I want to write a poetry, with layers of meanings, like rose petals

But what comes out has but one meaning, only one expression

My distress with life, life and poetry both seek rhythm desperately.

With every uttered word, and each unuttered phrase I dream rhythm

Just like my days and nights, seeking, failing, bleeding, and at the end pretending.

I am no modern painter, nor a feminist woman, who cares for my burning scar?

Most probably I myself do not care a damn, if I die every moment or every day.

The dark labyrinth of seeking is choking me day and night taking the lights away,

But still knowing, at least I think I know it, I follow the trail taken by all humanity.

But trust me I want to write a poetry, with layers of meaning, like a beautiful rose.

We are so progressive and modern these days,

We let our girls go out and work and wear jeans.

If someone tells you that’s because things are expensive,

Just ignore them; they just cannot see our liberal side.

If they point to the time when I told my daughter-in-law,

That she is not entitled to that particular slice of bread.

Or when I shouted on her for drinking more milk,

It was not because I am narrow! I just care too much for the grand-kids

And so should she as a mother, her only role, unless why is she here?

Did anyone complain about me claiming the right of my grandson?

Only my flesh and blood, from that girl my son married, the outsider!

You need to understand, my modern logical mind, I have read science and history

I have the judgments so I know what she deserves, or as a matter of fact what do I.

Trust me my man does not tell that to me anymore, he just suggests

And I know being the wise one that he can never be wrong.

I see dead bodies everywhere, blood and flesh

The stench of rotting flesh and rotten minds

And we want to save just our colour, or race.

If you ask the lamenting mother, who do you mourn?

Your child from Iran, or your daughter from India

Or the blue eyed son from Wild West?

And she with her calm but cold eyes looks at you

With disbelief and pain, the same pain that you

See on the faces of thousands of dead around.

She did not ask religion when they came to this world

She did not keep her milk and love for one race.

For her a boat carrying all her children is drowning tonight.  

A name, just a name on the cold black stone,

A name, dead now, paying for human intolerance.

Martin, you are just a name, inscribed-so cold,

Have no form or face to us, just a name in Ground Zero.

You have sized to exist a long time back, may be you have.

May be you do not feel love any more, but my friend

You still bring love and tears to others, who never knew you.

My love, today when I stand in front of the north pool

With invisible life gushing down, no heat can scorch you anymore

You are not just a name any more, you are the white rose

That kisses the morning sun all over this universe and brings hope.

What is a one night stand, a perversion?

A lust fulfilled or an empty soul rotting?

If it is to make me happy why I crave more

From someone new always? Why every orgasm

I have to fake and distant from bliss these days?

What is a one night stand, an empty heart?

Trying too hard to reach out and failing always?

A disgust, a tremendous nausea fills my cells

When I smell so many in my bone and flesh.

to Durham, my new love

When I leave tonight after the sun down,

I leave you with a part of me deep inside,

And I take something that covers me all over.

Our stay together has made me wise and full,

May be that is why I do not feel pain parting,

As I know parting is just another start to this.

 I will come back as a breeze in a hot summer day,

When you expect me the least-want me the most.

And if I do not can you not feel my warmth anyway 

In a full moon night with twinkling starts staring at you?

As I know I will feel you in me every moment I live,

My bed will never be alone again in cold wintry nights. 

Depression is like eating pizza, too much cheese and calorie

You know it is not good for your waist line, you still hog.

It is like sitting next to a river with a book in your hand

Hating the loneliness hoping someone sees you and talks,

But no one actually notices you as you are so regular.

It is like Thanksgiving in New York City all by yourself

Everything so merry but no space for a lonely heart

You walk the length of Manhattan and still lonely

But not tired so you keep walking the breadth.

Strangely I get tired of being happy so often these days

But depression seems like my clingy friend never leaving me.

Let me tell you a love story an old and told one,

It was told so many times that it seems untold now.

A story of a queen charming as dew drop on rose petal

Falling in love to a king as strong as her charm, stupid she was

As she fell in love with the strength not knowing the man.

And so the story goes, and they get married in a dark cold room

The king and queen make love every night in dark.

As if their love is an undeveloped negative scared of light.

And then one day, by chance, when the king happy, feeling her

In his heart and everywhere, danced and danced like a mad man

And that day by same chance the queen saw him the first time in horror

How can my love be so ugly, so deformed and twisted, so perfect in dark

But bone chilling in the day light, she thought and left him in disgust.

From that day the king, strong as a rock did not move, and played a cord

As if to immerse the curse that he was born with liberating the soul from that.

Day and night the music played and poured like a hot poison in the ears

Of the queen, day and night she hated her love more so, just to find one morning

There was no hate left to give, it was love then, as if the pyre of hate had burnt out.

And she saw the love and ran to him as she knew that was how the story should end.

Told so many times that I believed that this would be true in this cold dark real world too.

I walked with my chest open with the treasures cluttering all over me in pride.

But the story I just told you have been told so many times now that it’s untold

And so no one looked at my chest, instead saw me in my eyes in horror and hence

I have lived with my curse all my life, and I know no music to break the curse today. 

I look at the night sky very seldom these days

I hate seeing the falling stars, I wonder why?

Do they fall as their time was over to shine?

