NOSTALGIA

What it was? Unthinkable:
he had become inaudible
to himself.
Intramurality in defiance?
or falling from perfectibility?

The terrible stench;
and toxic fumes rising from decaying passions.
The flesh middle age, blocked arteries
fear of schizophrenia?

Scion of royalty clapping for wheels,
shine and color
hanging by a thread of hate.

This was life without a hero.
Pacers-by caring for posters only
Whisking the sounds away.

Many in the one
nostalgia of shapes.

Satish Verma

ECLAMPSIA

A catheter leaks,
quality of hearing suffers.
A tethered song sears on blue flames.
The actual, displaces the pain
truth becomes non-pigmented.

In space you move noisily
waking the birds.
Tomorrow will come with writhing cries-
bounties of past.
Not myself, himself, yourself.

The new experiments in womb
remained fruitless.
A malformed, distorted progeny was born
on payments without glory.
Masses were swelling without self knowing.

Thinker was silent. Philosopher was dumb.
Architect had the thumbs amputated.
A mausoleum of love remained unbuilt.
Sky was overcast, hid the sun.
The earth inherited the broken glass.

Satish Verma

SUPER TERRAIN

The metastatic figure.
He was seeking truth without thought,
being in and out, he was sleepwalking in
dream. I am the absolute, he said. Skeletons
are popping up everywhere. Poor beasts.
And there was the tired flame who
burned all night in vain.

The body was aching after the discovery
of a super terrain. Another earth? or
a conventional aberration? The planet
was heaving with hot clouds. Reason
for a substitute. Right perception of
life was difficult. Everybody was running
in opposite direction for a message.

He dives to pull up the corpse of liberty
locked deep in water. A noble idea to
free the corrupt world from the bondage
of decaying foundations. Half-truths and
half-lies must live together for the human
survival. Quest of the self ultimately
begs for forgiveness.

Satish Verma

BROODING SILENTLY

Entire age was spent in search
of self ultimate and he was still
unable to redeem a sad tree.
The silent unglorious drop. Florets falling
one by one like dreams.

White spread. Orange opus. Good-
bye crescent. Blue sky shying away.
A cuckoo on mango grove starts
a melodious croon. Sweet allegation
of betrayal, but for what gain?

Pain bounces back in the eyes of
a sparrow. Cannot find a window to
enter. Concrete walls. Closed doors.
Ad infinitum will move the traffic.
Where to stop? And when to fly?

Qualities were crashing down. Faint
bruises on face. Sticking plaster on
eyes. So many already gone to galaxy.
Sitting on a garbage dump.
He was brooding silently.

Satish Verma

PARANOIA

Multiple tongues followed
some strangers to see the
trafficking of images between space
and promises. Somewhere
adjectives were being cheated.

A tumor was growing in brain
locked, enhancing, malignant:
condemned destiny. Implicity of incest
in same gene pool. Where
the evolution has stopped?

A missile has intercepted and smashed
the moon into ten thousand
sins. Palpable wreckage.
We were shoved into dustbin
A pile of starving skulls.

Clotted stone blood. Mountains
were wounded. My mentor
had a paranoia. Delusion
Of falling snow
from burning sky.

Satish Verma

LANDSCAPE

Thinking was seeing through the time,
was a lone journey from naïve
understanding. Return was difficult,
back to bricks and forlorn shores.

How many beginnings had failed;
the doors locked, cobwebs, dust, smoke,
crowded with dangling hopes. Flywheels
broken. DNA twisted, life – in – heaps.

The purpose, warts and all, salvation,
as long as footnotes guided between
restless nights. Melancholy of space in
the bed. Silence of portraits.

A peacock explodes, defining the boundary,
then a chorus of approval. An owl hoots.
The candle kisses the creases of dark.
Moon swells.

Satish Verma

LIKE A Da VINCI

Come, become my mirror to read the backward. Script
wards have failed me.

The sea is turbulent
and I am laying flowers at your feet.

What was is your eyes
unfathomable like a da Vinci?

Hold my trembling hands
I am going to dropp the gems.

Nobody will agree with me
there was a face on the wall.

Bare as the night moon of October
I have undone my beliefs.

A loincloth was sufficient to hide the birth.
Ceremony has begun to knead the lies.

Use your death as the furnace of life
where knives are sharpened to start the healing.

A stranger has come as the guest of the house
answers should not insult any question.

Satish Verma

BELL’S PALSY

Recalling memories was difficult.
I presume, today was not my day.
Theme uprooted, I stood for the branches,
the spirit, the truth, the roots.
Do I see more than what was needed?

