Your Beard Smells of Old Smoke

"Your beard smells of old smoke", you'd once said.


I wish I could have told you of all the times, every time I rewound the poetry in the skin of a singular sentence
I wish I could have told you, how your hair smells of night jasmine; how a man of orchids had given in to the essence of a night jasmine's flourish
I wish I could have told you of the monochrome desires bleeding in the heart of the neon citylights and pastel lives; pastels have always been exaggerated, monochromes misunderstood


Beyond glass existences and pretended conversations, lies an entirety of restless unsettling essays; unpenned scribbles that made nightmares look lullabies
Beyond plastic flesh and ceramic bones, lies the whole of faceless demons and nameless fears; skeletons lurk in dark, blank spaces


In a war of similars and congruents, differences drew first blood
Between candids and corpses, second chances hung from semicolons


I could have resurrected and called it Renaissance
I could have scripted good mornings in goodnight kisses



But, this time, I'll let it all out, at a full stop

I am tired of beginnings that end

What's In a Name

Where had she come from
Where was she leaving to

What did she call herself in the silences

Who was she beyond and beneath her


I knew nothing; none of it at all



And yet, the eyes met
No comets fell
No meteors rose
And yet, the rains lashed the feeble city lives
And yet, the silences thundered the voices in the head
Not a moment stood still
Not a word was spilled

And yet, there was poetry in the blood and in the bones
And yet, there was life and there was death, wrapped in the skin

Where'd the Stories Go

Where do you think the stories go, at the end of it all

Dawns always make good mornings
Dusks often are buried alive in obituaries

But then, what happens to the stories when the lives in them leave them for dead

Are they buried, burnt, or, just sprinkled in the blank spaces, between pretended existences
Who tells the tales of the stories

The Goodnight Lullaby

The length of an entirety, the entirety you call home, wrapped in four fragile failing walls
And yet, I can feel myself choking on the dead air, as if sinking to the very entrails of a filthy ocean
The whole of a crowd, thick and filling, somewhat like a never-ending horde of blood-thirsty locusts
And yet, I can feel myself strangulated, my windpipe left for dead, in a loveless foreplay, with the comfortably unsettling silences of a ransacked cemetery


I still remember the night
It was a usual night with an unusual sky, patches of pale crimson and a tinge of beige smothered right across the ribs
It was the night I had freed my wife
I had freed my wife from the woman living in her bones
For, my wife was in love with me while the woman inside had rented out her flesh
And I couldn't watch her tear apart my love, gradually, inches by the skin
So, I held the woman, firm by the throat
And dug my fingers in
Fingers don't cut through; fingers dig deep and blunt
She blushed as if shot in blood as I felt her neck break and wilt like a spineless invertebrate nightcrawler
And then, I cut her equal, right between the breasts, all the way down, till the very end
The woman bled as my wife watched it all, in assuring stoic silence
But, the woman still had my wife's face on her
And, I had to conclude what I had begun
So I sat down to work, yet again
And as I carved her out and chiselled through the thinning lumps of flesh
I watched my wife's face disappear, bit by bit, somewhat like the setting sun across the fading horizon


My wife. My mother. My father.
I freed them all
One by one, one at a time

The idea of singulars is beautiful


But, what do I do of these lives
A pistol to his head, a bullet in mine
A knife to her mouth, a blade in mine
How do I free them all

Too many dead to be put to rest
Too few hour hands on the wall clock to cleanse them all



Tonight, let me lose another night's sleep as I put to sleep another goodnight

The Last Love Letter

Have you ever looked up the midnight sky wondering if the star-crossed love ballads have made their way beyond the cursed clouds?
Have you ever lost your very existence in the midst of a nowhere cramped up for blanks, pondering over the scent of possibilities in a singular fragrance?

Have you ever woken off a tender slumber, fingers losing their way in the abyss beneath the thighs, the canopy of hair eclipsing the contoured terrains across the ribs, minutes away from what remained of the umbilicus, mauling the very idea of outlines as you breathed my poetry in your skin?


If you have, you'd know where to find me.

