Musings..

हसरतों  की  कब्र  में , एक  रूह  दफन  हो  गयी ..

वोह  आग  को  लगा  गले , एक  आह  ओढ़े  सो  गयी ...

आंसुओं  से  आसमान  के , धुल  गयी  ज़मीन  तेरी ..

कि बादलों की  साजिशों  में , घुल  गयी  ज़मीन  तेरी ...

किस  फ़कीर  कि  मज़ार  पे , अब  चादरें  चधाऊँ  मैं ?

किस  शौख के  बाज़ार  में , दिलचस्पियाँ  जताऊँ  मैं ?

पुछा  जो  कल  कि रात  से , वोह  बोली  क्या  बताऊँ  मैं ?

क्यूँ  इस  सवेरे  के  आगे , फिर  आज  सर  झुकाऊँ  मैं ?

क्यूँ  आज  जलती  लौ  से  लड़  पड़ी  हैं  यह  हवाएं  फिर ?

क्यूँ  अब  दुआ   की  राह  देखती  हैं  यह  दवाएं  फिर ?

 भूले  हुए  गुनाहों  की , क्यूँ  मिल  रहीं  सजाएं  फिर ?

क्यूँ  हंस  रहीं  हैं  आज  रेगिस्तान  की  फिज़ाएं फिर ?

एक  आस  मेरी  थी  कभी , तनहाइयों  में  खो  गयी ,

एक  सांस  मेरी  थी  कभी , गवाहियों  में  खो  गयी ,

एक  रात  कि जो  बात  थी , कहानियों  में  खो  गयी ,

एक  अक्स  है , छुपाने  को , परछाइयों में  खो  गयी .

Absence

Seized by nightmares
My hand reaches to feel the assurance of your beating heart
But finds none
For a hundredth night
I lie beside a crease less left
Wrapped in despair and longing
And I wake up to another nightmare
Of having to breathe in your absence

Some yesterdays haunt my corridors

Some yesterdays have said farewell

Some yesterdays had blessed my coldness away

Some yesterdays chase me to hell

Your laughter echoes in my hollow insides

Your words are scattered all over the place
Its a strange grieving quiet in this house
Like a shore abandoned by the sea

Doors still wait unopened

Rains ask for you
Your poems bleed every night
In my sweaty palms

Your guitar has refused to sing

It does not like my tune

The birds don't come home now

Even when worried by June

The drawers are filled with you

And I stand here, looking at them
Like a shipwreck
In the solace of oblivion.

Clothes smell of your smiles

Walls chose to be bare

 I never look at them

For the fear of their stinging stare

I lie back into the void
When the chimes sing with the wind
The curtains dance
And blinded by warm, salty sorrow
I call out for you

I can feel you touch my lonely breath
I can feel you kiss my bruises away
I can feel you the warmth of this quilt
In the pillow cradling my head
On the sheets

And gently on my lips
You place back the pieces of a smile
"You are here", I whisper, "with me"

The silence whispers back
"Always"

What shall

The silent stare of the the night

Winds waltzing around with dust

Spirits singing to earthly mates

Burning in haunted lust

A fire breathing its last

In the midst of mocking ashes

A song from the womb of whiskey

Into his numbness crashes

A frown upon a forehead

The scent of evening prayers

Driving away an evil

That often pulls the chairs

The lamps that light for nobody

But for the whistling man

His family sleeps in his quarters

All of them who can

The bareness of a page

I clad with weeping ink

What will become of it

After the darkness shall sink?

A tragedy to be alive?

Or some comedy to pass away

In the middle of loving and laughing

One maddening November or May.

