Not Your Chaste Woman

I'm not your chaste woman.

No
I am not.


The woman you thought you had made a lesser mortal of
The woman you wanted to assault in the wrinkles of your stinking bed sheets
The woman you desired every morning every night and in the betweens
The woman you wished could be all about you and just you
The woman you felt you could cripple with the bruises and swollen wombs
The woman you had imagined you could tame in the lashes of your fallen chivalry

I'm none of it.

I'm not
Not any of it.


I am the woman who seeks for her lurching appetites
I am the woman who is beyond the idea of your holy grail of virginity
I am the woman who chooses her choices and her consequences
I am the woman who is complete in her world of sense and insane

I'm the woman.

This woman.
All of it.


I am no hero
I am no angel
I am no messiah



I am just a woman, any woman and every woman
I am just a woman; just not your chaste woman

Parallax Error

every scream
to
hold on to
is
but
a beckon
to
let go of

The Daydreamers

not all will begin
the way you had dreamt
for do we really know where it all begins

not all will end
the way you had desired
for do we really know where it all ends



and yet
like a flock of fleeting herds
we will daydream

in search of a miracle

Somewhat Like a Kaleidoscope

there are lives
the have been thoroughly wronged
there are stories
that have been brutally burnt
there are lines
that have been blatantly crossed


we are all broken

shafts of glass
scattered across the cosmos
broken
yet
shining

the pieces of existence summed up in the soul of a kaleidoscope 

Buried, Not Burnt

Is this it?
Where I'm supposed to say goodbye
One last time

The last of the lasts
The finale


One last goodbye to never come back again

Is this it?

Half and Half

half a face
half a disguise
half a smile
half a blank
half a band-aid
half a crevasse
half a glow
half a gloom


the man
the woman
and
the child
perish
in
the difference
of

a half and a half

Weapons of a Musical

If all the weapons in the world could bleed acappellas

I'd wage a war everyday
I'd grow an intoxicating fondness for bloodshed
I'd walk the deserts and the seas smeared in napalm
I'd turn every life that crossed paths an anarchist



If all the weapons in the world could bleed acappellas

I would die a martyr every day

Let the Lights Lose You

don't worry getting lost
not anymore
not tonight

let the lights sink in the nightmares the peach darkness couldn't
let the lights lose sight of the places you've called home in the middle of the dead nights


tonight
lose yourself in the lights
like you wished
you could lose in the dearth of them

lost is a home to house

For Fuck's Sake

" 'Love in the Times of Lust'. Why choose such a theme for an art display?"

"Why not?"

"Explicit is easy fame. Isn't it?"

"As you would like to think. Ironically, the concern at hand is deep embedded and a recurring whooping cough of the system."

"Which is?"

"Don't you feel it? Do you not see it?"

"See what?"

"The divide."

"Sorry, but right now, your words aren't getting to me even tangentially."

"It's funny, isn't it?"

"Sorry again, but what exactly are you talking about?"

"I'm talking of a world pulled together, knit close and tight in imagined boxes and assumed strings. A world where the idea of conversation is virtual, where the lines are blurred and yet, the divide is real."

"And how does that connect to love or lust, be it as standalones, or in unison?"

"Everything is connected. All of it, pieces of one never-ending jigsaw puzzle."

"And how so?"

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever felt lust for someone whilst you were apparently with someone else?"

"I was attracted.. yes. I'm not sure I'd call it lust."

"Have you imagined a different man with you on the bed at the very moment another man was into the very insides of you?"

"Well... Umm... maybe."

"In either of the above incidents, the man who was your subject of fantasy, was ever made aware of your intentions?"

"Both of them happened to be friends. Friends I didn't want to lose."

"Because you are already too lonely. Aren't we all? Less loners and more lonely. The world has to come to such that people look for actual existences in a virtual world. Coming to your perspective now, who said two friends can't have sex without destroying the friendship or sowing seeds of a possible romantic alliance?"

"But...."

"But, you thought it would ruin the friendship. Well, it might have. But, what if it hadn't? We live life off assumptions. Assumptions that have no history, no background, no real reason to build on, and yet, they are there."

"But, having sex with someone when you are dating someone else accounts to cheating. Isn't it?"

"And when you masturbate to the silhouette of the same person in the dark corners of your house, what would you call that? Black and white make sense in theory. Life happens in the greys."

"So, there's no love? Just lust?"

