Love is Blind

Love me like a madhouse that
Hates that one sane person,
Who thinks we're just statistics
Of a sample size.

Love me like a thief who stood
Still for the national anthem,
Than figuring out his escape
In time.

The madness and passion
Crossing that fine line of
Sanity.. I tried to love you like
A drunkard, high on stories.

But you forgot our beginnings
And the end. Crumpled what was
There in the middle saying
You didn't know how to stab..

Then you did.

I bleed holding your name in
My mouth and a knife in the back.
A laugh in my heart and a prayer..
That chants, love me like a

Tormenter who loves her whips,
And the sheep that sang praises
For his butcher before succumbing
To the itch of his stomach.

Where Irfan meets Ila

I just wrote a poem for you.
Apprehensive. Little afraid.

In the world where Irfan
Doesn't look in the mirror
To feel the weight of his age.

And reveals himself to Ila in
The restaurant that day.
There-

There, these unapologetic
Poems of romance blossom.
Hundreds of them.

Eventually, you turn them
Into a giant airplane and
We fly to Bhutan.

For a Teen in 30s

I've sliced a part of my
Heart and given it away
To you in apprehension.

It stays bitten between
Your teeth. Bleeding a bit..
Little salty, and tasty.

Waiting for a place in your
Eyes, the other pieces,
Await... Not knowing

Whether to heal or stay
Bruised.

And the knives of your
Lips that try not to kill,
Yet twist inside my gut...

Ahh! what can I say,
Falling in love with a teen,
In the early thirties..

It isn't easy. The knees
Creak and my back hurts.
Mirrors scream self-pity..

I shy away a little. But yes..
I've decided to preserve
The periwinkles that have

Already blossomed.
The cracks they've left in
My enclosed walls.

Things are visible now..
There's light. Colours.
I want to paint.

Sins

The first time I saw the sea,

Set foot against the incoming 

Wave that washed my feet-

I didn't know until the freshness 

Hit me that I too had sins

That needed to be cleaned.

When the waves touch me

To recede. Constantly inviting

Me to erase my footprints,

That lead upto the castle of  

Humiliation and defeat. 

I comply. But not fully.

I manage to preserve that

One footprint, which only 

I could see. An untouched sin..

More like a memory. A hole

In my Soul that needs my

Body to make it complete..

The need for an immoral act,

To keep the prayers alive

And have this life going.

Usual Day

Half of me loves the other half,
But the other doesn't even bother
To shake my extended hand.

This one-sided affair that hangs
In air and fights for the divide
In my breath.

Introspection is a war waged
On chaos of my brain,
The clarity I've now is a stink of  

A gutter after good rains.

The inevitability of the stench
Being dealt with the left hand on
My nose-

A usual day is my confused state,
Of sunshine and shade.
It's a lazy refuge, where..

I overthink about having coffee
With milk or just the black.
Only to end up having chai.

Fad

A story-burning ritual fell in
The groove of popular fads.
In a decided venue,
Everyone Interested would

Surround to throw theirs
In a bonfire.

Stories of those who couldn't
See made a lots of noise.
The one who couldn't talk
Amplified the fiery light.

You threw yours and now
The world is on fire.
One-half of you ran for water
And the other half..

Starved before it died.

Laadu

When her daughter comes
To the festive of Panchami.
Her mother doesn't ask
"Where's her husband?"

She knows how to read
Her veiled smile.

All night, both prepare
Laadu for the occasion and
Talk about the Jhulas and
Coconut Barfi of the old days.

The way they went to the
Farm to have lunch under
The neem tree, when
The Oldman was alive.

For a while, she thought of
Just asking, and the daughter
Too longed to tell all about her
Broken marriage..

But both know about the leaky
Roof above, which can't handle
The pour down of two people
At once.

So they gulp down their tears
By pretending to taste the
Laadus... For what use are
The sweets of a festive if not

To assuage salty grief?

Infertility

This woman who can't bear
Children, treated like an
Orphan by her own mother.

The others who don't let
Her shadow to be cast on
Newlywed brides and children.

Prayers to Gods of fertility.
Payments to similar places
Occupied by doctors.

A forsaken child seems to be
An answer to all her problems.

Not any, but her own. Though-

The orphanages fill the other side.
And this side, the bigots we're
In our homes.. we wait for..

Science to come up with an
Explanation on How silhouettes
Can induce infertility in others.