Listeners - Unplugged

|| silences are often the best answers to questions we could never wake up to ||

The War at Hand

We are all at war


At war with beliefs
At war with spaces
At war with blanks
At war with existences
At war with voids
At war with worlds


We are all at war within and without
We are all but at war with our very own blood and bones and the flesh that wraps them around


Ripped between what has become of us and what could have
We cut our beings open
Caught in a star-crossed affair of ifs and buts
We carve out skins bare
Caged in the differences of dusk and dawn
We lay down our pieces falling apart


But, we never bleed alone
For, we are all at war
And, wars aren't about singulars


The war to hold back drenched eyelashes to our empty monologues
The war to write down unseen assaults as if they were poetry
The war to silence screaming lungs lamenting at burnt houses and fresh walls
The war to keep remembering our stories in the seas of plastic faces and make-believe lives



We are all but at war with our very own blood and bones and the flesh that wraps them around
We are all but slowly yet steadily rushing to the cancer that is us

Who We Thought Were Men

When was it, the facade of mascara you wear everyday like a new dawn, became your actual face?
Do you remember?
When was it, the pitch dark kohl you outline your lost eyes in, somewhat like an eclipse, fell weak to the cancerous dark circles?
Do you remember?
When was it, the love you've always had for blue, as if a mermaid afloat the oceans, could no more live up to the blunt bruises?
Do you remember?
When was it, the tooth fairies you'd desperately hoped to be true, as if living off Aesop, failed at being, to the flesh-digging fangs?
Do you remember?
When was it, the cliche fragrance of ruby red roses you'd pined for every adolescent afternoon, drowned in the stinking inebriated breath of bloody hands crawling inexplicable lengths and depths of your measured skin?
Do you remember?


You'd say, every time he wore a new face, a different one from the last one, to the piling heap of rotting flesh, you died a day more.
And I'd smile, a shade paler than the last one.
You'd say, every time he was inside you, living an entire existence elsewhere, reciting letters to an address unfamiliar, you died a day more.
And I'd smile, a shade paler than the last one.
You'd say, every time his lightning struck thunders down your wuthering spine and stormed entrails trembling from the rains of yesterday, you died a day more.
And I'd smile, a shade paler than the last one.
You'd say, every time his crippled crumbled vanity pinned the limbs of the questions living in your wrinkles, you died a day more.
And I'd smile, a shade paler than the last one.
You'd say, every time his intoxicated eyes and rogue desires crossed paths with your humble sobriety, ripping it as if cut open, you died a day more.
And I'd smile, a shade paler than the last one.



Who we thought were men, carry corpses of women like they were meat, as their brittle penises play hide and seek.

Who we thought were men, pluck bones of men like they were toothpicks, as the lynched vaginas and slaughtered breasts choke.


Do the dead smile though?

Where Went the Love Letters?

Where went the love letters?

Where went the love letters
Where went the old-school romantics
Where went the love for words in love

Could you ever tell?

The first ever love letter
The nervous veins shuddering the brittle daydreams and the hesitant desires
The first ever wry smile at the length of the crooked innocent lips

Could you ever forget?

Love changed faces as letters knocked newer addresses and unfamiliar habits
Some sailed the puddles, some flew the skies; paper boats and paper planes weren’t nostalgia back then
But the wait, the wait for the letters always felt the same; pacing heart rates and cold sweat galloping down the spine

Could you live it all, one last time and one more?

Where went the love letters
Where went the poets scattering words like rainbows across overcast skies
Where went the romantics and their ballads that smelt like petrichor

Could you rewrite it all, for the sake of it?

Where went the love letters?
Could you ever tell?

Dead Aesop's Fable

the dead decompose
the undead rot
the survivors tell war tales by the street begging for condolences

;

life seems the only stranger to existences

Hate is the Antonym of Love

Do you have a dictionary

Look up the dictionary
What do they say is the antonym of love
Sorry what, what’d just say
Hate is the antonym of love, you say
Yes, you are right
Hate is the antonym of love; the opposing exact of emotional upheavals, or so we are told

I was told the same, for you and me, we are no different, you see
Dictionaries don’t quite decipher differences half as much as we do
So much so that I often wish a life of grammar that effortless yet congruent