Or is it that no one really cared for them as

There are so plenty in the sky? Is there anyone

High and deep in the sky who laments their fall?

Did they fall of shame or they were just tired of

Being so bright and felt like a wall flower?

I hate looking at night skies these days as

The falling stars make me cry, oh my parting friends

A dot of light disappearing in nothingness I weep for you.

I walked that day, a rainy September day,

Holding a screaming banner with my voice silent

We were walking in the rain, asking for the right

To love and be loved, it was magical all along.

And then there you were, standing on the sidewalk

Reading from a holy book, shouting your lung out

Was your conscience silent when you cursed us?

As I know no god told in your ears that he hates me.

For the book you read from or any as a matter of fact

Was not written by god, for god’s sake it was you and me

So stop hating me as you were told to, look in my eyes

And you will see the pain that you gave without knowing me

The deep hurt that you caused by telling me I should die.

I tell you my friend; you and I will all die one day and will leave

But I know I will leave with the hope of finding love

And I want to hold your hand and find love for you

Although you wish me to die.

what is life after all without the disappointments, 
without those nights when you wanted warmth and had only yourself?
and then i turn outside and see the rain falling,
leaving the safe and loved sky, dropping blissfully to the hot and thirsty earth,
to be gulped and evaporated. 
still they fall, fall to give life to us,
 and i think may be there is more to life 
than my own needs.

So much nakedness wherever I look and when I try to find you,

I see too much flesh and too much temptation here.

Do you hate me now that I have tasted so many?

Or do you pity me as you think I do not love anyone?

I too had an idea about love, saved my kisses for someone

But now after so many nights in strange beds pleasuring them

Do you smell me anymore in my body? You ask me if I will make you

Happy, I ask myself do I know what happiness is anymore.

It is just instant gratification may be, as I have not tasted bliss in so long.

Every time I undress myself, I still wear an overall on my self

So that no one can touch me deep inside and play with me.

It might sound so fake to you now, as I happily take these beds

But trust me my love, it breaks me as much as it disgusts you every day.

the pang of finding you

You have been the pang deep inside me for eternity

And I have longed for this pain for ages and nights.

And now that you are here and I see my wait end

I seek the pain that has been with me for so long.

I know only this longing is true oh my love

As I have still lived with the pain of separation

But I know I will lose myself if I have you now.

dream

Too many walls and too many fences everywhere

I have a hope that each wall will have a door and

Each fence will grow wild passion flowers

We will sing and talk to each other from our walls

And will starch hands across the fence

As I know a world without the walls will be too dull

But a world with just walls and fences are too divided.   

My life

My life is like poetry without any rhythm

A lot like the modern ones, without any meaning

But then you read it again, force yourself to read

With every reading a layer peels off and you see.

You see the raw wound, meaningless hatred

That I have earned from friends and strangers

And then I became so proud of not being touched

Hide more all the scars and walk tall and arrogant.

My life is like the canvas in a posh New York apartment

Just colours scattered without any forms or shapes

And I call that impressionist, so damn escapist attitude

As I know I have no justification to my perversion

The lines bleed if you look hard and the shapes emerge

You just have to read and look hard enough at me

And you will see I have a rhythm and am a painting.

the thirst

My eyes are thirsty and my heart is dry, without you my dear

Like a scorching summer day without a drop of rain.

Oh my thirst and longing, filling me up, burning and drying me.

A tempest brewing befriending the summer wind and

Taking me to a distant empty land unveiling me

The flower adorning the garden dried up in a dark shadow

The ruthless rocks beheld the dancing spring to a freeze

Taking me to a cold lonely prison of  nothingness.

My eyes are thirsty and my heart is dry, without you my dear.

on this stormy night

On this stormy night my love awaits me

While the sky weeps and laments in despair

While the whole world stands still in fear

I stay up, for tonight my love awaits me

let us meet again

let us meet again, before i forget your face
and you become a memory without forms.
let us hold hands again, and dance and sing
before we forget what it means to be happy
let us share the warmth in a wintry night
before the pain of separation makes us dry.

hope

i am living a story once again
a story told thousand times
still every word feels anew
although i know what is next
i am walking a path all alone
so mundane that i known potholes
still i stumble on each step
knowing i need to be careful
the story i live and the path
i walk, makes me new every moment
i strive to walk all my life
with the hope there will be a turn
that finally will hold my breath.

looking in

I have seen you when I was taking a walk,

When I was in the grocery store in the next aisle

Or maybe when I went for that musical all alone

I have looked for you every place I have been to

Everyone I have seen, have looked deep to find you

Now am tired, I am spent, let me find myself in me

Let me stop today to see my own image not you

May be there was never a promise for you in life

It was always getting lost in the crowd, was my destiny

And finally i found myself in this mountain top so windy

Seeing love in my own heart, as I have finally found myself.

the poet

The cloud hanging low over my apartment far from home

Did anyone, in some lost time write a poetry looking at you?

May be a song of love, or a tale of pain and separation?

Or have you wandered just like me, without anyone noticing,

Drifting from one sky to the other, not cared to anchor anywhere?

This morning when you hang low, I feel you in me so deep within,

Today you have written a tale of sadness in me oh poet cloud.

I know you will pass soon finding place in some distant land,

But at last you do not seek a poet as you are one for me now.