desire

desire is doing eleven rounds
with knots of men around God
seeking a visa paper fulfillment
of a far off cold white country
where a green currency rains

please do not close your eyes
but see effulgence for a trice
a pig-tailed man forewarns
to a mechanical piety of rounds
under a tree that looks down
with baleful eyes of summer

desire is not only a mere body
of body, to sweaty late night
discovery of a fear in windows

desire is a poem recognition
claps in cross-country portals
a jingle of money in pal of pay
desire is a miracle to happen
a suspension of physical laws
nature going contra,a turnabout.

you begin with nothing

you begin with nothing
just a plain glass of water
some baby cries to sleep
a night paling to morning
with some dogs absent
and barking at the wind

water enters cold and wet
dousing fires,orange in blues
a sweet thought,a cold wind
a heat in granules vanishes
on a white parapet to night

the night crumbles darkly
as a tree dies, a fruit ripens
a flower falls its red feet up
an earth shivers in a tree
a sky falls ,a cloud breaks

a color flies , a wind wavers
an orange creeps up gently
a hill fattens,a tree turns blue
a lake streaks in pure silver
and you end up with nothing
just a ball of fire in the east

Newspaper

Newspaper spreads
On pant-legs in park
Hiding ugly scowls,
Disgusts at country
Its deaths and inanity

Green bench witnesses
Some brand new dramas
Unfold from shirt pockets
Daughter-in-law peeves
Are hurts in old pockets.

Buttons open to waist,
Their jokes come out
Like kids after school
Like farts in company.
Newspaper hides faces
And also hides pockets.

green bench

from the green bench
a pair of glass eyes
looks for phantoms
coming from park gates

his eyes clutch visions
perhaps he is thinking
of all of them gone far,
his mates from womb

nephew tells his elbow
raise your feet will you
there is a road bump
an elevation for raising
foot to unknown space

he walks living in sleep
a television of god's story
a sleep between stories
of god-king deserting wife

there is darkness coming
from east, he tells nephew
let us reach before dusk.

Rattle

the wind at midnight
fuses night with sound
and sleep sitting up
at the window ledge
in the night's apron

the fan belts the wind
to May heat of poems
unrealized ,skies dead
to their potential cloud

come June the hills
will get up from stupor
down at map's feet
and then hurl buckets
from the sea's vapor

the streets will rattle
with wind from the hills
and cry saltless tears
from the distant seas

breath

for now you hold it against tree bird
waiting, guessing, imagining liquid
shapes flow windward, gone now
now back from leaves, a poet's mind
of words, of origins lost, ends open

begin now ,whir, fashion your things
out of sounds, through missing light
a center , a circle position on a ring
a stirring in leaves, a bark of ants line
a story that begins in day to a night

now you hold it in your hands, chest
congested in thought, a pain littoral
a sea holding wind, a weave constant
a moon-tide, a salt unmade , a man
in trees searching, an emptied bottle
for now hold it and leave it but hold
between now and then space , hold
so it will not go away ,not come back

Bricks

Bricks came first and then the lime.
We like their color and of the pan
That they sit in on woman's head
As a warm sky stretches infinitely
From the sun-kissed hem of her cloth.

Old bricks make way for new ones
That contrast so well with old cloth.
The bricks have burnt to perfection
Outside city where they spew fumes
As earth burns slowly towards sky.

Woman and boy cut smooth cakes
Burn them to perfection like hell.
Their hell burns fiercely in red face.
Once they are out from the inferno
They sit in pans on woman's heads
For a joy ride to house skeletons .
Then they are laid, end to end, to hide
Men from the sky and its fierce sun.

Reminding

Just now I am reminded of a top
First spinning on the child's palm
And flung down to spin on ground
Till it stops tired and falls to a side .

Reminding is a top act of spinning
A brief spinning on the palm tickling
Like the red velvety creature crawling
On your palm reminding rain season
And flung to the ground it reminds its
Vanishing in grass hairs of the earth,
The earth that is spinning after flung
From a big child's palm slowing to stop.

Kafka's top spins on my palm briefly
Only to stop a little later ,when flung
To the ground after reminding is over.

Stone

Whenever our cups, we mean, runneth over,
Full or half full at times, then his eyes turn red
Bloodshot and much water oozes from kindness,
Stone clothes in pleats, a sloping torso in waters
As the morning sun light marks their lines from
Side to side, their stone ersatz for an ancient body
Standing in eternal presence with its fixed stare
At a city of glimmering lights in its black fever.

Drop your clothes to stop cups of running over.
Flap your limbs about to morning birds chirps.
Eye contact stone eyes at their stare of kindness
And drop body's fears to turn your mind to stone.

(A 18-meter monolithic statue of Buddha stands tall in our city's
Hussainsagar lake)

Salvation

We are waiting for our soul's salvation
Especially at night , as sleep vanishes
From the corners of pillows, their soft
Textures turn hard in silk and cotton,
As resident dreams turn stale and old.

Then there are moths come to eat sleep
From a powdered body under our skin.
They seem to appear by window's frost
In search of their light fighting windows
Staging phantom dances of people in bed.

We are the people who cannot sleep
Only dance with our vigorous limbs
Touching backs, clothes peeled off
So we present really pretty shadows .

We grow our heads right into clouds
Not knowing the lizard and the rat
That scurry past our tiny feet below
Lost in rustling dry leaves and scrub
But a mild tickling sensation to feet
Is felt in heads even at such heights.

A Poem A Day

Poetic Images