So much so that I wish hatred could be the way out of love
So much so that I wish hate was indeed the antonym of love
So much so that I wish wars could be the way out of wars
So much so that I wish bullets could avenge bloodlines
So much so that I wish black and white could be the way out of grey
So much so that I wish apathy could fathom what lies beyond binaries
So much so that I wish band-aids could heal heartburns and scarfaces
So much so that I wish words were all about words, just about words
So much so that I wish acquaintances never turned strangers ever again
So much so that I wish deaths weren’t an everyday but once and for all

It costed me blood and bones, and, skin and flesh
It costed me the entirety of a marriage and countless liaisons called affairs otherwise

It costed me half a life of a lifetime to know we have been lied to
It costed me half a life of a lifetime to know we should have burnt those dictionaries long before we adulted
It costed me half a life of a lifetime to know grammar is but relative; congruency and differences are but subject to conveniences


Hate isn’t an antonym for love
Hate never was the antonym for love

For hatred never healed the wounds love had left behind; hatred did cut deeper though


Hate isn’t the antonym for love
Indifference is

I Am

In a cosmos of ceramic beings and toothless tales
I am the poetry and the poet

Between skinning lives and parching homes
I am the death and the corpse

Look for me in the concave entrails of your imposing insecurities
I am the salt to your bruised vanity


You are nothing like me and I am nothing of what you’d desired
You are just another casualty
I am the conspiracy

Hail the Insane

What do you call them
Legends in love
Or
Martyrs from a Micawberish matinee

What did they get right
Where might have you gone wrong
You have often wondered
Haven’t you

No
Nothing right
Nothing wrong
Magnum opuses don’t come with a recipe

It’s the arrogance to stay insane
It’s the disdain to become maverick madmen in an obsessed world waging wars for the sake of sanity in the name of equality

Sane is a dystopian folklore; hail the insane

felo de se

Death isn’t a choice; death is the only obvious

I.

We have probably been telling us the same old lies over and over again

But, is one lie told a thousand times over, half as real as the truth

But, is one lie told a thousand times over, half as appalling as the truth

And yet here we are, living mirages over and over, hoping this time around it’d be life at the end of the desert

If only, the illusion of life was half as rousing as the idea of life

But then, we hope

For, the promise of a dawn inspires

For, the actuality of a dusk weeps cold sweat

But then, what happens when the dawn just doesn’t seem apparent enough?

Broken promises are like broken pastels; survival turns synonym for life in the bargain for renaissance

If only, pastels could scream in broken spaces

II.

What happens when the illusion wears off?

Do you wake up like you’d, off a usual night’s slumber

Does death instead make sense after all, to the disillusioned existence

If only afterlives could be penned in novels and essays

But then, would you write poetry if you could become?

III.

This wouldn’t be the first time that I have desired death

It was a long time ago; long enough for desires though not long enough to be forgotten

Long before I had killed Gandhi

Long before I had sung ballads at my funeral

I had desired poetry long before I turned poet

IV.

The lies have dropped dead somewhat like the withered yellow leaves of the last twig alive

The disguises have given in to the betrayals etched in the faces beneath the skin

I have walked in and out of love at the length of broken marriages and wrecked affairs

I have sold borrowed intimacies and voyeured adulteries like they were groceries

I have let acquaintances burn in the name of a thousand gods because it felt good to watch

I have erased the entirety of existences like they were scribbles off a pencil

And yet, I haven’t found life

I am not looking for life, not anymore

V.

Death isn’t a choice; death is the only obvious

Society and Otherwise

the ones who could
auctioned souls at meat shops
borrowed desires at brothels
rented faces at highways
bred mediocrity
and called it society

the ones who couldn't, slept to ghosts; poetry in the breath, whiskey in the oesophagus

An Antinational's Love Letter to the Government

The Government tells
The Government tells a lot
I don't listen to any of it
For I don’t believe any of it


For I don’t believe in tell-tales, myths, fables and folklores
For I’ve learned to believe that sees the eye, my eye
Anything and everything above and beyond are but figments of fiction
Lives that breathe in fiction are more often killed in the brittle pages of yet another novel
And if I had to live fiction, if I ever desired to
I’d rather live and die a fiction of choice, not one of compulsion



If the Government tells you to let go of your faith, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you what to eat and what not to, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you what immorality might cost you, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you to hate and kill in the name of God, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you how it disapproves of how you behave, let go of the Government

