Lullaby...

One more time,                                  Waking off a sleep
I stand...


The temperature of  the real                 Brushes the skin.



The fake fluidity of the mirror
I keep looking for me                           In it...



Afraid of broken dreams
I drift away                                          A bit more
From
The remains of my innocence...




A few dreams gathered,                       Without a reason
The moist eyelashes
The arteries pumping pain
All of it remains                                    Very intimate.




Behind a faded smile,stays
The going away,of,                                A lost love.
Reviving one more of an illusion
I don't sit down,writing                          Another song...




A fancied desire to overlook
Goes down the food pipe                                      
Wet,                                                    Off cheap liquor.





A few words,found,without notice
And another of a pretended love poem
Lost,amidst the silence of drunken halogens...





One more time
I sing the lullaby                                   To myself
Wishing
The length I had walked wrong,is
Washed,off a sleep.....

I am...

Bloodline is inherited.
Not the poetry within.

Born off a poet       Doesn't make you one.
Nor does it             Ease your road.



Poetry isn't born off a fresh rose.
But,
The wounds,off the thorns.



Morning does show the day.
Just that,sometimes
The previous day's glory clings on          A patch of clouds
In the fresh morning sky.



I wanted to write.
But,
My lineage was too heavy.
I was afraid of failures,        Of disgrace
Till I was pushed against the wall.


I knew I had to write.          I just had to write.


People pulled me down.       My shoulders,weighed down off history.
I tripped.I fell.                      And rose again,to poetry.


I have read Tagore.        I have read Shakespeare.

Not Picasso.                  Neither Neruda.


I'm just Pablo.....

Fairytale...

My phone,lying on the bed
Declares existence,a brief glint of light.

The lucid canopy unveils,one more
Of a fairytale love note.



The head,far over heels.
Not a butterfly strolling the stomach's length.
I can't fake,being naive
Peddling one more of a story...




Losing myself in your thoughts
I don't ignore my nightly laze.
In a sleep,filled of fatigue
There isn't an unnecessary fantasy.




A bit of a moment's lure
A bit,off the day's habits.


One more of just a page,in
A novel,they call life.


Trickling off the tides of time,moments
Flip another of a leaf.

In the forlorn sky
One more of an orb sinks.

History cannot be lived in
Time sprints the pages of a calendar
And,abruptly,one more of a life,is
Forgotten,leaving behind,just a name.


Of love,between real and reality
I couldn't finish my fairytale.....

Footpath...

The habit of a half-starved stomach
Sleeps,embracing the insignificant entity...





On the edge of the footpath
A beggar,without a name to call.

All of her self,masked
In some dirty nickels and dimes...





A few familiar flies
Once,twice,thrice
Kisses,grown of neglect
A thick skin of the city's dirt...


The cheap chalice of clay
Every bit of it,blended
In,a graphic mortal,and
The insipid stories of,one more...




Another of the eyes,that dreamt
Wasted,at the length of the poetry,penned...



Alloyed in the last smoke,of
A depleted cigarette.


One more of a spoilt innocence
Contained,in the tobacco-stained walls...





People,or just the loneliness within
Prefers losing itself,in the crowd
If,that could be the cure,for a moment...





Perched alone,more of habit
The lamp post by the road
Hides,in its tired eyes
A thousand stories,untold
A spent footpath of the city.....

Dying to live...

I'm dying to live.

I have a life to live.


For years,I longed,and
I wanted to die...



The road was long.

The sun was harsh.



The scars,time left behind
Never grew skin,again...




Dreams bled,some to ashes...

And death looked the only escape...



One last time,before it's over...


I'm living life,in a day.....

Plagiarised...

The crowd around,the people
It's all so synthetic...


They live,but,penned thoughts
They thought were their's...


Not a dream to sleep with
No life to wake to...


A paper louse feeding on dictates
It thought,was essential,to survive...



An unblemished story is a forbidden fruit.

Stale leftovers are easier,a habit.....

It's not love...

