The Perennial touch

Beyond the horizon
The sun was
Dragging his feet
On the trodden path,
When darkness
Overtook the evening
And its dullness as well.

I was in a hurry
To reach you
Even while the day’s dust
Had hardly settled
On my bald head.

A nervous uncertainty
Gripped me
Like the tentacles
Of a vengeful octopus
In the sea of urban humanity.

You were kind enough
To greet me at the doorstep
With a smile,
Having strong elements
Of an algebraic equation
For my flat mind.

We sat face to face
In the rented drawing room sofa
When the tired ceiling fan
Was rotating its wings
Most reluctantly.

My eyes quickly ran around:
The brass decoration on the wall
Carrying loads of appreciation
Due to a work of art,
Had an obscure shine on it
And was hanging precariously
Like a patch of snow
On a broken wall.

The room got choked
By our silence.
The scent of
Those plastic roses
In your designed vase
Was too much for me.

But in their midst
You were a picture perfect
Of quintessential beauty
An object of my desire benign.

“Can I touch you?” I said
And touched you perennially
Like the sky kissing the earth
Beyond the seas.

My Maiden Flight

Very often I smell
A temporary breath
Of a petal of hope
Getting evaporated
Into the vacuum
Under my nose.

When love
Like a solitary drop
Seeps through
The unseen pores
Of a sandy bed
Of a dreary desert.

Trust gets twisted
At its crucial joints
Like the tender bones
Of a still-born babe
In the murky corridors
Of a tiny coffin.

Lo!
After my maiden flight
I land on your courtyard
Like a petrified swan
With broken wings
And bleeding dreams.

Mislead

Even the dictates of almanac
Mislead the sacred course
Of the holy Ganges
Into the arid zones
Of the sandy pasture of Thar
For a smell of vegetation.

Sundari smiles
While hanging like
A dried up saree from
The balcony string
Of her dingy cell on West Avenue,
For she offers an eye-contact
To the tattered frame of
A cycle-rickshaw below.

After a casual copulation
When the domesticated sparrow
Flies into the blue
Leaving her in pregnant deception.
Strange,
She still collects dry twigs
To build a dream,
To lay eggs
And brood in incubation!

Here and Now

I adore your loveliness
Within the boundaries
Of my ordinary eyes,
Within the bounds
Of an unbound ocean,
Within the reach
Of a receding horizon.

I hear your words of beauty
Within the audible range
Of my mortal ears,
For your words reverberate
Long after you speak
On the inner walls of my soul.

I smell your passionate breath
With the certitude
Of an irrepressible jasmine,
For I am not the Himalayan deer
To be misled by my own musk.

I love you
With the immediacy
Of here and now,
For I know not
What lies beyond
Or beneath.

Tonic - Touch

When I gaze
In an uneasy anticipation
At your face from the terrace,
All that I see
Is a pair of wide open eyes
Following me against
The blue background of the sky.

In a moment’s time
Your eyes gain
A benign dimension
And encompass me
With an ease,
And lift my agony
As if it were a quill.

Your words,
As sweet as you are,
Embalm my bruised frame
And fiery spirit in no time.

Your tonic-touch
Served with the compassion
Of a lovely angle
Holds my injured being
With the intimacy
Of a divine fragrance
That clings to the flowers of the valley.

From a pair of exclusive eyes
Your healing vision
Clasps my soul
With the softness
Of a summer drizzle
On fine desert-sands.

Entomb the Silence

Out of a heap of cold ashes
Of a dead volcano
I wish I could
Ignite you
And get myself overwhelmed
By the lava of your stifled desire
That you cherished by
A deliberate discipline.

I wish I could
Replace the half- spoken
Mono-syllables
Meticulously pronounced
Through your measured lips,
In an eloquence
Never heard before.

I wish I could
Help you bloom out
Of the layers of the tiny bud
Into an open-eyed
Sunflower of a prolonged noon.

I wish I could
Caress you out of
Your icy-midriff
And flow with your
Tide into the seas.

I wish I could
Tickle you out
Of the long-pregnant pause
That shapes
Your earthy incarnation.

I wish I could
Entomb your silence
At my backyard
And engrave the epitaph;
“Here lies her silence
Never to be resurrected”.

Do I Belong?

I have coined subtle words,
Framed robust sentences
And idioms unique
In my private fantasy and
They miserably ditch me
At the fateful moment
When I wish to confide that
‘ I belong.’

Carefully pronounced words
Fizzle out
Under the feather-weight
Of nocturnal dreams
Nourished in the womb
Of a barren Autumn.

Faint beams
Of a pestering hallucination
Giggle mischievously
When I don’t know
‘What is what?’

I have rehearsed in vain
Ridiculous postures
And carefully designed dialogues
In the privacy of my greenroom,
For I cannot
Look eye to eye
When most wanted.

Between the Covers

I have plucked
Every primrose and daisy
Sprouting in myriad colours
On every wild vegetation.

I have also plucked
All the flowers on my path
In their youthful fragrance
Of spilled out pollen,
And in their sealed-dreams,
Clinging intimately to the
Tender stems of unknown creepers.

I don’t know
For whom they bloomed.
For the hot Sun?
For the cool Moon?
Or for the soothing South Wind ?

Just see!
The flowers have never complained
-Either loud or in whispers-
Or perhaps
I have not cared to heed
Their effeminate indignation
Against my reckless passion.

Believe me.
I have also not spared
All the early flowers
Of Spring and Summer
Grown in the distant meadows
Only to press them for you
Between the covers.

A Substantaial Shadow

Often I am haunted
By the reflection
Of a shrunken face,
On the slippery floor
Of an illusory shadow,
That has gathered
An impervious thickness.

None can claim like me
To have measured
The substantial shadow of a dwarf
Gaining an immeasurable height
As never seen before.

Even when,
You are by my side
I tip-toe
To the left of the highway.
And get drenched to the core
By the visible nothingness
Of a cluster of barren clouds.

I know why, of late
I seem to feel ashamed to ask
For a word of reassurance
From my mother,
Who on long frosty-nights
Takes an extra cup of tea
To keep her warm.