My Salad Years

It was rebel poetry
And Ayn Rand.
Kipling, Kafka
The whole clan.

Two Ts and a denim
Train ride second class
A little went quite a way
With Saki and Richard Bach
The world was pink
And veins were green
Dreams were doped
With adrenaline
Today’s patience
Tomorrow’s pleasure
Illusions real
Love forever

Yes, it was reckless
And I couldn’t care less
There was always another day
To clean up the mess
It was adventure into pain
And tryst with failures
Restitution, resurrection
And deep-swigging fears
Introspection, exploration
Sandburg and Freud
Of first kiss and inhibitions
And moments celluloid

It was Howard Roark
And choked tears
Angst and attitude
My Salad years.

Chase

I keep searching you amidst a thousand faces
And it is foolish but love is a strange thing
Every passing car and every side-walk
My butterfly hope, everchasing

Solitare

I sift through the pebbles of time
And pick the emerald in your arms
I weave it in your thoughts sublime
And make a solitare for my soul

To My Failures

Is it that I failed a lot?
Or did I want too much?
Is the zero all I got?
Or what I have doesnt count as such?

They said 'emptiness is just the begining'
Each void to fill a goal
But I know what is like to never stop dreaming?'
And never have a dream become whole.

When all you get is a string of failures?
Do you cut your dreams to the scale of winning?
I dont know which is the bigger of fears
To fail a dream or let go of dreaming?

I have a million desires
Some of them never to be fulfilled
But burn me on a thousand pyres
My hopeless yearns would not be stilled.

Did you ever fear losing something
That you lack and would never have?
That void is what gives meaning to my being
The hope I hold on to when it's all I have.

Portraits

Love is the sand etched words
Drenched in thoughts of Seagull cry
Where the Ocean lies down to sleep
And beach kisses her foam-laced skirt.

Pain is the Ten Watt feeble light
And its one swarm lovelorn moths
The passion that wakes at purple dusk
And fails to burn to end of night.

Kiss is dew on half closed buds
And forest-fire on summer night
Seagull cry on a purple dusk
And thoughts of those sand etched words.

A Soldier Never Dies

I’m on the edge of suicide
Waiting for life
To flash past my eyes.
Instead I hear a voice
‘A soldier never dies’.
‘I am tired, I seek no adventure’
A fatigued voice replies.

For sure, no past flashes by
All I taste is irony in the air
Mocking my fatigue and despair
If life is your war
Nothing is fair.
It doesn’t end just coz you want it to
Try ruining it
All you destroy is you.

The only option is not to give up the fight
Coz, martyr in the battle may be
A soldier never dies.

Some Mornings

Your smile touches my eyes
When the curtains of rays
Drop down on night
When I brush away
The tendrils of sleep
I wrap in your scent
And inhale deep

What we feel
When you wake up next to me
Let’s say its magic
And let it just be
Let’s not name this
And set us free.

Sunbeams

Night I draped the moonshine quilt
And grew kiss-flowers on my bed
I poured my tears back to the sea
Waved to the stars and rowed ahead.

I see sunbeams in your smile
And follow the lodestar of your eyes
I throw myself from edge of the world
Wings survive, fear dies

My day-dreams catch the rainbow
Like Butterflies on pollens of desire
I row to the sunrise over the sea
Let sunbeams set my heart on fire.

All that I know about love

All that I know about love is
It keeps getting trapped in cerebral games
Hedging heartbreaks
Mitigating pains.

All that I know about love is
It keeps getting trapped in analysis
Like differential-calculus of Passion
In the cost-benefit matrix.

All that I know about love is
I keep losing it in a quagmire of spoofs
It hides somewhere deep amongst falsehoods
Like an elusive promise, a mysterious muse.

आत्मविश्लेषण

अभय दो!
मणिहीन तमस से
विवेक के कारागार से
मुक्त करो!
प्रभंजन कंचुली से
विषाक्त सर्पों की देह तुष्ट हो।
आत्ममन्थन की प्रताड़ना दुष्कर
श्रापित दान
क्षय हो कुरूप दर्पण !
दो मुक्ति का सोपान।

The Taste Of Life

I’m hungry for the taste of victory
Bring me challenge
and the promise of glory
I want live a Hero’s story

I don’t fear any death
Only a life that’s mundane
Give me dragons or equal adversary
I want to don a knight’s armory

I want to live for the day
That is worth dying for
All I want is a Hero’s glory
An adventure in a knight’s armory.

To You...

Fill my silences with poetry
Say my name
Call for me.

Like that solitary moon
Smoldering through the inky nights
I hold the promise of you
In the void of my closed eyes.
Wrap your fate-line around my destiny
Hold my hands
Call for me...

Questions-I

Most of the times it’s ‘why not me?’

If the sky can accommodate so many stars.

And at times I am tempted to ask ‘why me?’

Life, do you always teach lessons so hard?

A Vaccuum Called Home

I have a home I lost
It still exists like it was
But I didn’t know when I moved on
I would also move beyond.

Do you remember that stupid definition
Of 'Vaccuum’, the schools had taught?
I learnt, it’s having nowhere to go
When you are broken and all distraught.

And may be
Vaccuum is not, not having a shoulder
When you need to hold on.
It’s watching some idiotic flick
And not having someone to say to
‘What the hell is going on?’

Tell you what,
You never miss home
Until you know it’s no longer there.
You waltz the world in your suitcases
To flop back on your favorouite chair.

A Poem of Fury

Someone snatched
and tore apart my poetry
Filled it with images
of a blood-stained VT.
It’s a strange numbness
They make me suffer.
It’s the gunned down Leopolds
My pen can’t get over.

Of the ones I want to kill
I have no names
It’s everyone who cheered, failed or took advantage
When they set my Taj on flames.