I don't love you as the red rose.

Not because you are a diamond.

I love you as the piece of glass
The darkness between life and shadow...






I love you as the dew drop
That carries the essence of light.

I love you as the pitch black
That defines the brown of the sky...






I love you,not for a reason
Not of passion or intricacies.

It's not that I love you,but
The lurching desire to hate you,gives in...





There's not love between us,just
The warmth you carry,in me
The fragrance you leave behind
They are all,mine.....

The Gariahat crossing...

Today,at length of four summers,abruptly
I stand,face-off,the Gariahat crossing...







In the shadow of the flyover
Rests a crowd of alloy wheels.

A lit cigarette,oblique,between the lips
I walked the footpath,my very own.
The unfamiliar stalls,off the roadside
Adding to the unnecessary noise of the city.

A tram moves on,at a distance
Carrying a morsel of the afternoon activity.

The familiar streets lack the simplicity
The Gariahat crossing,a stranger to me...








On the edge of the footpath,lived
A madman,who weaved his own stories.
I couldn't find him
Not an address,he had left.

The emptiness beside my school
Lost in a mall's plastic busyness.

Cheap stalls flock the roads,as if,wild grass
Breaching lengths of the narrowing footpath.

Someday,somehow,it has been recast
The Gariahat crossing,a complete stranger to me...








Memories,a lot of them,winks by
The days of fresh adolescence.

Many a story,cloudy,overcast.

The first flavour of freedom
In between two naive fingers
The half life of a cigarette.

I dug in,every street,but
Couldn't find a story,I knew.

A minute's Gariahat,has changed,in a minute
The Gariahat crossing,is but,a stranger to me.....

Et cetera...

One more of a sleepless night.

The timekeeper calls midnight.

The cigarette ceases to exist
Severely lacking life.

The pitch black sky of a new moon night
A few grains of shimmer,off the pale halogen.

Amongst what remained of the long dead dreams
They are my hard-earned stipend.

Beyond the fairy tale of love,is written
The story of a real-life romance.

In the pseudo-hectic city life
They are my et cetera...








The fairy of Victoria,she stands still
Tired of her routined life.

At a distance,one could walk
Tagore looks on,the flyover.

Bits of poetry,here and there
Born off the crystal dew drops.

Somewhere,unnoticed,lies
The peeled skin of a love-story.

In the black and white of the city
They are my et cetera...







All,that remained,of privacy,finds
The banner at the busy crossing.

At the length of real and reality
One more story is penned.

Amidst the unfamiliar crowd of a bus
A scent,I knew very well.

At the end of a broken dream,begins
One more of the same affair.

In the intimacies of the city
They are my et cetera.....

Synonyms...

My lucid skies
Sprinkle a handful of lustre.

A bit unnoticed,of reluctance
Wears a bridal crimson.

Erasing off,yesterday's complaints
A new dawn spies in...





The dreams spread wings,again
Life peels off sleep,in the morning tea.

The mistakes of yesterday,alloyed
In tryst with the calendar.

The desire to scribble poetry
Resides,the oxygen in me...





The wait for you
Stealing a sleep,between.

Waking off it,again
In search of my words.

The thirst,to write with you
A poem,untold.....

The day I met Tagore...

The sky was pretty ambiguous.And I was no different,either.It wasn't the clouds.But,an absolute lack of shine.As if,the sun had declined.The cigarette was actually being wasted,than,smoked to effect.It wasn't a Sunday.But,afternoons are lazy.Specially when you've been fired,two days back.

                                                            I was badly tired.The world around,was actually running blur...



               "Son!"
 
Now,what is this?There wasn't a second soul in the entire house!I was definitely hallucinating.

    "Son!"     I turned in the direction of the voice.
                                             
                                   The elderly man was definitely one lazy of his kind,evident from the excessively unnecessary vegetation,that had gathered everywhere above his neck and touched down his chest.His lips were almost entirely missing!
                                            "Grandpa!A Gillette razor costs you fifty bucks!"

