Next time you bite a piece of my heart
Remember to hide away yours

(Read in caption)

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मित्र,

आशा है सकुशल होगे। आशा है सुरक्षित होगे। आशा है ... तुम होगे। और होना क्रियाओं में सर्वोत्तम है। इसके बिना भाषा-व्याकरण लिखी-पढ़ी सारी बात, सब गौण हो जाते हैं। अब मुर्दों को राख के राख कहलाने से क्या लेना देना? उसको चाहे अमृत बुला लो। न होने वाले को तो नहीं बुला सकोगे। और यही बात है कि मित्र, आज मैं तुम्हें यह ख़त लिख रहा हूँ। मुझे लिखना नहीं आता। शब्द खेल करने नहीं आते। सो तुम्हें मेरी बातें हो सकता है कच्ची लगें। उसके लिए माफ़ कर देना। मैं चाहता तो भाषा सीखकर तुम्हें एक काव्यात्मक, साहित्यिक पत्र से सम्बोधित कर सकता था, परन्तु ... मुझे तुम्हारे न होने का डर था। सो मैं बिन सीखे ही लिखने बैठ गया।

मित्र। मुझे नहीं पता तुम क्या कर रहे हो, या कहाँ हो, या कौन हो? मुझे नहीं पता कि तुमने पूरी बात पढ़ी भी या नहीं, या बस इग्नोर मार कर चल दिए। सही भी है। ना तो मेरा कोई अदबी नाम है, और ना ही मैं कोई कन्या। बातों का गुम हो जाना लाज़मी है। पर मित्र, आशा करता हूँ, तुम इसका ज़वाब दोगे। नीचे कमेंट में हाँ लिखोगे तो शायद मैं एक ख़त तुम्हारे नाम लिख पाऊँ। बे-नाम से ख़ुश हो तो यही सही।

पर जो भी बात हो। ख़ुश रहो। आजकल दुनिया में दुखी होने को कई ख़बरें हैं। पर तुम ख़ुश रहो। बहने से पहले समन्दर होना सीखो, जो बहकर भी हिलता नहीं है। कई बार मुझे पता है, तुम बहक जाते हो। पर इतना बहकना ... (बाक़ी नीचे) ...

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Smoke. Smoke. Smoke.
Rising from the chimneys
Of the houses in foreign lands,
Too far away, to exist,
Only in my dreams
With red, blue, yellow, and green rooftops.
Rising from the cigarette
Of the buffoon leaning against
The broken shop. Smoke.
Pulsing out through the vehicles
Puff. Puff. Puff. And getting inside
The lungs and veins
Of wary unwary alike.
Smoke. Like a snake settled down
A blanket of mist, above
The sleeping town.
Smoke. Like a cat prancing through
The night sky. Like a dog
Barking. Whirring. In the noon.
Smoke. Oozing from lungs
Like sweet juice. Like fire
Spreading, and then leaving an after smell
An after taste.
Smoke. All that remains.
After we die.
After we live.
Smoke. Smoke. Smo ...

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Mind is a strange place. You lose control over it, and it breaks you into pieces you can't even imagine. I saw someone drinking ‘solution’ on the bridge. He was confused. Yet he was finding himself belonging to everything. In those grossed out looks, in those ewws, and fuck offs he found his reflection smiling a drugged smile back at him. His clothes were tattered, perhaps he didn't had enough to score a room for his own, but he had enough to stone himself until the open sky became his room and his hunger became just another unjustified need.
Perhaps he was hungry, perhaps not, I can't tell, for the auto rickshaw went on. Crossing him. Like another landmark, the driver pausing and joking about him.
Somewhere, not that far, his brother died. Drinking the same thing. Somewhere, at quite a distance, his sister injected herself with hallucinogens; somewhere he readied himself to carry his corpse until ashes.
But everywhere in the middle I saw mind smiling. Everything men have conquered or not, it's all it.
Maybe Men are nothing but tools of parasitic minds, slowly killing them from within.

