इबादत

अबकी बार जब बरसो
तो सैलाब लेकर आना
सावन का नकाब पहने
कयामत बनकर आना

आंगन में छुपे हुए
सिगरेट के धुवाओं को जो बदले
सौंधी खुशबू से महकाने
वह बौछार बनकर आना

गुलाबी साड़ी में लिपटी
खजुराहो के मूरत सी
तराशा है तुम्हे जिस खुदा ने
इबादत बस करेंगे तुम्हारी
यह उसे भी तुम केह के आना

अबकी बार जब बरसो
तो सैलाब लेकर आना
अपने गीली जुल्फों के कैद से रिहा कर
मेरे रूह को भी तुम भीज जाना

-

Some days ...

I just want it to end some days
Everything to stop
No noise, no heat, no notifications
Just maybe some rain
Falling on the ocean
And me drowning
Dissolving
Being the salt
In that pacifist blue
That will be the wave
That splashes on the rocky shores
Smashing it
In perpetuity

Or perhaps be the petrichor
Just before the rain hits
And my existence
Fumes into that rain
Fuses so inseperably
That I know not
If I am the cloud
The muck
The droplet on her lips
Or the thunder

-

Opinion

They don't know what to think of you
Except what they see
You smile all the time, You make jokes
You talk with a certain confidence
They see that ...And that's all they see

They don't know
That for days, You fight yourself to get out of bed
They may never see how in solitude
You hit your head with a clenched fist
To hit the reset on your never quiet brain
And they shall never see how while in bed
You pull your hair, what's left of it
To somehow get rid of something uneasy
Going on and on and on and on and on
and on and on and on and on and on and on
A nagging in no words and from no source, non stop

They can't see that you don't have home
Not the architecture, but the person
The place that makes you feel at peace
The arms that calm you to true sleep

They see you as a complaining useless entitled snowflake
The judges have beaten the gavel

-

लाल

कभी मरने कि चाह जगे
तो घर आजाना
मेरे बिल्डिंग कि आठवी मंज़िल
के छत से नीचे का रास्ता
साथ तय करेंगे

हाथ पकड़े हम
गुलमोहर कि टहनियों को तोड
जब फुटपाथ को चूमेंगे
हमारे चेहरे भले ही
सीमेंट में समा जाए
गुलमोहर के लाल फूल हम पर बरसेंगे
और साथ बहेगा हमारा लहू
जैसे वहीं फूल पिघल के सारे जमीन को रंग गया

तुम्हारे घर से मेरे घर तक का रास्ता
घंटे भर में तय होता होगा
ट्रेन समय पर चली तो
बस एक फोन करके आना
मेरे जिंदगी के कुछ ही पन्ने हैं
इतनी देर में समेट लूंगा
एक आधा चिट्ठी लिख लूंगा

फिर सारी दुनिया भुलाकर
लाल रंग बन जाएंगे

-

An Artist's Death

He dies everyday within me
Shouting relentlessly at the top of his voice
Silently
"Help me"
Everything drying up in the drought
Of my heart, drowning in suppressed oceans
At the brim of the dam of my tear glands

Help me - he shouts again
He begs me, with all his might
Minisculed
While I choke him with thoughts
Of inability!

Is he my child
Or am I his?
I am unaware
All I know is ...my hands
Are at his throat squashing
His voice like an insignificant bug
While he thinks of me as his savior
And (deep down) I think of him as mine!

-

If your heart is broken...
Rejoice! For you have loved

If it is shattered...
Put up a bittersweet smile.
YOU, my dear, have loved
....with all of it

-

To be a man or woman
In your own right
You gotta be the villain
In someone's book
And the hero
In your own

-

Unmarked

Unspoken words are often heavy
As the dirt on an unmarked grave
For a living person, suicidal ...yet
Fighting to grasp one last breath

No love, no life
Yet the desire of that one last kiss of air
But, alas! Not even a drop of saline water shed

Un-expression manifests strangely
Within the body
Choking the larynx
Crushing the heart
Treading cruelly on a mouse of a soul

Help me! I feel ...
Tongue paralysed
Tear glands wanting to burst
Held by a reluctant steel dam
Damn! Damn! Let me free...

To know the love for life
A moment before death
That is when...
I am.

-

Of Fuels and Fantasy

Sometimes I dream of myself
Noosed up to the ceiling fan
Gravity choked
Displaced neck
Snapped spinal cord
And I sigh in relief!

It's over
I am with my lost loved
And then I lay awake
Gasping for an inflation of lungs
Staring at my dream instrument of salvation

My heart races in a triathlon
And I bleed tears
Smiling I go back to my nightly grave
Where death fantasies is life's fuel
To go on...

-

Patience

I'm just some floating feeling
Embodied as a human
The footpath below my balcony
Calls me to take my true form
Gulmohar petals calling me
To my dark bleeding destiny

But...
There's just one unkown voice
Stopping me
Promising to be in my arms

And I wait

-