I, Them, Us

I

red leather
value chair
respected even
stepped down
became myself
pure me
eyes clear

Them

tentative respect
protective contact
opportunities possible
keep contact

Us

who we
who you
who I
what matters
beyond favours

A Creepy Agenda

In a crowded conversation
An undeclared agenda
Angrily slithers in, waiting
To schedule the evening.

The roar of the crowd
Drowns it out; strikes it
Out of the night’s list
That was never inked.

The Jungian Fine

The dried words crackle and crumble
in the famine of thought
Organic reflections transmit emptiness
as transactional assessments overflow.

Loss! Loss! Loss! Cries the mind
of that which is quantifiable
That which uncountable
is lost without a whisper.

As artistic deficit stacks up high
no coins remain even
To pay the Jungian fine for
“the divine gift of creative fire”.

a lost dream

we lost our dream somewhere
in being busy building it

blank chaos

blank.
the first word to describe
an unquiet mind.
the opposite
of the current state
of chaos
unbridled.

cold feet

cold feet
disturb the balance
of a body warm in a static position.
your native intelligence
wards off the
cold feet

cold feet
get
cold feet

we were never
natives of this land

sudden death

alive people talk of people
now dead
in chat messages, sans smileys.

one truncated message
talks of the end
of one life, in one line.

five hours later in time
one tear is held back
perhaps conscious of the lack
of a context

the place
the moment
the sight.

far away from the crackling pyre
distance dries that lone tear.
it will violently gush out
perhaps years later
on a dry unassuming summer late afternoon
without warning,
like death that struck today

who knows, who will kill, that day.

an old letter
that wasn’t to be discovered

an old photo
that wasn’t to be ever seen

a hasty scribble
that didn’t otherwise mean anything

The Morning’s Remainder

The morning’s remainder
A pre-dawn questioning punctuation
Hung and hooked on the right angle
Of the grid-like orange shadow of the window grill
Made bright by the sodium vapour street-lamp
On my white wall, fades slowly to 6AM
And the sun beckons the patrolling policeman
Sleep now.

unfinished letters

unfinished letters more
than those that ever reached.
the story of my life.
the heat of mumbai summer
burns the sleep in me
dampens my dreams
forces visits to my dark secrets
catalyses my impulses.
my phone rings no more.
life desperately trying to teach
failing even drastically.
i shut my eyes tight
every time i see my reality
and walk in darkness
bumping into incidents i lived
wishing i had not.
nothing remains mine
not my memories, my sketches
my poems even belong to them.
so much colour in this world
i don’t even have a shade of grey.
anger unchannelled grows
so big i cannot stomach it.
nothing wants to be mine
i want to belong.

saturday 07 june 1997

Generation X

imagine
a sole generation
that vies with a few

and then

imagine
a generation
that rallies with them
almost salivating
for borrowed endings
in hopeless mirrorings
of wanting to be
yet, never wanting to know
what they are
or can be

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