The Walk Back

The sun hiding from
the blaze of your naked beauty.
The heat dimmed
in respect to your passion
My-‘self’ long lost
somewhere in the shelter of your breasts
I am finally coming home.

The buried yet remembered sins
call for the final reckoning.
And shards of broken dreams light up my way,
as I walk back to a crossroad left behind
I love to see you as my final destination,
somewhere in the lap of forgotten times,
Waiting…forgiving…encompassing me in an all powerful fire.

A full circle has been run,
and I return home.
To the place where you won my blood,
the battle…lost before the first rumble of war
yet, fought to win the right of your nakedness
and…then, deserted in pursuit of an unknown fear.
A choice wrongly made…and I turn back
to the crossroad that stole my home.
Wait…please, do wait…am coming home.

Last Song

The song sung
under the shadow of the last sky,
trapped beneath the ashes
of burnt threads of time
and few lonely hearts
that stopped beating.

I knew what you were saying
but surely I knew wrong.
I heard what the world was saying
but surely I heard wrong.
The mistakes of my music
hidden by the blue veil of night.

And you are lonely…
While I lose myself in pointless poems
The words entangling and suffocating you
In a mesh of senseless sound.
As, you struggle…I watch
And immerse in my last poem as if it’s my first

The world appears hard for you…
Deserted in the darkest of winters
And, here in the moon-swept rooftop
of the forsaken mansion
I wish I could share my fears.
And, as you go behind the horizon
I write yet another song
of another dawn in the world we left behind.

This dance is yours as much as mine
And as we let the music wash over us
like the disrespectful waves
on the majestic shores.
I sacrifice myself every time
as if it’s my first.

The strength that made me weak
Left me waiting in the world of words.
Shivering, waiting for your blanket
To be hidden in your arms.
Time has come to break free again
Freedom bought at the cost of my last song
The song written in tribute to my first.

Rain Messenger's Diary 8...Death Watch

Waiting for the last breath to part as everyone waits for the inevitable is a feeling that no one might understand before actually experiencing it. The pallor of death lies low on the faces and the walls and everyone except the person concerned seems to be terribly agitated.

This most unlikely vigil is what I experienced when I was called to be present at the deathbed of a distant relative as was expected of me since I was now considered “grown up”. I felt sickened at the expressions of the people there…I could feel the hidden current almost a bated breath expectation of death so that all necessary preparations of a funeral could be initiated. I had never felt so cold, it was as if the life of that person had ceased to matter as if the transition from ‘she’ to ‘it’, ‘a person’ to ‘a body’ had already been made and all that was left was the irrelevant detail of actually taking that final step. What was more irritating was she didn’t seem in any hurry to take that step. How very inconsiderate…doesn’t she know it’s a weekday, people have to return to their offices and their respective run of the mill rat races? Nobody had all the time in the world.

They say one shouldn’t talk of death as it bodes ill but then what about that collective unsaid death wish for the person who was once the home maker and was now so annoyingly holding up all the work that needed to be done after she died.

As, everyone showed up they shook her and called her as if to wake up their own spirits and just pat them back to sleep while telling them “we did our duty”........the endless roll-call of “Jethima…ami…ami Swapan”, “Jethima..ami…ami Gadai” and so on and so forth made me want to throw up. It was the ‘society’ and the ‘social fibre’ that we are so proud of laid bare for me to see. They had come…as was expected, as was proper and civil.

Why the hypocrisy, I don’t know but nobody minded. Nobody wanted to celebrate the life that was spent, no one reflected on it. Everyone concentrated on the death and the inevitability and helplessness of it. No one cared for life for there was no human being in that room just mortals doing what they were “supposed” to do.

Then…she died.

Last Cigarette

As the last cigarette
Burns itself down my throat
Leaving behind burning eyes
Filled with smoke
And as the late night movie
Takes its final bow…
I hold my breath within
Afraid of losing the fragrance
Of burnt skin.

I pick up my pen
Out of the obsessive compulsion
To describe what stirs inside
Just to grasp…
The longing to write the last lines about you
Yet she refuses to be ignored
And the last cigarette
Refuses to be burnt out
And I wait…

Smoke fills the room
Blurring my vision
Or, maybe, I have closed my eyes.
Certainty, is the cost
Of my last cigarette
It’s a pain to let go
Yet I know,
That you would kill.
As I refuse to put out…the last cigarette

I know I will return to you.
Holding fire is a pleasure
You can’t let go of.
But it’s not with pleasure
That my soul’s your slave
It’s not by choice but by a ‘un-understood’ force
That I bow…
To what I hope, dearly
To be my last cigarette.

Blood Soaked Mirage

They burned the tree
That owned my soul.
Using the womb as a weapon
To suffocate the desire…of survival.

They took me to the gallows
And death smiled
All I could do was smile back
The fear of light…as I walked out of darkness

They felled the mighty oak
The shadow
Of what once was might.
But, remorse was not what they felt

They killed.
For the guilty pleasure
Of the taste of blood
Killed…out of fear of me

Annihilation is what they want for me
Order of death is proclaimed…
Yet they cannot kill what is me…
For I am not a man…just an apparition

So they burned the tree
That owned my soul
And when, enough men have died
Maybe, we will be free


....EXPRESSING SOLIDARITY WITH MY FRIENDS IN MUMBAI AND TELLING THOSE WHO FEEL THEY CAN SHOCK US INTO SUBMISSION...WE ARE AND WILL ALWAYS BE INDIANS.
MAY THE SOULS OF THE DECEASED REST IN PEACE

Wanting Her

Love was not just a game I played
To buy shelter
To walk alone or to follow her
Without question and thought of surrender.
But, she was broken
Long before the sky broke for her…

Treacherous were the alleys
Wondrous was the pain
To hold on…
Like the condemned man’s faith in God.
To build on a broken faith…
Long before faith was ever discovered

Yet, I wanted to follow
To feel her lustrous body
With the ecstasy of my mind
To lift her spirit
Higher than the wind swells.
But she was broken…
Long before the sky broke for her.

Wanting to find the destination
Of the departing night
To look for the symmetry
Of two bodies in unison.
Take away the desire from my being…
Yet, I wanted to follow.
But she was broken…
Long before the sky broke for her.

Faith Lost

Integrity lost.
In the lingering moment,
Spent on your naked eyes.
Faith lost.
In the eternity spent,
In fighting…

The death sentence,
A frivolous exercise in power
Faith lost.
In the words
Of a stranger…
Of was-a-lover.

The nauseating dive
In the last attempt to hide my face in your thighs
Yet thrown away. Questioned.
Faith lost.
In life…In moments…
In what was once the time…when rain fell.