seed of my thoughts.

Black city I

You have been used, abused
And exploited by your own.
Mistreated and humiliated
By those who’ve been inside you.
Raped and assaulted
By your own pimp,
And even by those you’ve fed
Your own milk and those who reached
New highs by stepping
On your corpse-like remains.
Yet flooded in tears, wounded by arms,
Slit into pieces, into sects and segments
By those who’ve grown up in your lap,
You crawl to them with open arms
And give them your last breath.
Those who took away from you
And never gave back.

Anthem for the lost

Who wants to sit in a rocking chair
When there’s a see-saw in the garden,
And you can go up to days of love
And down to lusty long nights
One thing at a time.

Who wants to be a raging bull
When you can hit that elusive bulls-eye
With your charming archers arrow.
Who wants to walk the oft-driven path,
When you are that doped Alice
Discovering your own burrow.

Who wants to follow the misleading compass
When your heart can show you the way.
Who wants to weigh the pros and cons
When all you want to do is play.

Who wants to bury her gift of art
When life is one big Broadway stage.
Who wants to go to the end from start
When there’s mystery in opening a random page.

Who wants to build an earthly nest
When you are fixed to the wings of fire.
Who wants to stick to measured flights
When the winds can take you higher.

And who cares for those who think you’re strange
When stranger things have happened to you!

So trip through the marathon
From monsoons to summers to frost
And stroll past the last lap,
Singing the anthem for the lost.

Smile

When dark clouds surround you
And there’s no sign of the sun,
Smile, it’s going to rain on you.

When thoughts cry out
In the lost alleys of your mind.
Smile and renew your spirit.

When fears of fire
Burn your soul
Smile and pour the water of life.

When the pain of the past
Covers you in shrouds of shadows
Smile and hug the present.

When you’re blinded by light
Close your eyes
Smile, and see with your heart.

When too many voices ring
And you are deafened by chaos
Smile and feel the silence within.

When you are lost
Alone and have nowhere to go
Smile and look to me.

Unsung Heroes

Their cries were silenced by
The fire shots of cowardly power.
Their silence shut up by
A mother’s cries.
You were lined up and shot
And brought down like a card
In a pack of jokers.
Fallen prey to serendipity
Of unfortunate events played out
By the Gods of violence
And makers of hatred
In a world created by the devil
Of power-play by those
Who know not that life is about living,
And not taking another life.
And you died fighting or fought dying
To a struggle for peace, unattainable
In this world where love
Is only a puppet in the hands
Of those unidentified faces.

Tears freeze in the spectators' eye,
As you perform the last dance of glory
Going down in the song of your obituary—
And become yet another unremembered name
In the midst of a thousand unsung heroes.

Silence

Down, down, down you go.
Go to the depths of the dark well.
Well of grim thoughts.
Thoughts that grow on trees.
Tress whose branches run haywire.
Haywire words falling to the ground.
Ground of dead leaves.
Leaves that fly to the tune of the wind.
Wind bound in an invisible force.
Force that drives you to madness.
Madness that takes you to far off lands.
Lands that end in the brutally peaceful sea.
Sea of unfathomable silence.
Silence.