Landscapes

Soak me in the rains of
Western Ghats. Sew me sweaters
Of Nilgiris in no man's land.

I need winds of Rajasthan
To take to me to the worn-out
Mountains in Gilgit-Baltistan.

Bake me a plate of Kashmir,
Pour me a cup of Chandratal.

Legs chained to solitude,
I'm drowsy again. Slap me awake
To my primal instincts-

Make me fall, drown, and fly.
Serve me those landscapes-

I want to feast on forests
Of Chota Nagpur and
The blackwaters of Nicobar.

Levitation

Three good days this week,
Seventeen okay and ten
Good years and counting.

Four hundred rupee notes
In the wallet as you descend
Down like a king watching her face.

You forget the count of steps,
That you skipped to leap..
A good smile is enough to

Make you question reality.
Levitation is a subtle art,
Taught by the eyes that are

Intoxicating.

AI

The only virtuous man tied
A rock to his soul to drown
It down the village pond.

The fish fed on it to cry fire.
And day there was a
Serious drought.

That only happens in
Dystopian movies.
The kids in the street laughed.

'And Cut' said the director.
For the movie written for bots,
To surpass the captcha.

Unshaved Tonsure

Joined the Army at seventeen,
Salaried young bloke, High on
Confidence and hormones.

Married her briefly, and
You impregnated her readily.

The night of the early nineties,
Drunk cycling in cantonment,
Your pregnant lady on pillion-

You skid and fall, nothing serious,
But your Son has a misshaped,
Wobbly head later on.

To hide his geoid full of
Mountains and valleys-

Adamant to trim the foliage,
Maintains a profuse hairstyle
To preserve himself of shame.

You keep respawning in your 

Deathbed after every major incident,
Lord Yama asks what's the secret,

You look at your son's head and
The hustler Lord, to meet his
Monthly targets.

He has been training himself
To be a barber first, while you lie
Farting again on a hospital bed.

Tamed Mountain

The hillock that once adorned
The name of lovers on its rocks,
Has been invaded by an
Insecure Lord, who throws

Stones at young couples,
He's supposed to hate romance.

The college love that should
Have screamed wild songs,
Now replaced by monotones
Of pretentious chants.

The incels who celebrate this
Shared euphoria are proud to
Inherit this madness from a
Generation that forced him into

Celibacy to hail him as
Fertility God.

The name of his other half
Defaced, overwhelmed by
The relentless offerings, he has
Forgotten his age-old love,

That had blossomed when
This hillock was still a mountain.

Ajar

Sticking a foot at the door,
A story stands.
Not ready to come in.
Not ready to go away for good.

Life has been ajar this way.

The words that want to go out
Get caught in the wheez of
A bad cough.

The ones that wish to come in
Hitch to the juicy affairs of
The wind to fly away.

The roads always take long detours
Before reaching a place. Exhausted,
You ask 'What's the point?'

The many letters you wrote,
Invisible was the ink and
The one they were addressed to

Never believed in the silence
That could speak.

Praise to Despise

The dark grips you and cold
Seeps down to the grit of bones.
And buried in your palms you'll
Pray for the Lord of Warmth.

At the break of dawn, the first
Stroke of warmth on your face,
Paints you orange and you can't
Be thankful enough.

But by noon, he gets overhead
To hail upon your skin to bow
You down in a sweaty submission.
What was a prayer once, turns

Into a curse and at what you
Beseech for now is what you had
Despised a while ago.

Greener Grass

You descend down the stairs
Looking at the unpaid electricity bill.
Slip off the last step and your
Thigh lands hard on the edge.

It's swollen now. It wouldn't have
Mattered five years ago..but..

The soul that leaves the body
For a while in each fall..
Seems, it hesitates to return to
Your dilapidated bones now.

The age that's hailing down, even on
Your mind- What if the astral self,
Decides not to return to the hut when
It takes a nice little walk in the night?

Lured by the empty castle of a
Bodybuilder, who died yesterday,
Writing poems, the next day in the gym.
It's leg day says the instructor-

"Calves on fire, frozen knee, sweaty feet,
Welcome to this ambulatory demise,
A funeral hosted in my thighs" recited
Instead of a hundred squats.

A Ride in Rain

Your hesitation to get drenched
While you ride- drizzle, stop, ride,
Repeat on the highway.
Seeking random shelters gets
Strenuous after a while.

