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.

Death and cigarettes

I blow rings of smoke all the time
Every wakeful moment, each season
Coz death can be a zillion things
I wish to choose my own poison.

Out of the many things that kill us
The most lethal is Boredom
And most obnoxious, of course,
Is the cold altar of Altruism.
Fatal can be a Lover’s Distrust
Ideas can be toxic
One wrong move can prove ruinous
While Humour might be caustic.
A Sacrifice, suicidal
Indecisiveness can be killing
And a Suspicion can gnaw your insides
A Failure might be drilling.

Have you never seen a Spirit die
Or the ebbing of a Passion
Or the necrosis of true Love
Or Faith suffering erosion?

While life hangs on to each labored breath
Death almost always, has no reason.
My smoke rings create an illusion of power
At least, I chose my own poison.

The Alchemy Of Hurt

You wonder if it’s just the tough shell
And I hide somewhere within its patterned whirl
Practicing that arcane art ocean taught me,
The alchemy of hurt- turning pain into pearl.

I wonder when it is going to stop.
My senses have been overwhelmed surreal.
Those distraught neurons are hoping, someday
They would give grief a decent burial.

I close my sky

I close my sky in a square 10X10
And get high on the solitude in my veins.

Each of us dwells in our own microcosm
I chose to close it more- upper limit one
While silence within roars, world is a distant hum
Ties either untangle or come undone.

When you wade through the river of sadness
You leave footprints of that pain
I believe I walked out of that madness
When I closed my sky 10X10.

Dreams and Legends

I want to be the stuff legends are made of
And go on to become one, one day
I wonder what it is like to be happy
So much that I don’t care if I don’t live to see the very next day.

I want to breathe the stuff dreams are made of
And live a life built out of them, one day
I wonder what it is like to feel the win within
And keep the moment frozen in time till my dying day.

I don’t wonder about the meaning
Or the purpose of my life
All I know is what I want-
The power to walk assured on the edge of a knife.

Love

They whisper about this thing called love-
The voices inside my head
While others scream- Screw it!
The age of irrationality has long been dead.
Lazy weekends and lots of space
Are the only things you need
Yet they whisper- how would it be
If you can just let it go; let someone else take the lead?

We The Generation

When net-working on the net didn’t make sense
‘Catching up’ was possible without a mobile
Video parlours existed
And Bollywood was the only style
When even as teenagers we were quite innocent.

Hanging out for drinks at a plush joint
Still manages to thrill
Coz back then
Beers were just a furtive drill
And curfew at home indeed had a point.

Yup! We were not ‘connected’ 24X7
And yes, the cable was a revolution
We were the ones who heralded Coke
And got trapped in a strange juxtaposition
BPOs, Godhara, India Inc. and 9/11.

The generation grapples with its contradictions-
The need to be ‘living in’
And shaadi dot com profiles
Going through parental screenings;
Between the Bhagvad Geeta
and consumer addictions
We the first-borns of globalization.

Don't tell me how to live

Don’t speak to me of accomplishments
Or moving on with the same gusto.
I am just hanging in there
Burning the debris of sentiments
Scribbling a new manifesto.

It’s been a crazy year
And a crazier one before that.
It takes time to resurrect
Time to assimilate,
The world isn’t flat.

Don’t speak to me of love
Or the possibility even
There was a time for dreams
A time, when I was really driven.
The candle light has lost its sheen
And ‘foolish twice’ is not forgiven.

I am no Cinderella lost to cynicism
Just a woman trying not to lose.
Don’t tell me ‘how to’ live
Coz when it comes to survival
You don’t get to choose.