If the Government calls you an anomaly for who you are
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you an absurdity for who you sleep with
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you a disease for what you write
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you an antinational for what you believe
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you an aberration for not adhering to the Government's idea of democracy
Fail the Government

Let go of the Government
For the Government has long let go of you
Fail the Government
For the Government has long failed you


The Government has faces
And the faces will come and go
But the idea of Government is not on sale or for bargain


The Government is just an idea, another abstract, if not for the people


And, the Government is but about governance, and not forced acceptances
And, the Government is but about governance, and not a nation in itself

The Government that believes otherwise is cancered


And if the Government has let go of the very people, and if the Government has failed the very people, what more is it than an idea misconceived
And don’t we all know, miscarriage is but a synonym for abortion?


A cancered Government is no better than a cancered mortal
A dead Government is no better than a dead foetus

Bukowski's Dream

Have you ever sought life in the stench of the slimy enamel and the soiled bones of a spoilt foul flesh
Have you ever sought soul in the severed skin of the spineless existences of insolent bedbugs
Have you ever sought universe in the vacuum beneath the death mirages of a stranded desert


My poetry resides in the midst of measured lives and busy pretences

When They Finally Burn Me

When they finally burn me
I’d have died a thousand deaths

When they finally burn me
I’d have died a thousand deaths but not lived lives enough


And yet every time I died; I’d tell myself this would be the last of them
And yet when the epilogue knocks the door, I’d tell myself this too would be an erstwhile lost in time


Flesh and bones smoked off a burning cigarette right to the ashes



When they finally burn me
I’d have died a thousand deaths
When they finally burn me
I’d have failed at life


The dead would mourn the death somewhat like the poet mourns the poetry

Chords of Discord

waged wars and riveting rebellions
at the end of it all
we eventually make peace
for the world is us and just us

vendettas breathe in between existences

Que Sera Sera

we befall where death beckons us
we become where life belies us
we betroth where happiness begets us

Motif

she sat up all night
and
bled by the piano

tales of an otherwise, shredded and minced in a rancid melody 

Barebones

between your chameleon thoughts of a desired love story
lives are traded in flesh and skin

but then, what about the barebones?

Poetic Justice

if words could cut half as deep as a poet's insides
it'd wither your entrails and shrivel your lungs and leave you for dead before life could whisper


the day poets turned poetry
mankind would be a long lost stranger

But Why

i wish i could be indifferent like it were true
i wish i could put on the facade of ignorance i bought off the inexpensive grocery store
i wish i could believe for once, stories were just about stories
i wish i could undo it all; every bit of it, every last of it

i wish for all and none of it
somewhat like the life of an oxymoron


why is it that distances seem ruthless cruel only sometimes
why is it that sometimes, existences grow flesh, become skin

but why

Homeless

i once knew someplace i called home

a roof, a floor, and four concrete walls
i had once thought that's what it meant to have a home

year after year i keep coming back to the address i had always called mine
the same bed, the same linen, the same fragrance
and yet, it has never again felt like home


i once knew someone i called home

a name, a heartbeat, and a hundred thousand dreams
i had once thought that's how it felt to have a home

day after day i keep coming back to the breath i had once kissed mine
the same mascara, the same lipstick, the same perfume
and yet, it has never again meant home



the bohemians lost in translation, where do they live anyway
did anyone ever know

Lost

freshly severed pieces of a morning's catch lie served, pale and cold
spoilt leftovers from last week pile up like corpses, stale and stinking

the lurking depths of the hollowing entrails have lost appetite


half a glass whiskey, many a burnt cigarette; they are today's palette
stories old and new, bleed on the canvas you'd imagined off my parched skin

the withering crevices of the dwindling hippocampus have lost love


crumbs of death and shreds of life cohabit the weeping blank spaces
you and me drown in the deafening rabble of the in-betweens

the curious semicolons of the rancid existence have lost poetry

The Symphony

beheaded corpses and spineless skeletons

we are but marching to the final act

Taken In Time

we could have been lovers gazing the star struck skies
we could have been wedded in the lush green and echoing crevices
we could have been wrinkled in the dampened walls and cramped up blanks
we could have been a forever tale


but as time spends some more of what remains of it in circumstances
would we ever really know