Only eyes to eyes speak without words, sound,
vision or reality.
All the flowers have shed their petals. Now
seeds are shining. I feel liberated. The
faultline has defiled me. Bilingual insult.
Time leaves the questions in air, suspended.
You have to find the answers, yourself, in the
debris of arguments.

Bell’s palsy. Face, lips distorted, lids drooping,
speech slurred, you clog
the brain with help of anti-depressants,
how many endings you have seen?

I have not lit my dark cell,
moonlight, mauls the window,
jostles to enter
hurts in my face!

Satish Verma

BEYOND

In emptied mind,
nudging the inner absolute,
you wanted to know the Other.
You were being observed.
but observer was missing.

From trivialities to stark realities
fusion of substances –
started a movement in pain.
The questioner
missed the questions.

You started losing yourself
overwhelmed by silence.
Talking the truth was simple;
difficult was
feeling the truth.

You wanted to know
the answer, through me.
I wanted to go,
```I was thinking –
beyond the answer.

Satish Verma

TRACKS

Visibility was poor when he pursued
the face, face of himself.
The eyes, quizzical eyes, looking at the image
of cogitating mind, who had left the body.

Condemned to think, think ceaselessly
for a long time, for the election of truth,
what we deserve, Violence was within us,
rage was ensconced
in our veins.

And we were destroying the beautiful dawn.
Trials of shadows had begun
and execution of innocent marvels started,
which continued till the dark hour.
Then he had the premonition.

Dirt will prevail now. Coarse banners
were recalling the candles
from the homes. Future was collecting
thousand of dark memories and time
had stopped in its tracks.

Satish Verma

MATRIX

He said creating a will
to become whole Being,
was more important. Spacing of thoughts
can wait. Fear was there
all the time.

Life had been loaned on a timeless impermanence,
an in-between death and death
Light was being and dark was being.
There was no god, no icon
only shades.

Castaway on a lonely stretch,
you tune in to the rising pitch of cuckoo.
It stops for a while. A deliberate pause.
Again more resolutely it rises
to measure the awakening!

A soul caged in body wants to fly away,
on an austere journey; solemn and relentless
transcending the misprints of life.
The matrix and it secret will be out
after a short while!

Satish Verma

MITOS AND FANATICS

Deceit had a mitotic division, it was spreading;
temporal print on calico.
Possible, had many variations
and masons were existentially tense.

Frank discussion was taking place
between fanatics
to exterminate or allowed to live
shooting stars.

For demolition
you don’t need scrupulous hands.
A giant pain was visible in vibration of sun
leaving footprints on grass.

Paralysed waist down
virginity kindles a prayer,
labial submission of love.
The dead faith stumbles down on climbing up.

Endlessly the war goes
between god and man.
Estranged keys have lost the doors
and walls are crumbling.

Satish Verma

STONES

Thoughts move
like free radicals
at different levels, at different times
to carve, to destroy
to put up their signatures on walls
to seek authority and wealth
to catch the sex and glory,
in perpetual chase.
Miss the shadow of moon,
miss the stars.

Here we go, here we sleep.
Only religion is desire,
only drama is hate.

We will set them on fire,
all the bees
all the wasps.
No insect will live
only us, the human beings.

Arrival of fever
entery of death
we are puppies
we are stones.

Satish Verma

THE HEALER

An all pin pricks again
draws blood from empty hands
blank papers fly.

Trying to learn Braille
to write a canto
for unseeing Budha.

Unbroken tinnitus violates peace.
night is also blanking the vowels
Pain has become wordless.

Light can only be assumed
fleeing from the moon.
only breeze gives the hint.

The burning grass scrolls back:
there is no healer
in the bush.

Satish Verma

PICK UP THE DAWN

He was not him,
today the day ended with a boom,
had walked aimlessly for hours
in half fear and half hope.

Window filters a new moon. It
burns the pillow, wets the glass,
had he kissed goodbye
to the glass house?

Tired of being a dwarf
bridging the gap between hurts and animus.
The truth was only known to the deported.

Smoldering in the cauldron for years
he was never ripe for the plunge;
his kind refused to cling to straw for ever.

Wanted inner shength to stand
against the shots, to read the illegible words
and pick up the dawn from falling stars.

Satish Verma

DUST

Creeping in waking night
was fear of fear
and you wanted to accept the defeat
retreat,
It gives you solitude of
blank space, featureless.

The terrorist mask of blazing guns
bribing the absent gods,
