I'm Sorry - 2

I wonder if love would be the same
as it was once,
when she looked with eyes
in such lovely disguise.

Love would not remain
as it was once,
I would exchange lies
with lovely eyes.

I wonder that I still think of love
as it was once,
when we painted skies
to hide surprise.

Love would then remain
as it was once,
in our eyes, and
with time, see it flies.

I'm Sorry

A shiver
and then you writhe, maybe.

A sound dissolves into your breath.

Do you close your eyes
pull your head back
and smile?

Do you miss me?

Tell me how it feels,
when he touches you.

Sugar

It has always been the same, the way fingers
whisper to each other between the handle.
She knows that he loves her more
when she looks at him from behind the tea cup
and says, "Sugar?"

They have never trespassed the barriers,
but when she makes tea for him
she feels a surge she always tries to suppress.

Once he dropped in when she was alone
someday, in the afternoon
nothing happened except that she made tea
and he ventured into the kitchen.

That day, she did not offer him sugar
nor he looked into her eyes over the tea cup,
nothing transpired, except unsurfaced desires.

Neither compromised, love or loyalty, that day.

If I was The Magician

He travelled across Asia during the Raj
in the army, world war two
in ships, on foot, in swamps, in fields
that looked similar to his own in the anonymous village.

He was a foot soldier, carrying a rifle with bayonet and few bullets
one of the multitudes that were littered across
the invisible boudaries of either sire of war
subservients holding fast to the orders and honour.

He even thought of writing his diary,
atleast that was mentioned in his letter
but no one ever discovered it, even after the war.
Perhaps, he hid it and never returned to the place.

The boy has known him only through stories
told by dadi or papa when he has not felt sleepy.
He tried to get dadi to read him the letters (there were only two)
when he was in 4th grade, but she only sang those songs
the language he could not understand, and held him close.

When war ended, he did not return
no one knew in which country he died, if he was burnt or buried
or if he was captured. Years later, a friend sent a note
said that he died in Burma, and was buried with other soldiers.

The boy was sitting in the classroom, examination
and wondering on one topic that he would write an essay on.

Three Years

In three years, he would have moved away
unbound
into the sky she covered behind the clouds
that rained, but did not dissolve.

It is the origin of his infidelity.

Tappe

sardiyon mein kambal odhe bhi jab thithurte hain
ek angeethee pe haath sekne ki aas
kitni ummed bandhaa deti hai
waise hi jaise parvat par barf pighalkar
nadi bankar uss kinaare tak aati hai
jahaan se hawaa ek navik ko raah dikhaati hai.

maine dekha hai usse aisi thandi raaton mein
apne aap se batiyaate
nadi kinaare hawaa ko tappe sunaate.

Arth

tumhari paribhasha ke maayne
kabhi poore nahi kar paaya main
haar gaya tha apne hi shabdon se
bikhar gaye the arth zameen par
jaise moti tumhari maala se,
aur main samet-ta rah gaya
unhi ko jo maine hi piroye the.

In The Dimensions

We are travelling in the dimensions,
trespassing the horizons believed lost.

Roads divide, converge, end
but lights always design new patterns,
we swim across the walls, fly over the origin
before we are consumed back where we begin.

In search of the intersection, we cross
oceans, mirages, clouds and time,
and place markers to recover the paths, or not.

Mornings come with the longings of rain.

On the days we cannot fathom sunrays,
we make stars with crayon colours
and keep dreams in translucent jars with lids shut.

We are travelling in the dimensions,
struggling at the edges which erode rapidly.

We may have once come at the either side of the boundary
that separates the words from music
because when I sang, I heard no notes.
In summer we float to the bed of the rivers
and collect dried moss, silken stones, feathers
for no purpose, to think in randomness.

We are travelling without seam
in the dimensions that unwind in spiral threads
and many intersections, one where we may cross
at same time, with smiles.

Orchards are beautiful, but not like the forests
we are dreaming in wild.

We are travelling in the dimensions
that may merge in me and you.

There is a sunset we may create in the shades
of your eyes and my voice,
at the intersection where dreams may come to shapes
of your fingers and mine, together.

Courtyard

She carries scars that never reconcile
A nurtured silence paces hard
On the nights when wolves reign the forests
It rains in her courtyard.

Vanity

There are dreams they call vanity,
I shed my life in steps
of a seductive pole dancer."

Origin

I am the origin of your words

you may take the credits and awards
but when you will smile, I will cry
in those words.

Musings

There are miscellaneous memories
in which I never return
where faces merge with faces
and voices grow faint
breif recollections of events that mattered then
stories barely unfold before I move to next.