Barely Surviving

we aren't alive
we are barely surviving between deaths until it all adds up to the end of times

The Essence of Death

have you ever felt death
death that would kill you and yet you would still be breathing
every minute of your existence wishing you could choke on the awkward lengthy silences


have you ever slept to your love
night after night
have you ever woken to your love
day after day

all of it out of a mere habit of coexistence and not love
wishing every night you could kiss goodnight like you meant
wishing every morning you could kiss goodmorning like you cared

that's the essence of death

Years From This Day

years from this day
there shall be a day
existences will cross paths at the crossroads of destiny

we would still be us
just not the way it once used to be
we would still be in love
just not with each other this time around
we would still be dreamers
just not in worlds that overlapped


but how different would it be
would it be a love lost winter
would it be the scalding fury of a summer hatred
would it rather be none


time will tell
years from this day
time will give history a second chance

Numb in Time

has it ever happened
that the tranquil turned skin
quite much in a manner
that all you ever felt was nothing

sensory numb and visual blur blended and wrapped in an endless time warp


have you ever felt at home in the middle of nowehere

Felt in Words

i could keep writing forever


that's what feelings do to us
don't they
that's what we make of feelings
don't we

we have never been able to quite make peace with feelings; how we feel, what we feel, why we feel

overwhelmed in happiness and in sorrow
so much so that we pen it all; every bit of it, every last of it
in the hope that we might finally seek respite from the seething gravity of the scalding truth



and yet here we are, humbled in words

The Privilege That is Poetry

poetry isn't everyone's
for, poetry isn't usual
not even for the ones who could play words at will


chapped hands rinsed in bad blood
a thousand wars waged at the length of a mirror
teeth stained ugly, gnawing through the hollowing spine
soiled nails cutting through clenched jaws and clamouring ribs
the entirety of a Renaissance honed; skin revolting bones


baring it all by the typewriter
that isn't just another everyday

poetry is privilege

Speaking of Love

why is it that we actually fall for what makes us uncomfortable and then seek to run away from it?

why is it that love is such an inexplicable paradox?

Another Forever Affair

and then

yet another mere mortal was etched in a forever 

men may come and men may go 

the gods they make are unscathed in death 

Forgive. Forget.

you could forgive

could you forget though 

if only 

Grammatically

between your ideas of love and lure
lives crumbled to bits and shreds

so much in the name of grammar

The Summary of a Forever

pages of love written, torn, re-written and ripped again
unendingly hoping this would become a novel
essays of intimacies lived and re-lived, imagined and re-imagined
raunchily desiring the sultry daylight was for actual
paragraphs of existences shifting spaces back and forth
gradually choking on the flesh and the bones between acceptances and lunacy
chapters of desertion sipping in, one last time and one more
audaciously dreaming of penning the differences of the buried from the dead


                         - c'est la vie -

O Oedipus

have you ever loved a mother

have you ever loved the woman in a mother
have you ever loved the mother in a woman


how did it feel

they say words are an alchemy
but sometimes
words cannot suffice for the wuthering storms wrecking your insides all the way down to the entrails
or, maybe sometimes
the goosebumps are better forgotten in the skin, the quicksands drowned beneath


have you ever loved a mother

i once did

have you ever felt the peace of a dead midnight in the midst of a wreaking havoc
have you ever watched the flight of freedom even as the worlds came crashing by
have you ever drenched the betweens in love and in lust at the crossroads of a frozen time

i once did

every time our eyes met across the melting pellets of ice pressed hard between the vanishing lips
every time my fingers felt the scars from the time they cut her open
every time her being stood still to the goodnights at the doors of my bare ribs



i once loved a woman and a mother
i once loved the woman and the mother

Mademoiselle

there is something about the smell of the rinsed hair strands of a woman
a maddening intensity somewhat familiar somehow intoxicating


she used to have it too
maybe she still does

the hollow stained walls and the breached blanks can't tell

Life, My Darling

life, my darling, is poetic
one too many a skin cramped for spaces in the numbered lifetime of a forever
you could only pretend to fathom what lies between and what runs beneath but never quite really decipher