It starts to rain shortly.
The anterior soaks. Your thighs,
Chest and belly feel the cold first.
A bit of the wetness seeps into
Your undies from the front.

The droplets that trickle down
The helmet, get through the collar,
Drench the back, along
The backbone.

By this time, the only warmth
You're left with is around your ass.
And you distinctively feel
The last drop that invades your
Preserved abode.

It redeems you-
Like a homeless man not hesitating
To commit a crime.
You're not afraid of the rain anymore.
There's no home left to protect.

All your restraints fall off and
Soaking suddenly turns out to be
A pleasure.

Troy

Every time your mother tried to
Tame your wilderness as a kid.
You ran away with your cycle tire
And sat all day, at a potter's home.

Looking at his fingers mending
The puddle, on a rotating wheel-

The way he mixed the water in
The mud brought from the dried-up
Pond, mixing it up and shaping it out-
Must give him immense power to

Create something out of nothing.
A whole tribe of pots might hail him
As their Lord, who in his own way
Must have said..'Let there be light".

You felt something off about a
Red plastic mug among the lot,
Which was used to pour water.

Years later it occurs to you that
The little mug was a Trojan Horse
Sent to destroy a Civilization of Soil,
That can be deemed now as Troy.

Too Much Self-awareness

You self-diagnose your symptoms
And you think you're in a depression.
Then far-fetch the counterfactuals
To hit the edge of deniability.

You're hesitant to talk about it to
The only friend you've got.
You fear losing him and avoid a
Good cry that could reset your mind.

Worried about the weight, worried
About your face- your personality
Seems a fuck up and you think you're not
Worthy of even the things you deserve.

However much you try to occupy
Your mind, the emptiness shrills
Against the incoming wind like it's
A shell of conc on a beach.

Waves crashing hard on your shores,
And you giving away a slice of sanity
To each slosh.
You thought you had strong shoulders

But too much self-awareness, acts
For your own peril. Mind seems to
Have become an unbearable rock
That wants you to perish.

Sugar Daddy

Your thoughts explode into
Flowers, you fly through a
Haze of fragrance.
A deep dive in the sea to
Sail among the corals.

You ride a shark and meet
The Lord of Atlantis who
Made his mermaids twerk for
You, he wanted you to be
His friend.

You're in the Himalayas now
Somehow. Slide down on
The snow, barefoot.
You look at yourself in awe,
Your bondages peeled off-

No baggage on your shoulders
Or trauma to process.

You were given a chance
To be a feather for a day by
God knows how and you
Defied the laws of Newton, like
You're his Glucose Guardian.

Gratification

You run and run,
You run from your friends,
You run from your family.
Your guardians, well-wishers
And from yourself.

Chained to a chair, you
Run in your head.
Legs tied to a post, you
Run from wars that haven't
Yet begun.

You re-imagine possibilities
To run from the past.
Hold on to dystopias to
Take your mind off the future.

Can't talk to anyone openly
Fearing exposal of your
Vulnerabilities, in a denial
Mode constantly - winning
Arguments with yourself
That are imaginary.

You thought you wrote for
The love of it. But sometimes 

You sink in a condemnation that 

Screams a fake sense of

Achievement that comes with 

Writing.

Which you need for 

The gratification of the 'self'

That seems to be dying.

An Arm's Distance

After doing the honors of staying apart,
I stalk her secretly to read her poetry.
Happy to know that she exists and
Happy to know that she still writes.

She did the same to me earlier.
I hope she still does.

The things between us have been
Ruined to the extent that there can
Be no peace. Our volatile personalities
Clashing for no reason and disturbing

Whatever there isn't.

Better to be at an arm's distance like
Soldiers of different platoons.
We needn't be friends or enemies.
Just sticking to the blinders to

Glide forward in the campaign-
Each poem is a kill towards victory.
And we thumbs up and greet and move
On our way to conquer different hills.

When You Fall in Love

It rains when you fall in love.
It should rain.
There should be a cool breeze
Brushing against your cheeks.

The sky should paint itself in
Colours you can't name.
And in a Saree she should
Walk in slow motion.

The heart should pace up
And mind, go numb.
The bones should lose density
To skip the early phase of evolution-

So that you can have wings
To defy gravity. And you'll not be
The same once you're back to
The ground reality-

The memory of a flight is
Enough to bind you to the sky.
And an instance of her face
To create an ebb for once..

You're done for life.