"Son,have you imagined Tagore,without an overflowing mane and beard?"

"That doesn't mean,anybody,who puts on the same,comes up and says,I AM TAGORE!"

"I AM TAGORE."

"Really?I thought your episode was over,way back in 1941!"

"Do you think so,son?On my way,I heard some of my songs being played and sung in houses!People reciting me in classrooms and coffee shops!"

"My great great grandpa,you are mistaken.You are not what you think you are."

"Tell me son.What am I?"

"You are a curse."

"Why so,son?"

"WHY??People have been roting and reciting you for seventy-three goddamn years,even after your death.I don't mind.But,you are not the only poet,song-writer or story-teller!It's hilarious how people have turned Tagore,a religion!Do you think it's good that people are stuck over you?And they don't even feel it necessary to move on?To explore,experiment?Writing something of their own,rather than vomitting your verses?"

"Son,I never told them,make me your religion.I never wanted people to limit themselves with me.People love me.So,they sing me,read me and recite me!"

"It's not love.You are just a bad habit,people are afraid of giving up.I just hate you!Whatever I write,my mom says,Tagore wrote it!Nonsense,man!You are no god!"

"Son,I am no god,and,I was never one.People are always afraid of embracing a change,stepping out of their comfort zone.I always wanted change.I always favoured change.This is not what I wanted."

"You know what,I will erase this habit called Tagore."

"Son,remember.Write.People will read you.Write well.People will love you.But,never take away Tagore from them.They will make you,their habit....."

Tagore and me...

Of fondness,and habit,in bits
Tagore grows some more age.

Some of it,dipped in the morning tea
Some of it mixed with the rice and fish bones.

The moments are captured,easily
In courtesy of Tagore.

I start with Tagore
And end in Tagore...







My childish games,my cravings
They are entirely mine.

What if,they don't wear
Tagore's cloak?

My thoughts,let them be
Painted in my commas and full-stops.

Living with Tagore,I will
Write something,my very own.....

She...

She was fearless,they said
In her elegy...

She wasn't worthy,alive
Her afterlife made the front page...

A hundred candles burnt
A thousand words wasted
The smudged kohl of her eyes
Lost in the night sky...

A week later,she was,but,a full-stop
A name,lost somewhere,in the cobwebs.....

If...

The sun looks on,with tired eyes
The clouds fleeting the sky
Only if,he could be one of them
What if,for the length of moments...

The metallic tram-line sleeps,wearing
The dirt of the molten-peach street
Going beyond what lies between real and reality
If somebody would recite a poem...

At the end of office,amidst the crowd
A pair of eyes keep searching
Only if,in the routined existence
He could breathe fresh life,defeating time...

The stale dinner of last night
Flavoured with the broken dreams of dawn
Time pens another novel
Wishing,this could be different...

A bohemian,sleep-lost
Walks some more of the road
In pursuit of a new address
If he could lose himself,even for the time-being.....

An elegy...

There were thoughts.
A lot of them.
Crowding the length of my intellect.

I could have written an entire book
Somewhere,in my mind
And forgotten it,the next morning.

I could have set them free.
The thoughts,as they came
I could have let them go
But,I didn't...

There they lay,cold.
Their blood stained with ink.
Their mortal remains,caged
In the stretch of an entire poem.....

Blur...

Moving out of the darkness
Breaking free of dreams
At the end of a sleep,one more day
Lies trapped,in the traffic...




The very familiar crowd at the bus stop
Amidst them,stands a couple of new faces
Walking with the tired alloy wheels
They will become the crowd,today...




The moments lose life,one after the other
As desired by time's mandate
The few grey strands of hair
Costed,of experience...




Shedding off yesterday's dirt
I sit down to address the tomorrow
At the length of the past and future
My today remains a blur.....

Ashes...

Everything I wake up to,are
All too familiar
I want to sleep,a bit more
In my cushion of dreams...

The city streets,are
A bit too crowded,with faces
I walk a different road
Wishing,I could be lost...

