Titles

You drew lines with sticks and chalks

in my soft, moist earth

while I cooled  feet in  the soil

with tomorrow sown for mirth

 

Now you’ve shown me a sky scarred

by ruby-eyed planes

and scraped by ivory towers

that I must climb with bars

Joy, sincerely feigned

and have my country heart devoured

 

it’s venom that moves me now

since the day I was bitten

with your blinding diamond teeth

It’s venom that draws me to death

in your fire, I glisten

Its smoke of my flesh I breathe

 

And for now I move, a beast

caged in robes of elite

glide with wings of a preying bird

carrying bleeding, mangled feet

 

Horizon

 

Blues of dawning hearts

they swirl in quivering skies

shall we paint ourselves red

shall we turn to ripe

shall we turn to glowing stone

pierced and waiting to be thawed

or shall we swim in the violet whispers

open and soft

never home

gleaming one moment, tearing in another

drenched in electric thunder

 

Shall we soak the sun for its vital incandescence

and lose our contours to its heated whims

Shall we lean into one another

and taste the fear and thrill

of being

in flight

Brittle

​Made with love, whatever that is

Here’s a porcelain doll

For you to break with your kisses

Warm but cold and no qualms 

Honey charred your eyes turn to

The pieces of her scarlet

Ripe and crushed, beyond undo

The heart shaped throbbing garnet

“It’s just China” blushing you say

“Fashioned for final crash 

Mindless, thoughtless, too much to pay

One could not be too rash”

Her Gaze of glass, your spine of steel

Spirits of smoke in both

Shapeless, weightless, none can feel

brittle shells of broken oaths

Blue Moon

One day happiness will come to me
Draped in resplendent gold
And I will turn away from her
Wrath in my blood, frozen cold.

There’s a shining pin in my skin
For each day spent in trance 
Painting verses for the steel world
Never caring to  glance 

As the moon of my soul, revived
slept sans a lullaby 
Twisting and turning and writhing
Poisoned by each muffled cry 

Cratered and greying and aged
before his time to bloom
He mourned  the tideless waters 
From his violet tomb 

Impaled with silver beams I bled
Then seeking my old shell
And crawling into its darkness
Sang for my heart’s burial

The moon has drowned in my world
But elsewhere, has begun to rise
And when it rains outside my door
Memories burn in my eyes

They fuel my dreams ablaze
Char what’s left of my days
Hissing, they rise in steam 
Till only a carcass 
of me can be seen.

Crystal Womb

I dance on thin ice and feel

the aged winter trace

Fractals on my skin

 

Cracks are born beneath my feet

Each time I prance, this maze

Of crystal babes sprawls in

 

The wrinkled cradling arms of snow

And I dance, debonair

Tease the cold that waits

 

To pull me close by my toe

Embrace my soul bare

Take the cadent bait

 

Of my heart and spirit and being

To lull them to eternal sleep

Returning to the silent womb

My final lilting scream

Paper

I write these words

To read your mind

As you try to read mine

In these words that sprang

Into being

On this blankness so white

On the surface of which

We smile back at ourselves

And we weep tears

That fall and pool

In our own eyes

And sometimes

Just sometimes

A strange hand

That  comes into view

Cups to hold a trickle

Or reaches out

To be warmed by the joy

It’s yours today

And here you are

Peering into the depths, oh my!

Of a canvas that shines

A dance of dark and light

Will you see me?

Or will I see you?

Or will you see just you?

You just might

We shall see

We shall see

Forgotten

To all those who hear me

here’s my tale

To all those who know me

here’s my tale

beneath a veil

a face so pale

it breaks when it smiles,

ever so frail

it’s a tale

it’s a tale

not a maiden

it’s a tale

it breathes and it lives

it flits and it sails

treasures in a bale

it carries for the sale

leaving no trail

into the dark vale

do you know my tale

Alas! I must have failed

lost it in the rale

as life set to sail

The End so prevailed

I have lost my tale

do you know my tale?

Oh, do you know my tale?

10 Greatest Mughal Emperors & Rulers

The Mughals, who according to Dirk Collier, liked to call themselves the Exalted Descendants of the Gurkaniya dynasty, happen to mark the most glorious period in the History of the Indian subcontinent. Not only did the world come to see this vast, rich land as an integrated, invulnerable national entity, but also saw it rise to a perigee of economic abundance, political stability and social harmony. Arts flourished like never before as the symbolism used in different religious contexts began to merge under benevolent, tolerant monarchs, and India earned it’s coveted title of the sone ki chidiya  through the burgeoning trade within and across national borders. So let’s take a few moments today and get a glimpse into this semi-barbaric, yet progressive line of rulers and emperors who left a resplendent seal on the story of our country.

In The Bus

Summer descended upon her and sank its searing claws into her brain, fracturing the tender connections between her several and swirling thoughts. She squinted against the shard of light that streamed through the dusty, blotched glass pane. Had she been reposing in an air-conditioned, neutrally toned room that was scrubbed and vacuumed and polished and mopped to a degree of pristine perfection, would her mind have been a tad bit less cluttered? Had she not been rocking to the blithe rhythms of this ancient bus, one that was in effect, a furnace on wheels, would some clarity have graced her musings again?

Exalted

“The Moon sings to me, and sends me glowing pillows carrying sugar-cube dreams for my heart.”

I proclaim to myself. Yet, what I see as unassailable actuality is, in fact,  merely an optative reverie.

Spread across the ominous sky- it’s colors never dark enough to be black, and never a shade even remotely as discernible as the most treacherous indigo- are the sprightly stars, amused at the austerity of their own mother fabric, the vast sky that has cradled them since time was an infant.

They know my dreams, and they know yours. Perhaps their delight arises from the knowledge that they’re a part of all those dreams, and the ones our minds spin into a gossamer cocoon of repose to screen ourselves from the overwhelming heat of the sun, right when it reigns over us diminutives.