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Does that moment hit you with poetic expressions
When that stranger was brutally beaten
Completely alien to your thoughts as you were alike
Does that moment hit you with piercing iron rods in your chest
A burning bubble cuddling the inside of your stomach
The blood of the stranger colouring the scrapes of the brittle knees
And bile frothing forth for an expulsion
Is this the price of expression, this banishment

Each word, where logic counts, is blamed
Chains are brought for people who question
Whips are cracked on the backs of the people who talk and quote
Hands are twisted around wooded planks
And blunt swords are pulled up to the groin and rapidly blasted
This is what they said when they talked of freedom
This is the real independence:
Of action, not of speech,

For you are independent to safeguard your faith
By attacking, looting, burning people and property
But others have got no chances clinging to theirs
There is no life if no conformity
And no leaders will be allowed except you

The divisions is not based on the colour of your face
Or the flag you bear
Or your tongue
But slowly your heart has got stained too
A shade of red, saffron, blue,
A darker shade of white too.

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i am not a poetry of enlightenment
nor i am a prose piece rich in myriad philosophy
i am not a queer movement
nor some distant still unbeaten mountain
i am not a guitar taut with strings made of errors
nor i am a tv soap for you and your friends to watch and laugh
i am not a heartbroken kitten
nor i am a bloodthirsty canine
i am not Hades, not Poseidon, not Zeus,
i am not Horus, not Indra, or the divine Brahm
i am not where you seek me, nor i am where i was found
i am nowhere in the middle of my birth and death
i am lost. not lost lost maybe,
but just another synonym. i am not the word you seek
when you forget something, i am its antonym
choking your throat, clutching your tongue
i am not a quote to keep you motivated
i am the click bait of your procrastination
i am not the recycled glass you tinted for your windows
i am your window, the broken one, with edges still sharp with malice
and ends poisoned, my centre is lost in abyss
and i am hinged to some memorable styx
i am not your strength, your arms, or your charms even
i am your heel, your unconcern, your decay
i am
i. neither us, nor you, not anything different, no mean, no curious,
selfish, stoic, eccentric. i am
INFINITE.

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Close your windows tight, for it might get dark below when the sun is high up in the sky.

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sugar mopped crystals
kept carefully under the guise of silver
in gold stockings
saved for the people to come by,
as a refuge to their ignorance;
for ignorant people bring about revolution,
wise men are coward, and ostrich indeed
they don't get spiced by sugar cubes
nor sweetened by an extra pouch of chilly flakes.
for wise men sit behind the swords and read,
they listen and write of the grim reality
and the abstract, none of concern of the weak
of mind, and the goats and sheep
who care all for a bit of fame, and none for their blood,
for whom dying for a harem is as great a martyrdom
as dying for motherland is.
thick browed, and pot bellied dogs barking commands
and their hyenas gathering dogs and cattle
and marching onto the field.
the war of same blood round the corner,
and only the cowards will survive.
for brave men got no mind
the size of their arms,
and peace is something they understand not,
all the songs of praise to blame.

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The layers of grass parting, like a river
budding fresh out of nowhere, right there
in the middle of the lawn, tearing through
the wet, burrowed ground.
The wind, flowing, like a bride running
to embrace her ocean, or mountain,
or just her hearth. The strand which holds her
into this world. The thread of her kite.
The leash of her noose. The feathers of her wings.
The grass parts, as a small breeze dances across
showing moves difficult to handle by mere mortals
no feet, no hands could ever copy those subtle
stimulations of the supreme. It feels as if
the combing of the rough soil, by a summer wind—
which is making way for the clouds to drizzle—
is the most romantic feast laid on our senses.
Leaves, calling out poems to the flowers down
in the garden, and the boughs calling on the birds,
rodents crawling home, and ants justling office hours.
The world is so busy and content underneath
the green fluff of soil. So dull and boring above.
I have whole day to keep watching with my closed eyes.
The closing song of the nature's opera.

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a slow death, gnawing
its way past the cities of summer,
monsters looking just like heroes
jumping in capes killing people
the caravan of decay, moving around
this whole city―a graveyard
the garden grows obsidian
and the nightingale's call
a dirge, hymn of lamentation,
a mournful dedication, an elegy,
for the dears begone. the industry of
bloodshed burgeoning
and candle march soldiers holding
candelabras,
sappers of evil working hard on new forts
whilst the silhouetted darkness sweeps in
and devours more.
nothing in world to call home.
no fireplace a hearth.
no gathering a party.
no books. no pages. no everything.
the knives are fancied and worn around head,
just a click and die.
and that's all in media and news. people laughing
almost at nothing, but deep within, at their own misery.
death, it may come at the end.
but this is a fool's job
to run ragnarok business
t h i s s o o n.

―death

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