a life at hand and too many deaths at bay
do you live or do you survive

Wronged

we have been wronged in our stories
the stories we tell the world are our very own our very being
the stories we sing us goodnights and goodmornings to

have we wronged in our stories though

The Ones

the ones who travel the lengths
the ones who breathe on a knife's edge
the ones who wear skin on the sleeves

are

the ones who will know what it takes
the ones who will make the difference



the rest of what remains will drown in a lifetime of miserable alibis 

The Living Paradox

isn't it amusing
how we are
a bunch of baffled spaces
carefully wrapped neat
in layers of absolute contradictions and absurd logics

do we really live
or, is it life that grows skin, one at a time 

Dead End

for once
love was about nothing beyond
for once
love was about a simple story
for once
love was about love

love was in the dead ends this once

Mannequin

and a headless manwhore
he stood soiled and scathed
right in the heart
of a dead sea washing faceless lives ashore

Just a Step Away From a Masterpiece

i am just a step away from a masterpiece

one step
that's the entirety of distances
that remains
distances so subtle yet distances so elaborate

i am just a step away from a masterpiece
but then, so are you

does it make me any lesser
does it make you any better

i am just a step away from a masterpiece
but then, so are you

will we make it
maybe
or, maybe not
is it about the one singular step
or, is it the journey that's all of what ever mattered
what happens if we make it
would it be any different if we didn't
would a masterpiece suffice ever for the cosmos of a void you feed within, everyday

a lot many lovers
a lot more heartbreaks
loathed in one's own glory
wrapped in measured intimacies behind chequered walls and wailing silences
almost as if the near apt fable of an epidemic
somewhat like wreaking havoc
a lot more poetic
a lot less romantic

i am just a step away from a masterpiece
but then, so are you
and, would we ever know if we made it
maybe
or, maybe not
would it matter whether the remnants of a lifetime were dipped in the sunken glory of a fallen existence or drenched in the bleeding wounds of a celebrated afterlife
would any of it be ever enough to appease the clenched jaws and the trembling veins



i am just a step away from a masterpiece
but then, so are you

Proem

she was the calm
breathing storm in her skin
wreaking poetry in a world of essays
wrenching shores in the anarchy of the boisterous waves beneath her eyelashes

she was the calm before the havoc

The Fall of the Parallels

have you ever seen

what you once called parallels
meet at the very heart of the countless bylanes
cut each other at the skin
losing the other in a debauched stream of warm, bad blood


how'd it feel

Thirty Four Days of Winter

It was a late night
That December, it was colder than usual
It was a late night
A late night in December
Where it all began


There's something about nights
Dark and improbable shivering down the spines
And yet, a sleep impregnated in thoughts
Dreams of a good morning, lives better and tomorrows brighter
And, that's where it all began
The desire of many a dream long lost, finding home for once



She was the solace
Her eyes eerily calm
The wrinkles enveloped in the purposely spoiled kohl and elaborate mascara
The smile she wore cut her lips oblique
Debris of a yesterday spilled across
Remnants of another, wrenched beneath the skin


She was a queen
And like every other, she wore a crown too
A crown bedazzled in agony and anguish
A crown nevertheless
The stories she flushed down the stinking urinals
The poetries she wet her crumpled bedsheets in
The life she wished was still alive
She wore them all around her neck
The pendant of a dear dead son cutting through the ribs
Scars from a fallen dusk etched in flesh, right above the navel

She was the warrior queen




He was the inferno
His eyes seething yet numb
Somewhat like the entirety of molten lava asleep in a bottomless pit
His lips had forgotten the taste of a smile
The pages he had burned off the novel
He was smeared in the ashes that bled off it


He was an alchemist
Some called him a magician, some called him a conjurer
For what remained of the mass and the mediocre
He was just another lunatic in the crashing waved of pretended busy lives
The chapter called childhood lay wronged in the wounds beneath his tattoos
Memoirs of severed strings wrapped in the singular scar smothering his lips
The ruins of an erstwhile rebellion
The crippled crimson roses from a commonplace betrayal
He would spread them across, thorough and detailed
Somewhat like canvases from an aftermath

He'd reimagine it all in monochrome



It was an unlikely affair
Or so, it seemed in the apparent skin
A queen and an alchemist
The hordes of worldly people condemned them

