GHAZAL

Let us go away, you and I,
Far away from the spying sky.

Here stars and jasmines bloom at night,
But blood streams from the sighing sky.

Love must waft in like evening breeze,
Must burst like rain from heaving sky.

I need no adornment but you-
And stars plucked from the dazzling sky.

Your love finds me wherever I hide,
Even underneath the sprawling sky.

Cut Off

' As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods,

they kill us for their sport.'
- Shakespeare, King Lear

I often lost his voice on the phone-

Bad network

Disconnect

Re-dial

Dialling

How would you even know

if I die, he used to jest.

I'd reply with silence,

it silenced him for the moment.

We hanker to buy with

bleeding bits of the heart,

The cologne of love:

Sometimes so costly

it leaves you with no heart at all.

Just a pulsating void

like the bleeding silence

at his end when I said

"I love you";

And then, (finally),

"I love you too, three, four, five..."

He loved his bike.

Faster, faster, Death cheered him on;

School kids race in the rain,

Splashing mud on me.

As the boat gently bobbed
away from the shore,
Little did I know
it had no oars.

They laid him to sleep

and threw earth over his dreams,
My cat gave birth to three
kittens that day.

Dust to dust returneth;

I to him.

Dial

Dialling

Beep beep beep.

Re-dial

Switched off

Cannot be reached

Out of coverage area

Does not exist.

On the Ferris Wheel

We rise higher and higher,
Green canopies ramble
beneath us;
Wet petals sleep on rainy sidewalks-
Windblown lilac dreams gently
heaving with teary sighs.
Bright lights, bright awnings,
Bright nameless faces
Peer up at us.
City lights of sleepless nights,
An unknowing faraway glimmer,
Unfeeling, like the blinking stars overhead.

Up and down, up and down,
Faster and faster, we move,
Slicing through the dark,
Brushing past branches,
The cool air rushing into
the vortex of my being-
A vortex that sucks in
You, Me and everything else.

We move in circles, so does life....
Or does it? Some points of beginning
can never be returned to,
Some trajectories, once distorted,
can never be retraced.
Some paths, once lost,
are lost forever;
You see, some circles are never finished.

Some things are just not meant to be:
Some things like You and Me.

Home lies somewhere there,
Home sweet home, shrouded with innocence,
Somewhere there, at an unreachable distance.

We swing up, and swoop down
Like eagles to prey on
Life, that crawls along below;
And that's all that's meant to be,
as we step out, laughing-
God knows why....