"You know, I was once married. Three years into the marriage, things fell apart. And one busy evening, my wife walked out on me and the marriage, while I was away. When I returned to an empty, ransacked house later that evening, I was infuriated. I wanted her back at that very moment. Call it ego, call it madness. It took me a couple of days to get to terms with the fact that my wife had actually walked out on me. Over the next fortnight, I loathed in self-pity and alcohol. But, as time would have it, nothing got better, and alcohol wasn't quite turning out to be the solution. Over the next month or so, I got physically involved with women aplenty. Lust could address what alcohol couldn't, I thought to myself. I wouldn't lie, I had some great sex. But, everytime I returned to the empty walls and deafening silences of my house, I felt like throwing up my intestines. I felt like screaming my lungs out. If only things would get better.

Expectedly, they didn't.

At the end of it all, I realised something.

Love is a habit of the existence. Lust is a habit of the act. In time, they might or might not overlap. But, in singularity each holds their importance in the truth of their being."






That night, the artist didn't smear his canvas in crimson.

That night, the man fucked the woman.


For fuck's sake.

A Hundred and One

"Seven years since your first and only book was published. Could we expect something coming soon?"

"Not that I know of."

"A lot of critics have already written you off as a one-hit-wonder. What would you say to that?"

"If they were wrong, I could have smirked it all away. It's the hints of a possible truth glaring bluntly at the face, that unsettle me."

"But, you were just getting started!"

"Or maybe, just getting spent of what remained."

"Your book 'A Hundred and One' has transformed a lot of lives out there. It was you who made me fall in love with poetry!"

"We would like to believe our works heal others. But, we don't. We just offer escapades. Getaways from the seething actuality into a make-believe reality, in broad daylight."

"So, realism isn't real? Whatever you have written, none of it is true? Is that what you are saying?"

"What we sell you are half-truths. If we took to writing all of what made up actuality, you wouldn't read us. Even the bravest wouldn't."

"Do you believe what you write?"

"You would have loved to believe so, wouldn't you?"

"So, you are a hypocrite!"

"We all are. It's just that I happen to be a well articulated one, so I am termed an intellectual instead."

"And, why would an intellectual of your stature care to sit here, conversing with an absolute nobody?"

"Time is a terrible bitch. What does a fallen episode from a yesterday have to lose?"

"Do you realise you are a hero for many out there?"

"There are no heroes. There are just demons and lesser demons. The dictates of time have made me a lesser. Success, or the lack of it, is a strange happening. Almost magical. Do you think had I had a couple more books to my name, I would still be sitting here in the middle of a nowhere and be having this conversation?"



As an adolescent stepping into adulthood, I had picked up 'A Hundred and One' as a matter of sheer accident. Hardly did I know, I'd go on to worship the man who penned down the very book. Six years later, meeting the hero in actuality was probably not the best of ideas. Or maybe, not even a worthy one.

When you try finding the human in the hero, the journey scars you in the very process.

Scars last long. Really long. Long enough for a lifetime.

If only nightmares could be forgotten.

The Flight to Freedom

watch her spread her wings
cottoned clouds against the overcast skies
she soars into the wuthering heights
leaving behind all

but

a silhouette

The Immortals of Neverland

why do you cry to the immortals
lamenting chapters of a measured mortality

immortality is no gift
for
immortality is godly

do you want to be the gods
no fears to feed your lurching lives
no idiosyncrasies to drench your barren souls
invincible
unerred
and
immortal


you are fallable
blessed to be
a mere mortal
flesh and bones

that's where life is


the immortals are as godly as the stones and bricks you choose to worship 

Atypical

but
then again
what good is a world
with
no stereotypes 

Meant to Be

nothing is meant to be
nothing ever was meant to be

the gods
had they been
do you think
would have unscrupulously conspired
for
your modest lives to fall in place
and watched you wreck it all
with a wretched smile across the dainty faces


we are no god's children

we are but shrewd manifestations of selfish desires
we are but fragile remnants of abused residences


we are what we have made of us
nothing is meant to be
nothing ever was meant to be

Burn the World

don't just watch
burn the world

burn it all in the wrath of your mediocrity

the world is in a dire need of cleansing 

It's Time

how long will you hide
how long will you hide those monsters within
how long will you cage those beasts in the skin

let them out
let them breathe
let them seek salvation

in
the thin
the stale
the bloodless
the poisoned


you've put on the mask of good for too long

nothing is good
nothing will get better

it's a choice between the bad and the worse
and it's time
you made a choice

The Final Act

nothing remained


all the moments
smitten in love
all the pages
scripted in lust

all of it amounted to nothing


nothing remained
and
each knew as well as the other
but
the curtains would just not drop

the final act was scattered in the dead air

I've Lost Him

i've lost him


who was amazed by the shifting faces of a chameleon
who lived life off chewed pencils, scented erasers, and a pencil box
whose happiness was in the affordable pleasures of a nickel and a dime
whose rainbow dreams were woven off cotton candies and paper wheels