for whom you are aiming?

The holy man on road
fakes,
crushing the grass
lilies getting flattened under the giant wheels.

Moving an bloody toes
festering heels
carrying the sacred earth under the nails
all night.
peeling the time, throwing the skn
and waiting
for the dust to settle.

Satish Verma

HAPPY VALLEY OF STINGS

I don’t fake the pain
pain was me.
A grafted rose opens up along the road rage.

This was the city of my birth
my oblivion, my reincarnation
ejaculated from the dark.

Here I found the golden dust
nuggets of truth
and the nostalgia of a broken moon.

The marble white love
and green bowl of arms
a happy valley of stings.

The sun backtracks on hills
when I walk on sands
leaving the deep scars.

A small horizon was my window
hunger of nightingales on branches.
The tree was walking in, my house.

Satish Verma

NO ANSWER

Prisoner of praise
was slave of anger:
sucks the rival in high speed.

The violence travels
from roots to leaves
The lake bleaches, puts out the skull
a myth is washed out
in complete agony.
Give me the hemlock
I am ready to burn inside.

Crazy moon
where did you go?
Hunger had been arrested in bloody eyes.
Now fumes are rising.

The iron fist no longer strikes
demands to know
why you had to go?

For the first time
I had no answer.

Satish Verma

MICROPAINS

In troubled times
he just walked away
carrying the antiquity in briefcase….

The new man.
Ending the anonymity of stubbornness,
rejects the yesterday
but I wanted not to be a participant
of terrible decay.

Who will understand? Enough was
the midnight ecstasy,
for in the hour of loneliness
the sentence will be stretched for eternity.

This young history
may try to build a new order
by dirty hands.
Life will give its verdict on death
understand it, when it was not there.

Reason becomes the law if you don’t
alter the purity and a face has a meaning.
The experience never ends
as for as the voice reached micropains.

Satish Verma

TREE FALL

They felled a huge tree.
Some Druid feared that it had an afterlife
and it sleepwalked at night
but it was me.
My tracery
my shade.

Beyond the sounds I had landed
here as a seed.
Today I am visiting my ancestral home
my walls and my soil
I am I was.

I am in every tree
every tree was me
a mute, silent submission of learning
the first translator of nature
the sculptured journey in time.

Destruction and eternal fall
I want not to happen
still it goes on
masterpiece of death.

Satish Verma

WISH RAGS

Into the dark enters the blue;
a homeless song punctures the cloud:
gentle grass was never so green.

The colors start fading
there was no other movement. Sun strides in.
No going, no coming of pain. No propitiatory
prayer of mine or yours.
I seek the wisdom of a tree.

Like hawthorn collecting the wish rags
fluttering in desert flora.
A husband, a father, a patriarch
in heart of conception, malice for none.

Give we some peace of Ash,
rebirth of thinking,
return to being,
burnt out self.

Satish Verma

…… SMALL GODS

Shared my solitude, gave me comfort,
the road, my prelude to a long journey
moved with me.

Sensual saints had a break midway
bolting the stars, when bruised arms
were building the shelter.

An offering to genius was not accepted
cold blooded murder of a dream.
Overnight my hair turned white
a genuine tale was twisted.
Absence of’me’ was not a meaning of death.
I was learning to live.

Can you tell me, what is time?
The clocks are crazy, do not slow down,
end was near without stopping,
The spirit was moving through formless door.
Everything was lost in space, the space
and unfolding were becoming one.

I was talking to prisnors of small gods
a snuffed lamp, living voice and beasts.

Satish Verma

RETREAT

Remember it not.
Oblivion,
Let it slide into cave.
The annual rings of old wood are
hurting.
Tree of life burning inside.

It cannot happen
it can happen.
There is no certainty.
this is certainty.

Bread with hoofs
no butter, no udder
no milk.

A spider in the bottle
slumbers on gaint legs
watches with red eyes.
Time to feed.

The aroma of sea.
Pungent smell of brown algae
the bathing moon,
a lone boat.

Did you know why I admire defeat,
retreat:
Perfect solitude,
featureless calm.

Satish Verma

MORSELS

Talking of nameless and unhappy death
I resume the pathos of recluse
if not, what do I do after the sunset?

The shadow themes are picking up
and I am saying, 'No, I cannot do it,
may not do it, will not do it.'
I have been a drifter, did not grow roots
between the desire and wish. I had been
hopping from a thing to nothing.

Pretending my privilege, I ask the periwinkle
how do you do it,
remaining evergreen?
A smile spread on the calyx
the kind of a rainbow.
That was the answer.

No trace of bitterness, just the innocence
