बढ़ रही है अब ज़िंदगी आग़े ,
सब कुछ अब ‘तुम’ से ‘तुम‘ तक नहीं रहा ॥

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हम तो पहले ही ज़िंदगी में तन्हा थे
तुमने छोड़ कर कौन सा कमाल कर दिया

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Life is quite rough
so can I use
your soft thighs
as a substitute
for the
cure.

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Stories you read about ageing,
illness and death
and never quite knowing
when you'll take your last breath
just a niggling feeling,
that questions
why we're born to live, and yet live to die.

Stories you read about wishing,
you knew about love
or believed in something
below or above
something about needing,
to call it your own
to covet and nurture
when you're alone.

Stories you read about chasing,
memories and dreams
and hearing life's laughter
instead of death's screams.
Something about feeling it,
there deep inside
and bottling it up
like tears never cried.

Stories you read about needing,
to forget the pain
while reliving the past
again and again.
to find your way home
feeling calm and contented
within one last poem.

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The poem of the mind in the act of finding
what will suffice. it has not always had
to find: the scene was set; it repeated what was in the script
then the theatre was changed
to something else. its past was a souvenir.
it has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
it has to face the men of the time and to meet
the women of the time. it has to think about war
and it has to find what will suffice. it has
to construct a new stage. it has to be on that stage
and, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
with meditation, speak words that in the ear,
in the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
of which, an invisible audience listens,
not to the play, but to itself, expressed
in an emotion as of two people, as of two
emotions becoming one. the actor is
a metaphysician in the dark, twanging
an instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
beyond which it has no will to rise.
it must
be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman combing.
The poem of the act of the mind— % &

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आहिस्ता चल जिंदगी
अभी कुछ कर्ज चुकाना बाकी हैं
कुछ दर्द मिटाना बाकी हैं
कुछ फर्ज निभाना बाकी हैं


...... caption— % &

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Feelings of unease,
Restless, never at peace,
I walk these arid lands,
Bones aching, growling weak.
In search of good fortune,
Landmines under my feet,
I greet the familiar darkness,
Yet kneel before it, on my knees.
Running in place,
I only yearn to be free,
Yet the most harrowing thought of all ,
Is that I know not what I seek.— % &

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All around me are words,
I wish to speak
I hate to admit
I look forward to.

All around me are words,
I want to share but
I hold back.

I want to hear voices telling me,
“It’s alright”.
I want to see through
The sweet talks.

All around me are words
I want to differentiate
the real and the reels.
I’m insane, holding back
I know all the things I lack.

Yet I can’t believe the words
in the weighing shards of hearts.


— % &

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भूल के भी बिगड़ नही सकते,
इतना बुरा सुधार कर आया हूं ।

और किसी का बुरा तो हम भी कर लेते,
पर क्या करू बुरे वक्त से गुजर कर आया हूं ।।

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I want to bury
myself so deep
inside of you,
it will leave you
feeling hollow
when I'm not
with you.

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