But then, they had scripted their worlds in themselves
The rest, drowned in the rainbow after the rains



He made her the canvas and the muse
She made him the art and the artist
Away from the pastel lives of the neon walls
They found love in black and white


He was the fire that cleansed her
She was the tranquil he sought refuge in
Far from a world of make-beliefs
They found themselves in the differences


And, when it all felt right for once and ever
And, when the habit of being had turned home
It all fell apart, bits and crumbs that would never make sense put back together
Somewhat like a compulsive turn of acts from a repetitive history



The desires born off a robed night were buried in the naked daylight



The winter was gone at the knock of spring
It was a change of seasons; a hundred thousand lives were all the same



Somewhere, in the middle of the deafening noises of a maddening mediocrity
Something could never be the same ever again



Thirty four days of winter were a lifetime somewhere 

Crimson

and she wore the crimson
like the dawn of a dusk
as if
plucked from the skin of the setting sun

In the End

you aren't different
you are malignant
you will make a king someday
or devour your very existence

she had once said


years later
a while after he was all but bygone
she smiled to the obituary in the silence of a single tear


cancer could never tell kings from rubbles
the malignant had fallen to the malign

Moulin Rouge

elaborate kohled eyes

lips done neat 

pride well wrapped

in

the untamed flowing strands

kissing the wriggling waistline

and

the scent of petrichor

she was the goosebumps 

where the seas met the storms 

The Love Letter

in a world of red
be my beige
in a world of roses
make me a rhododendron

in a world of everyday romantics
let's pen a forever of an affair, sultry 

Posthumous

Have you ever felt immensely quenched and terribly thirsty at the very same time? Has it ever happened that your food pipe is drenched and yet the tongue and the palate feels unusually arid, somewhat a dead desert?

It was strangely odd a sensation. A vaccuum feeling.

As the seething temperatures scorched his very skin to nothing, I lost my father to ashes, once for all.



How would you feel, if, on a murky afternoon, you walked out of your room to realise, you lived a lie all along, for the last two decades, from the very inception of it?


I had never seen my mother. They said, she died fighting to let me live. The only string that led me to my roots, was my father. A father, whose identity seemed bleaker than the rapidly vanishing horizon against the overcast skies.


"Hi, madame.."
"I'm sorry for you loss. I really am."
"Some things are simply inevitable, I suppose."
"You are his son, aren't you?"
"I've been told so atleast..."
"You have questions, don't you?"
"You are the famous fashion icon Ira Dubey, if I am not mistaken."
"You aren't, my son."
"And how on earth could a life as celebrated as yours cross paths with a commoner life like his?"
"Commoner? He was anything but a commoner. Who do you think your father was?"
"Just a regular guy, who wrote advertisements for a living. Or so, I have been told."
"They called him The Renaissance Man. He was a legend."
"Outlier? Rebel?"
"He wasn't a rebel. He was the revolution."
"I don't understand..."
"Your father brewed storms in his words. Storms that rocked the seas and wrecked the sails. Poetry that turned anthems. Poetry that cut lives open, poetry that healed the charred. For a decade, he wrote and wrote. He just wouldn't stop. And then, one day, he just retired himself. But, the world had only gotten started with him. The day he exiled himself was the day that marked the beginning of a revolution."
"How do you know so much about him?"
"We used to know each other. Once upon a time."
"Estranged lovers?"
"If only definitions could put an end to the hundred thousand questions that feed off you, every single minute!" Her smile was hauntingly calm.
"Did you know my mother?"
"I had met her once."
"What was she like?"
"The sea that could contain the entirety of the storm, within."
"My father, you said, was a revolution."
"That, he was."
"They called him The Renaissance Man. What did she call him?"
"The Madman."





That night left me orphaned. All over again.

Semicolons

if i could
undo every story
i have spent
the entirety of a lifetime
in

there would be a story i could never undo
the story where we met; star crossed lovers in a sinking crowd of walking dead lives


in a rusted novel of full stops

semicolons  are a privilege

You are the Dream

you are the far fetched dream
      i and only i get to live

               - reloved -

Not Yet

have you given up already?

don't.


it takes many a rain to make a rainbow