i've lost him
i've lost him to the greedy pangs of an apparent adulthood
i've lost him in the detrimental desire to grow up

i've lost him in the forgotten streets i've drowned my broken sails in

The Afterwar

the war was over
or was it
could you really tell

as far as the eyes could wander
it was all blood and gore
the smell of the napalm shook the air

the rotting corpses
the smothered divides
the settling indifferences
could you really draw the line


wars are never about wars

wars are testimonies of a deafening madness

The Metaphorical

the end
isn't
where the beginnings fall apart

the end
is
ancient
as ancient as
the beginning of all beginnings


the end
is
the only truth

what lies between are mortal metaphors

The Fallacy Called Life

once life sets in
death is inevitable

look at you
rejoice life
every time you survive
look at you
believe in life
every second chance


the fallacies the fallen have fallen to

The Other Side

what
would you tell
you
when you meet
you
on the other side

the same lies
you knew were lies
or
would the lies of an afterlife be any different


for what do you know of the truths

The Life Bioscope

you aren't living
if
you are breathing

you aren't alive
in
your routine breaths



you have lived life
when
you have lived the breathless

when
in those moments of breathlessness
in those moments of a complete void
you have refused to give up on life

what is life if you haven't fought it

An Ode to Lust

how many times
have you woken off a sleep
in the middle of a dead night
hoping
you'd find me by your side

all but a flimsy blanket
that kept us apart



how many times
as i stood right across the distance
have you desired me
not a word here
not a word there
and yet all said

the sudden temperatures riding along the skin
the sudden flush of blood slapping the brain
a maddening numb down the knees
and
a thousand wolves waiting turns

to
fetch me
feed on me
every inch they could
every inch that remained



how many times
in the midst of conversations
have you played it all inside you head
back and forth
again and again
the episodes where you've devoured me

you've blushed my cheeks
you've wounded my chastity
you've scarred my breasts
you've bled my vagina

you've cut me open
for
the times to come
and
the wolves that come along


you wonder
how do i know
how do i know it all

the hungry tides beneath the silences
the blatant truths beyond the apparent faces
the beasts you've caged in the ribs of your being

i've seen every bit
i've seen all


the filthy eyes tell you tales of lust as the fragile penises crumble

Bare Necessities

and
she peeled off
the last
of
every bit of linen
that had smeared
her naked

she
and
her bare necessities
had
finally made peace

The Skies Have Fallen

do you see
what i see
do you see
death

sprawled across the skies
severing through the bloodless spine of your wretched concrete cacophony
the ripped flesh holding on to the last bit of skin
trembling at the sight of the reaper


death is here

A Bloodless Canvas

half a puddle
blemished imprints
of
faltered existences
a singular divide
and
the molten skies


i sit down
and
bleed on the canvas
again

Into the Skin of Your Eyes

I have seen the skies cut open
I have seen the clouds bleed a bruised chrome
I have seen the shooting stars turn blisters on a jaded skin
I have seen the fallen fledglings flutter one-winged


I have seen it all
In the rhyming waves of your floating eyes

The Gods

between
reason
and
faith
the gods become

between
lost
and
found
the gods breathe

between
life
and
death
the gods trade

Before the Romantics

love was simple
love was easy

before
the romantics came in
and
made a big deal of it

they left
but
the fables didn't

and look at what they have done


everyone is a martyr
everyone is poet
everyone is a lovelost
everyone is a broken

because we have tried too hard
and we have gone too hard
and we have come back too hard

we have failed love on the way to the legend of love stories

The Shape of the Rains

have you seen
the tender droplets
of
a fresh rain
trying hard
very hard
to
hold onto the skin
of
the foliage

but
does it really matter
does it matter how hard did they try
does it matter how dear did they love
does it matter how intense did they desire
does it matter how big did they dream

in the end
does any of it all matter


falling is inevitable

The Neanderthals

no conversations
no stories

no words to speak your heart out to
no words to sink your heartbreaks in
no words to ring the ears
no words at all

imagine a world
that
mirrored it all


does the idea run algid sweatlets down the lengths of your shivering spine


in a world
of scripted spontaneity
apparently emotive words
and
emoticons and emojis



what is more appalling

the idea of extinction
or
the life of a fossil

Rip Van Winkle

what if
one sultry Sunday morning
old Rip Van Winkle
woke off his slumber
and
walked the streets

smoking a pipe
the acrid smoulder losing sight
in
the withered tales of time
trapped
in
the greyed curls of an ageless


could you ever tell