Category: Uncategorized

I can settle for a name
Or a word
For poems or for jokes.
I can settle
Today or some years later
A few more marks stretching across my torso
Where will it end?
You tell me a story five times in a year
The endings remain the same
You share your life and take mine away from me.
I can settle for your stories
Or for your mass manufactured emotions
Or for the quiet unsettling way you weaken my woes
Say the right words. At the right time
I would settle for you if you were the right one,
Mine.
A few more drinks, a few more drags
And we will call it
Intoxication
We will call it friendship. I can settle for a friendship
My instincts retracting inside
I can’t settle for you
I step out with a sleeping heart
Dormant. Not a doormat
Smiles may bloom someday. Let’s hope?
Yet it was so simple, so long ago.

What if I touched your shoulder in a mindless space of joy
Can you swim through your past?
Don’t look at me like that
Don’t inhale my skin
Who can tell if it lasts?
Cities scattered, you grow lovelier
The song of the day is to mourn
I could run to you, small leaps, fast
Follow you where you go.
The smoke rings fly away, your eyes are deep
I could cry, I think I might 
Words have no meaning. The end or the beginning?
Let’s quieten for a while.

Good, and hungry
Underneath my metal bones
I'm doing good.
Just hungry
Care for a cup of tea?

A winter wish to weather away

A summer urge to burn
Leaves of pages I cannot read

There's little I understand,

you know?

I saw a sea of faces
Beautiful, beautiful
Wide eyed. Narrowed. Scholars and sighs
I follow the red bricks and nature's green
But now as I close my eyes
I want new ways of how. Kaise?
Just some words on a wordless day.

I was smiling and I suddenly realised I am my mother's daughter:
I share blood in my laughter.
No escape from the same way my mouth twisted, smirked and hid itself 
All in a second or two
No escape, and it's beautiful.

A thread of fondness glisten quiet 
Buried deep inside the muck
All so vague, a knowing mistake
Out of love. 
All out of luck.
Leaves fall off. My tea shines, cold
A final heartbreak
No final home
Fingers part, a newer start
Feelings come unstuck.
My eyes uncovered, my heart distilled.
Flowers on a feathered field.
Alone and pure and what?
No strength to praise or blinding days
A life of ifs and buts.

A cold smile brews like a spasm
Through a love,
Static in its undecision.
If I could paint a flower, why would I paint it blue?
Delhi rides in autorickshaws, and
We slice through the winter wind, sharp
I keep moving, on from you
Only onwards.
Only a new day. Only if.
A quaint film, a lovely dinner
The city paints its scenes
I pour out my heart, like wine,
They come and take a whiff.
Grabbing joy at a picnic green,
A ribbon drops from my palm
Could I leave myself?
My heart?
My sighs?
The crowd will keep me warm.

I don’t know any of you but
You don’t know any of me than a girl who’s spent
I don’t know myself
Any more
Than I can possibly invent.
Where should I go?
My eyes stretch and crash at the waves
The sun shines on a sea of
Abstractions
We must make meanings, always, he says,
And we are under construction, is it?
I say
Build me a house. Of wood. Or steel
It must not break before I die
Or, you could be sand and I, the seafoam
Together, apart
A restless life.

It was raining, could you see?
Strained my eyes so hard, man.
Not a drop. My eyelids are heavy and dry
And droopy
I couldn’t see the rain. Maybe it stopped?
There was a breeze by the valley
I wasn’t there but I remember my footprint in its soil
If only I could unravel my heart’s turmoil, you’d know
And if you’d know, you’d tell me
Won’t you?
How to wake up and feel the new smell of a day
How to age
And act like it.
For now I will just sit and stare
My time lying empty and bare, but not free
Oh no, never.
I shift cities and lay still forever
Motionless. Emotionless.
Waiting for nothing,
Nothing gets better.