Emergency! Emergent
18th September
Secret seeds strengthen, seventeen
Greedy greens
Gentlemen greet
Four freaks
Three ticks to terror tactics
Uri undone, unforgiven
Restless rebels revel
Reek red
Ratatat! Ratatat!
Machines moaning mainland mourning

Divided we stand
United in grief.

The Glass Marble of Memories

Hold up a glass marble
with pride and feel its weight roll between your fingers.
Set it against the streaming sunlight,
behold    a memory within itself.

Watch     the clock melts away
like the colourful swirls of stick glass
it turns into a lollipop in the hands of a ten year old.
                                         Splat!

Follow its roll, as the evening sepia paints
a haze softened by the golden clouds,
over the main street where your grandmother's house stands
quietly in the corner         shaded by a gulmohar.

Catch its glint in the evening sky shatter
into a shower of fiery kisses from the tree
smelling sweet like her warm chest and wrinkled neck
carpeting the porch as you enter.

Look     it sits next to her on the stone benches
amidst others in solitaire and sparkles like her silver mane
polished from coconut oil, a few disgruntled strands tied around her toe
so the wind does not get a whiff of it.
                                     
                                        You pocket it.

Writing A Poem

You are griped by a scene -

it slaps you across the face and forces you to gasp.

You leave the zeroes and ones waiting

for the desire to set fire with verse.

The old hand-made paper notebook and an expensive ink 

have not romanced each other, it has been a while.

The pulpy paper - soft to the touch - balmed with musty scent 

lays bare and ready to be ravished; the pen stands in position.

Should you write fourteen lines, carefully chosen ten syllables per line?

It could include a satirical twist at the end.

Or should you write free verse -

free flowing lines dancing wild?

You scribble a few lines, caring for

nothing, not even the unfashionable rhyme.

Noses Of The World

A brazen bump on 

the smooth and supple surface,

pocked with pores is 

the protruding nose.

Slender and long or 

fat and strong, 

it is distracting but 

adds character. 

When in love, you 

muzzle two together,

And in anger, you 

flare it to breathe fire.

It grows and reshapes, 

an eternal flux throughout your age,

the sharp line or 

the short snout is 

here to stay.

Hiking
up
the
hill
on
a
sunny
afternoon,
the
salamander
saw
bodies
roll
by.

Prisoner Of The Mind

Rays march in through the window -

soldiers dancing in rehearsed patterns -

dust particles chime and giggle above,

the heat spreads through the room.

I close my eyes to an orange hue and disappear

into a frothing bubble of indulgence.

I force life into my razor-on-vein fantasy:

tall, dark, handsome, and intelligent - bonus!

The vein oozes fire, consuming the pieces 

of memory stitched together to define his contours.

Your silhouette looms at the door, 

familiarity dimmed by the greying light.

I squint hard at your darkness, reaching beyond

and run into his arms - my bonus.

Green Sonnet

When you listen to blue violin tunes,
When the bottle of wine is rim-lit gold,
When the bulbous glass glows red in the moon,
The book whispers a cold secret untold.

Basking in the warmth of a good story,
You head to the kitchen to fix a meal:
Some hot potato soup with celery,
Some spicy garlic bread to seal the deal.

When you light the candle, lay out the plate,
Ensconced in the Indian kitsch style chair,
Up leaps your cat on your lap for a taste
And swoosh goes the soup, flying in the air!

So much for soul-searching and time alone
When you could share friendship and grass homegrown!

Colour Orange

I hold your tiny hand, free you of the guiding stick
and we walk along a bustling street of loud noises.
What is the colour orange? you ask.

It is the warmth that you and I feel when
the rising sun touches our pallid skin.

It is the sweet crunch of the carrots we
nibble on our afternoon walk from school.

It is the aroma that consumes the bakery
where we buy our Sunday morning cream-filled buns.

It is the purr of Batman when he settles in
our lap and silently watches the rain.

It is the tireless bond of the goodnight
kiss which keeps us strong for another day.

All things lost, apart
from time, can be found it's said.
Can lost love be found?

Thousand-mile journeys,
The zen master convinced said,
Begin with one step.

Red bull-bulls whistled,
Spring was around the corner -
Suddenly it rained!

Game rules

It started out as fun -
him and you giggling and nibbling ears, taking turns to pin each other down.

It got a little rough -
every time you showed a little strength; it was a game after all and you didn't mind.

It felt comforting to touch, to know intimately -
the lines of thought on his forehead,
the crow-feet around his eyes that rendered them grave,
the folds of skin that fell limp when he turned his neck,
the brown gums gaping through growing gaps in his tiny teeth and carrying gritty remnants of raw tobacco.

They were muddy, the waters -
you could see yourself and imagine your future, but it lacked depth.
You were probably just driftwood caught in the tempest.
You thought it romantic.

He couldn't tell his friends you both holed up together;
they wouldn't approve or understand, he said.
He couldn't tell his parents about you;
they were orthodox and wouldn't understand, he said.
He couldn't let his daughter see you when she visited;
she was too young and wouldn't understand, he said.
His ex-but not-yet-divorced-wife couldn't know you had sex and he couldn't get a divorce, and you didn't know that she didn't know. No, bizarrely, you just hold hands!
But let's start over, he said.
You understood, or thought you did. You believed him.

It was three years too late before you knew what it meant that he knew nothing about you -
not even the obvious marks of identification that you joyfully jotted down for your passport that carried his security signature,
not the strands that curled against the strands that waved and fell on his bare chest,
not the side of cheek that dipped, nor the side that didn't.
You had mistaken the obvious red flags for boyish forgetfulness, as obvious and as red as they were.

Once, outside the lofty bar, wrapping your arms around yourself against the Bangalore breeze,
you didn't want to be driftwood, you said.
He said it was PMS!
He put on his shining armour and dazzled you with a warm kiss on the forehead and a warm tummy rub.
It was a joke, he said. He made you laugh. He made everybody laugh, especially after a few Vodka-Bulls.
The joke was on you.

It had gotten rougher and it was now a sport, bordering on unfamiliar territory of psychological bend -
the tickling seemed unfriendly and the fondling of breasts, a purposeful patriarchal punishment.
You continued to laugh, until you couldn't -
for there was no shamed and battered male part to grope for a win.

Clutter

Oh the cumbersome clutter!
Consumes the conscience of the clumsy critter!
Making barely bearable life bitter!
Agonizing the soulful side of the strutter!

How does one organize a messy mind!
Blue or pink, light or dark?
All she wanted to do
Was make choices of the kind!

Meh

The sun
That caressed my tongue;

The rays
That set me ablaze;

The clouds,
To dowd woman, bowed;

The drizzle
Against the skin, tickled;

The wind
Danced high with the winged;

The flowers and trees
Powered the displeased;

Trumpeting horns
Reminder of a music forlorn;

Ah music!
Harmonic, eccentric, euphoric, homesick;

Suddenly the siren
Dragged inevitably the frightened;

To all this and more, dismayed,
The world meh-d.