Of being used and abused
Tagore has lost meaning
I sit down to write something new
In the name of poetry...

The guards of time
Have it measured,in days and moments
I want to live,a bit more
Before turning ashes.....

Her daughters...

Our mother is independent
Her daughters aren't.

The sun burns the skin
Beneath,lies complete dark
The day brings in
A fresh struggle for life.

The morning newspaper,witness to
Fresh scars of yesterday.

Somewhere,a daughter
Drowned in vermillion
Burns in the pyre of the price
Her parents couldn't meet.

One more of a life
Turns dust,even before a breath
A daughter is a curse,they said
A mother's tears,unheard,torn apart.

Yet another daughter returns home
Soiled in society's puddle
Washes off the dirt on her
No rain,enough,to cleanse the kind.

Our mother is independent
Her daughters aren't.....

Something...

He was a lad of sixteen
Rebel for reasons he thought
A dreamer,reluctant enough
Of actually growing up.
Dreams had wings,not limits
Life was precise,though
Days turned pages of the past
He defied,giving in
One more time,the sun creeped in
Through the overnight dreams to reality
He did finally grow up
Wearing the mascara of the burnt cigarettes of time
Only that he was arrogant enough
To dream,even in the absence of sleep
And today he walks a road
Dreams on one end,life on the other
A rebel,lasting seven summers
Ends,dawning a new sun
The war won,he smiles at me
I smile at the mirror.....

An ode to love...

A lot has been written,of love
A lot more will find the pen
Many a dream drowned to death
Though some managed the shore
Some turned martyrs,some saints
Most of them,once in a while,bred poetry
Some turned songs,others filling up the bin
And here I am,one fool,lacking words.

Butterflies aren't there,no violins playing
Life is king-size,only in advertised signages
Dreams are better,being dreams
So,walking with her is my reality
A kiss to sleep,one more to good morning
I am no Romeo,she isn't Juliet either
We live,not mere pages of literature
Not just a dream,but,in love.....

The Proposal...

Hold my hand,once
For the meaning of it
And I will be the ring
Kissing your finger.

Look at me,one more time
Meaning everything you wanted to
And I will be the kohl
Brushed against your eyelashes.

Embrace me,yet again
Meaning what it feels
And I will be the fragrance
You carry in your skin.

Speak to me,without a word
Meaning all,silence could
And I will be the lyric
The love song you wanted to write.....

An address,different...

You had asked me
Where do I stay...

There isn't an address
A known post-office
I dwell the city.
The city streets
In the stories of a thousand
The dim street lights
In the eyes
That can't afford a dream
The beggar,by the road
In Tagore's love songs
The green of the fields
Skin,moist of sweat
The crowded buses,and trains
The phone number,of
A girl,without a name to call
The tides of the Ganges
I live in them,with them
In bits,maybe,entirely.....

Behind a mask...

I was,once
Sad and lonely
Having nobody to comfort me
So,I wore a mask
That always smiled
Hide my feelings
Behind a lie
That said,"I'm fine."

I was never fine
But,wanted to say
That,all wasn't good
I needed someone
Who would look
Straight into my eyes
Hear my unspoken pain
And every bit of it
That my dead silence
Wanted to say...

Today,I'm living
A lie called life
I'm just surviving
In the name of life
The mask,I wear
Keeps smiling,untired
Hiding every drop
Of my pain
That silently escaped
My wet eyelashes...

All behind a mask
That always smiled.....

Couldn't be in love...

The midnight cigarette is,but ashes
Unnoticed,lacking tobacco
Swollen plaster of walls,neglected
Speaking difference,a slogan erected
On a lazy winter morning
Lies on the footbridge,basked in the sun
The real meaning of love.
The lack of being
A city of three hundred summers
Walking the roads I knew
In search of love
I end up,lost
Amidst the chaos,people
Tired of living a lie
In a corner seat of the cinema
The sudden growing up of someone
The empty box of popcorn
Moments,that are past
In the crowd of cheap halogens
My city feeds on shades
People walk their lives
Between real and reality
Not even a skeleton of love
The grave-diggers did find
Hides in the words of love songs
The habit of sleepless nights
I came to fathom love,but
I couldn't be in love.....