LOST

What did leave and what did not

What is left behind is lost

Why to weep these waters hot

Why to think you loved it most

Of that bloom that withered young

Of that star that fell tonight

Of that song that died unsung

In the shades of whispering light

In despair lies the broken glass

In numbness lies the wine

A time that doth refuse to pass

In pain two world entwine

And slumber shall not visit thy bed

For on silken sheets is agony spread

Nothing at all

Time slipped through her sweaty palms
And she slipped through her existence
Pleasing and laughing
Her demented self
Dragged itself in the motionless calms
She feared the fire, as it chased her
Every candle she lit, burnt her down
Sometimes slowly, sometimes at once
Her charred remains fell on the tired earth
And she rose again to walk
She lifted her hands and touched the humid air
It touched her back
And ran down her neck as a curious drop
To disappear in the melancholy of her skin
She laughed again
The wind tried to plait the whims of her hair
And the grass wept below her naked feet
She felt nothing and spoke much
Of care and promises
She sifted her heart through the sieves of hope
To find a morsel of feeling to feed upon
Hungrily she looked, starved and white
But alas! Everything she had devoured
To bring her back after she lay dead every time
Her ghost smiled and shrieked
She fell down on indifferent sands
the Sun in conversation with musing clouds
About a woman who is so dead yet not
The sands took pity at last
And hid her under their whispering prisms
Come they said, come back to where you belonged.
The candles melted away.

The Sparrow

And so the wounded sparrow
Came to me and wept

Said Satan and Moloch were men

Hope away from the planet swept

Bleeding through dying whispers

She spoke of her loving nest

Her son and daughter lonely

Waiting for the warmth of her chest

She smiled to remember there was happiness once

In the realms of her little world and beyond

When brothers and sisters in chorus sang

And beings and birds shared a loving bond

But now fires were raging

Their were shrieks, and pain and grief

But now men thirsted blood alone

And lived in souls of a terrible belief

She had seen them lying in blent red heaps

She had seen them hunt and laugh

She told me what one sows, he reaps

And prayed i write it on her epitaph

I questioned her why then little thing

Are you dying with the deeds of mindless men

She laughed and stared at her bleeding wing

Because i had prayed for a happy heaven

In this world answer me if wise you are

Can i be happy to breathe and sing

In this world black, bitter and dour

Will my loved children ever want to swing

I will go now to a happier place

And they shall come to me soon i know

If you see them, please remember to say

That their mother sleeps on a blissful bow

My tear dropped in her eye and ran down

But it neither moved nor blinked

On wet earth i lay her, in a quiet grieving brown

And what she had asked, on a paper I inked

The rain washed away her forgotten words

She embraced her loving earth

In the grey skies sighed the lonely birds

and I never saw her children.

The Smile Of Austerity

The smile of austerity.

looking through hollow eyes

into the darkness of your soul

and asking your humanity

the question it cannot answer

the stillness of its misery

surging through your veins

reaching your grieving heart

tainted and poisoned

asking the meaning of hope and love

asking why God made men

to be born crying, to live sighing and lie dying

why you were born to a rich father

and she to a starving widow

why you could sleep in comforts of the quilt

while winter slaps her numb naked feet

you glanced one glance and strolled ahead

to meet happy friends and celebrate the day

she slept that night in the lap of death

oblivion gently swept her away.

That you will not believe

It is the lie in my truth

The hatred in my love

The scream in my silence

The pride in my humility

The nothingness in my substance

The black in my white

The laughter  in my tears

The despair  in my hope

The winter  in my spring

That you do not believe

That you cannot see

And thus it’s not me whom you love

You love her what I used to be

No, nobody is to be blamed

It’s just between me and time

But this truth is a truth

That u do not believe

That you cannot see…

I live with u in a palace with broken walls

The plaster and velvet curtains

Have hid them so well

That you are only charmed

By its magnificence

I can tell you but I cannot show you

That disillusion in your eyes I fear

And when I hint it in conversations

You laugh and embrace me

It is the pain of this betrayal

That you do not believe

That u cannot see..

So I will live with it and you

And dread that day

When the curtains will fade

And the plaster will peal

That you will see the real

And you will loathe the traces of my shadow

 I know I will love you that day

With all that is left of my heart

But that day my love

It will become a little truth

That you will not believe

That you will never see.