this heart is a strange thing
she desires and reaches out
she wears not a cloak to protect
she holds not a shield
yet, when she comes to sense
what is not hers
she breathes a cloud of moist air
and saunters back
to beat gently back to her blissful stepping rhythm

arrivals

crowded platforms
unknown travellers
one wonders if the journey is the same.
all that is left of my privacy
is the mind.
Its that train:
the one that should have been here
an hour? a day? a week? or years back?
i watch time
move solemnly, unfazed,
likewise my thoughts
of that arrival.
jostled, pushed:
struggling for the tissue
in that bag:
lost among the million
people? hopes?
i wonder
is this it?
the last parcel in the mail van?

first love

Its raining
gently falling
from leaves
on to window panes

Streaks of lightning
illuminate
an otherwise inconspicuous million

I can feel them
when they noisily
touch a starved earth
and she suckles
like an infant
its mother's bosom

I hear the clock
and my voice
endlessly conversing
with a distant you

wish you were here
beside me
listening
to these noisy raindrops
the occasional thunder
distant traffic
the egotistic clock

disjoint

just me
and the wild flowers
never enjoyed jagjit as much
as this moment mentions.

the soundless wind
the leaves have another story to tell

laughter nearby
a cry elsewhere
the bitch and her hungry litter
outside this boundary
yet within

with multiple conversations around
which one do I keep pace with

interwoven

in silence
somewhere
a leaf turned
towards the sun
yearning to stretch
waiting to shed the tenderness
and the red for her green coat
ready to bear the morning dew

as every sandstorm eats at my edges

I shall be the rock that I am meant to be

Transformed, never the way I was formed to be

but the form I took

glass bangles

he waits outside
standing by their side
with the shop long shut
his ware lay lined
green, red, blue
gold stripes interspersed
still

stranded between thoughts

a little here
a something there
I land on my feet
and much before that
I am gone
through a well planned design
am stopped midway
by an intrusion
sometimes a finger
touches the sun and burns
sometimes the toe nail scrapes the ground
and it tickles.

what itself thrived only a second
took more from me to endure
stranded between thoughts
like a trapeze
the world i see
holds on to what it saw
easy as it was indeed
the sky and the earth
and the space in the middle
are mine
to throw thoughts at
and wriggle through them:

afterthought

as an after thought
the last bud
on a dying plant

as an after thought
the last cloud
before the parched soil
cracks

as an after thought
the dead soul creeps
through
a hole in the rusted gates to heaven

sculpture

i thought i was complete
till the master positioned me
in the middle of life
with a mass of clay beside me
one by one
she came, then he
another he, another she
place a little clay
here and there
i cringed at my changing shape
till admirers walked by at my new shape
say shapes if i may..

beside

you are beautiful;
i am, she said, he said
insanely: she said
nothing. waiting to turn real
it did not
old wolves, green eyes
trees meeting the dark skies
drawing lines on the moon
i am ugly, one green eye peered from behind the trunk
i can kill, another rustle in the woods
i am beautiful, she said
you are
he said the wolves live in my jungle too