Memory

Memory has its ghosts, full of whispers and sighs.
At times in the concert of first monsoon rain
They deck out all the troops
And fiddle our sense
With footfalls in sepia-coloured lanes.

Groping for words, I've called out their names
Which drowned in the tears unaddressed.

Puzzled with the cryptographic symbols in vain
I search for my keys and linger in the rain.

Theatres of Shame

I am drowned in the cauldron of unwholesome sounds
That explode my cortex and lobes.
Even my breath now is strangled with words
That hammer and blast without ounces of sense
In a circus of unlimited rites.

But I'm the lead actor who's hammed all his lines
And waits for an immediate exit, stage left.

Gazing with the honesty of well-practiced whores,
I who had vaunted my unorthodox claims,
Mime all my acts in theatres of shame
And stifle with sanctified hope.

Deafened and mute, I wait for my cues
And crash amid thunders of cymbals and bells.

Sighs Unaddressed

Unknown as leaves amid spring summer breeze
Or trivial as stones in the destiny of brooks,
I flit by her presence and vainly now hope
For sprinklings of green amid brown grey or rust
That kindle my embers of hope.

Her lips now are made my rosaries of faith
Her face my icon of anchorage in storm.

So I conjure my lines from glances unseen
And weave a whole yarn from words she won't speak
That gather my sighs unaddressed.

Only in hours both idle and worn,
I indulge in dreams full of rebirth or more
And script a new fantasy of time-travel lore
That moves our orbits up close.

Once these are gone, I plod back on earth
And stagger as a discarded can in its groan.

In Search of the Reader

Here among causeways of irony and hope,
I shoulder my robes full of autumn and its leaves
And harbour all reeds within time's storied urns
That breathe a few whispers of texts that are lost,
Now in our quarries of fate.

Tethered to their bones by memories now tossed,
I wonder and droop with chisel still in hand
And carve all my songs now on stone.

Etched with my veins that flower now on walls,
I wait for the gaze of one who would hear
Symphony of waves through these stones.

Fishing

At times a few words or moments will fling

A strange shade of light on choices you made

That startle and shackle your steps.

So you ponder as an angler with quietness and thought

Never knowing what from the lake of your depths

Shall pop, float or splatter with mystifying gaze

And tarnish those images you sheltered so long,

Here at the rim of these dark, raven woods

That mock our whirlgig of rides.

Rattled now and awed, I retrace my steps

And search for the charades I had left.

Vacation Blues

Here in the company of poplars and pines,
Where ever-roaming clouds do slide through your bars
Even as butterflies ballet among leaves
And leave me all dazed with splendours of sense
That still would all glitter and shimmer without end,
At night as I fixate on  light-dotted vales
Which glimmer as if diamonds are splattered on your screen
Bright beyond all that is known, done and seen.

In the next room, I hear my dad cough;
And all the stars dim their lights.

Sachin...Sachin

Words now are feeble and strained as I try
To condense my decades of splendour you'd sprung
To metres and rhymes that hardly comply,
Now in this moment of one final flash
That is torn between agony and joy.

So how might I voice
The tears you had driven
Or fears you had pulled
And how with your stance
My heart would just prance
And leap beyond doldrums of failure and stress
To a world that is painted with mountaineous strength
Shining with beams that have lifted from dark
Billions of palpitating hearts.

Guidance in darkness and solace in grief
You sprinkled your gems on our dim-dying days
Which have throbbed with your strokes ever since.

Even as the minutest flower that breathes
Wonders of fragrance to the sunshine in morn
Read, if you care, these verses of mine
Offered in gratitude and reverence without end.