Of residues...

Time is arrogant enough
Deaf to human words
Never does it learn,to
Freeze in the moment
Some more of life
That,days had measured
Goes down the worth
Matching steps with time
And some of it lies
In the distance of expense...

The summers spent,bathes
In another day's dirt
The sudden growing up
Costing an entire boyhood
The sighs and laments
Masked,beneath a half-smile
A couple of the hair strands
Greyed,lacking green
Somebody goes by,whispering
Time's losing to tariffs...

Someday,somewhere,somehow
All of it will end
Whatever had remained,of
Days of a life
Amidst the thick swarm of names
The name will last,of residues.....

The urchin of the streets...

Yet again I wake up
In my bed of concrete
To the noises of heavy tyres
Travelling the distance of the flyover
A jobless father
An ailing mother
A sister and her dreams
They make my world
My life of alms
The urchin of the streets...

I too had dreams
Dreams that were just mine
Dreams of being different
Standing out in the crowd
Today,I am different indeed
Shunned by the society
I too had a name
Which lies buried today
Beneath what the society calls me
The urchin of the streets...

Sometimes,a piece of bread
Weathered in the city's dirt
Sometimes,nothing but hunger
To feed on,for the day
A life,begged of alms
It remains yet another story
Forgotten,just like the others
Not a name to call
Not a dream to live
It's just another struggle
To survive the moment
Growing the habit
Of being called
The urchin of the streets.....

Dry leaves...

The citylife wheels through
Another routine busy day.

The last grains of sand
Ending some more of a length.

Nobody really noticed, when
The chapter of growing up was over...







The gaps that held a pencil once
Smell of smoke and ashes.

The misspelled words of a child
Are life's grammatical errors, today.

The eyes kohled in fatigue
Not a sleep, that could dream.


The city lies scattered
With the sands of time
In an eye's minus power
The burnt end of a cigarette
Waking up, off a midnight sleep
The pages of an unread journal
In a faint memoir, or
The expense of an entire poem...







Thousands of brittle lives
Dead as the dry leaves of time
The letters, rusted of neglect
Of a yellowed love
The name reads the same
What changes, is, the skin.....

The other horizon...

The rusted,hackneyed society
Filled with painful orifices
The fatally hostile faces
Beneath a pack of jovial masks
Lies in the abyss of darkness
Laments some tattered hysterics
I don't have the zest
To abate the harsh reality
The zenith of success is,but
All,of an illusion.....

Once upon a time...

There was a boy
There was a girl
They met by the hour
Befriended by chance
Loved by choice
Parted with time...




One swallow never made a summer
One summer a lifetime
Three silent winters,between
They met that spring,again...




Words found their way
Amidst patches of silence
Memories breathed fresh life
As if,were yesterday...




They met by choice
They stayed by choice
The sun did set one more time
And love had slipped the hour.....

A eunuch story...

I can't take anymore
I have had enough
Is it really my mistake
That I was born this way?
I was born different
But a human being
Feelings and emotions,my own
Like every other
Of the human kind
But,they are ashamed
To give me even a corner
They call me a eunuch...

Can somebody really change
The law of nature?
A victim of the law
I am,but,a cursed mutant
A child passes by
A certain sense of fear
He hides in his eyes
I walk the roads
Picking abuses from here and there
As I clap the infamous frequency
A life,worth some filthy dimes
I am,but,a eunuch...

I don't remember my doll-house
Or playing hide-and-seek
I don't remember my first love
I was never given a license
To be impregnated of feelings
Today,I'm just another one
Of  God's lesser children
I'm just another eunuch...
Nobody would shed a drop of sorrow
My lifeless body,still and stiff
Yet another story will
Like all other stories
Come to a full stop...
The story of a eunuch.....