An Afternoon In Daze

It is a piece of golden comfort

floating somewhere.

The buildings, three-storied,

old and lime-washed, are surrounded by trees.

Hulking guardian angels of the locality.

On Adenwalla Road outside,

taxis are parked around bends,

the drivers asleep on the boot.

Another road shimmers ahead,

dazzling like a river in the afternoon light.

My father and I are walking…

there is a sugarcane stall here,

the smell of beedi smoke…

How brightly this scene glows and glows!

The jingling of the crusher

still ringing in my ears.

 

The above poem is from my first book Reeling (2012).

I Was Walking

down the streets

bored with myself

the shops the buildings

in the evening light

looked even more bored

with themselves

my hands were chilled

with loneliness

my mind was lost

in isolation

then I saw the moon

tailing me

I turned down a road

and there it was

a few paces behind

and when I finally

entered a bar

and went up the stairs

it rolled over my shoulder

and died in my drink.

Left Blue

by brown-and-cream trains

red BEST buses

I travel in black-and-yellow autorickshaws

taxis

through the neon burning

green orange fluorescent

pink

and think how much the withered darkness holds…

how the broken stars’ sob stories

keep the golden sand

awake at night

and the sea sniffling…

 

The above poem is from my second book Circling the Sky (2013).

This Fire State

these melons of blood

burnt

are constantly

growing

bleeding

and when they burst

they catch fire

what will quench the thirst

here even water burns

all around

the melon people crawl

big headed

full of smoke

all over there is fire.

 

The above poem is from my first book Reeling (2012).

When You See

the heaviness

the dullness

dropping dead

in you

the silence of the mind

is a kind of thought

a feeling

a poem whose

words are

looking for you

and finding

you somewhere else

closed in some

unhappy form

sinks further in blue

calling this quietness

your music

and finding how

this broken emptiness

can give shelter

calls it home.