after many hurts. Life prods, life knocks,
natural and unfathomed pain. Must it leave
a scar? Live as you are, I say.

The blackened bread, the fudge,
whatsoever comes on the way
the flavor should be sweet.
They are morsels of confession.

Satish Verma

LONE JOURNEY

Goats and camels
My caravan moves on sand dunes
to cross the desert of hunger and want.

Give a sharp prick
draw the pure blood
and don’t cry at the sight of violence
in the sky
I am not going to die.

It is galloping dark
there is absolute stillness in the air
and I have fallen in love
with the whistling breeze.

Somebody is pawing, clawing at my back
as if trying to maul
the back of a denuded totem.
Moon is watching helplessly.

An owl on a branch
looks straight, flaps
flies away.

Unpeeled clouds are now walking away.
Dew will settle
among the thirsty fields.

Satish Verma

REVEALATION

Acid filters in the cords
scathing the greens
frightens the lamb.
Tiger leaps from the bush
to make a kill,
body is cold, blue.

Ants are dragging carcass now
of dead beetle
as an act of benevolence.

White bones are jutting out of the sand,
here the beheading was done.

One rose was black, one is red
One was queen, one is dead.

Night will sweat out a moon now
who will walk like a bruised wound.

Pain is very thick like the fog
only silence will give the voice.

Obsessively you want to hold
the rags which made you rich.

Satish Verma

…… STUNNED ME

It was dull green
under the weather,
foliage of a tall weeping Ashoka.

All day the sun had beaten down mercilessly
At night, under the shimmering shade of stars
somebody left a body of a child
wrapped in a red rag at the foot of the giant,
where the roots were jutting out from earth like a basket
to receive a birthday present.

A gift from a veiled shame.
Shutting out the breath,
a purple death by asphyxiation
A pink doll: mist draped in dew and flower.
Death was no stranger
among the saints and beasts.

Stone to stone,
stunned me.
I was discovering the life.

Satish Verma

ANNIVERSARY

Hydrangia was in full bloom
when I left.
Machine had failed me,
when I was looking at the
third eye of the sun
in crimson sky of west.

I was running away from myself
keys were chasing unbroken latches
the moon was yet to be born
in blackness.

The foetus turns
strikes the womb with violent kicks
who was the father of unknown child?

Let’s go and meet in dementia.
Three cheers for the wedding boot
turns the man into a snail.

Death now enters
to cross the threshold of tears
and listen to soulful
nightingale.

Satish Verma

REVOCATION

A grandson sails through the century
jumps into the chair of grandfather
and revokes the death penalty
for the iconoclast who refuses to be alive.

A truth should be deemed again
to find the mystery of death.
Between man and divinity
lies the fiction
which no body wants to write off.

Green goes the sea in full moon
the earth has a debt to pay.
Sometimes you walk a long distance
to know when the sun will rise.

Unchanged remains the odor of wind.
The chest feels the punch
fetching the burden of roaring sounds
in the domain of soundless solitude.

The grandfather is lifted by untainted words.
Still swallowing the emotions
the peacocks on a tall tree scrambling,
scream in unison.

Satish Verma

THE SPIRIT

How long will it go
this hurricane?
Let me go, open the sails
and put the boat on high sea.

Water is deep and blue, wind is strong
and I want to do it again
Tonight I will break the vow of moon
and bring it down.

Who knows where I land
the school of sharks
or turbulent isle
the body will be lowered to feed the hungry waves.

I was used to upheavals
up and down, up and down
and slept on pillow of clouds
who will wash the mirror today.

I am not going to die
not now but for ever
I will cleave, my body, my soul, my thoughts
into thousand pieces, each will grow into I.

Floral and thorned, rosy and scented
opening like a tribute
to fetishes of yore
The spirit must live.

Satish Verma

YOU AND EVERYBODY

Again you made friends, words
wanted to leave the paper blank
for the parched lips,
crying eyes,
trembling hands.

Missing stanzas,
flowing river,
rootless floats.
You did not feel like-
time filled you every minute,
you were empty, poor.

When you read the end
you understood beginning.
Will to die was not sufficient
you had not completed the script.
Alone in crowd you wanted words
to commit suicide.

Democracy was a funny name.
Everybody was sad, except the lead
who did not know where to go.

One day you found your voice
and were surprised
you were everybody
when you were hurt, you bled inside
and your blood then mixed with
the blood of everybody. Then everybody cried
and you became separated from you and did not say anything!

Satish Verma