FAILING GOD

Onlooker to your own empty life, you try to conceal
it was not that simple, to confess in silence.
Pain was the first question,
I give no answer.
The smell of pungent sweat
and levitating incense are entwining in the air.

Seeking my own truth, I abandon the path
and fall upon lies.
The lofty drama of life unfolds.
I was not seeking any labels.
Devoid of sanity, the possessed people were dancing,
around the fire without flames.

Fear of infinity haunts me,
I must answer to myself
to solve the mystery.
Of the fragility of my existence,
amidst the sounds of stubborn, half-baked truths.
This is, therefore a part of my poem,
dedicated to a failing god.

Satish Verma

HUSHED WITHDRAWL

Always struck by infinity,
I was searching a center,
and time was walking through me mutely.

Covered in tremors I was ready to abdicate
the flavours of life.
Exhausted, wearing rags of knowledge
I discovered the finite in hostile virtues.

This was a manic dance full of foggy dreams
scaling the impossible insomnia
and silence was falling like snow flakes.
Silhouette of death hovers around the praying lips,
we pocket the coins of memories
and forget the bitter past.

Perpetual stress breaks the neck
awfully engraving the pain.
I stammer for a barometer.

I perceive you my ghost, a reminder
of my frightened childhood, when I lost my home
in the labyrinth of mirrors.
Cannot stop it, the dark now spreading in the eyes,
My kids won’t understand my hushed withdrawl.

Satish Verma

…………..MOVES ON

My altered sensorium goes berserk
when I hear four - letter words like nuke and kill,
love and hate, repeatedly.
The decrepit age full of abused prisms
deflects the sunrays for warlords.

Here I am ripened in pain of a withering syndrome,
collecting the live mushrooms
from rainwashed wastelands.
The primrose way of life did not agree.
To become untrue to the whiff and waft of summer dunes
was difficult and I remained entombed in scented air.
Phantasy was a beautiful garden for me.

Was it a desiccated, mental frame,
matured, but manic isolation from an aligned life?
or walking alone in a desert of hidden paths?
But I was my own tailor.

I presume,
evil must be alive in erotica,
the myth of erected columns in history to celebrate a victory.
My brow sweats when I start climbing the steps.

An identity crashed in mud
I felt a sense of depression, flickering off and on,
dying several times amidst the jasmines and bougainvillaeas.
Hiding in fog, a serial killer has been
nominated a blind judge.

Fainting and waking up with hallucinations,
sick in limbs, my journey starts
for violent similes, mindless but full of stops.
My words were not mine. The symbols ruled the day.

The past will always morph into future
but my present will be here
in my flights, weary but strong in veins,
My sun may be eclipsed for today
but the bright century moves on!

Satish Verma

CANNOT OPEN THE LOOP

When I am completely denuded
Of my tremors,
I come at peace with my skin.
Burnt by raw blaze of reality
The brilliant confusion of today.

Promising night
selects the partners of grief.
Vacantly I fix my eyes on stars.

The words will never convey the silence
the mystery of eternal search
amongst the ruins of dreams.

Tongue falters on recitation of factuality
Over coming the rage.
Fatal dichotomy of life and death
starts sleepwalking.

Gulf widens the shores
seeking in metaphysical depth.
Speech does not bring solace
mathematics cannot open the loop.

Satish Verma

CUP OF ELIXIR

Without a collateral black magic,
nobody wants to start a currency
of silly thoughts.

All tears had dried up in eyes.
It was time to cry again for prudence.

The spirits of ancestors were dumped together
in a mass grave,
and we elaborated to groom
a new son of god,
after slaining all sane arguments.

Where was the need of pathos
for dying foetusus in wombs?
Let them remain unsung, untold,
we will purge our sins from our gowns later on.

An unprecedented situation has arisen.
Somebody shouted from the past.
came running like a bull
and spilled the cup of elixir.

Satish Verma

OPEN YOUR BOWELS

On the road
negotiating a midnight blue
into the myth of rebirth,
putting death in dock.
to go or not go to beyond liberation.
Home, left far behind!

Leaving the house of desire and fame
I was ready to go for my chosen abandonment.

Life had become useless.
Debating had begun.

Ambulance was sitting idle on the keys.
Observer was being watched.

Septicemia. Venom has reached every
microcosm and physician was dead.
God was not mincing any words for dummies.

A lightening stroke was travelling
from head to toes.
Open you bowels.
Earth is crying.

Satish Verma

TRAIL OF BLOOD

Experimenting with thoughts and nostalgia,
trying to extinguish the guilty fire,
hiding the ruins of a home,
were not simple jobs.
I was building an ivory tower at the dead end of a road.

Give me some hope, nothing else,
A marvel, which gives some sight to a blind beggar.
The clowns had already plundered the shelter
and habitat of coarse logs.
It was a cold night and I was shivering
in worst of time and hour.

How could you do it,
prompting him to leap from the dizzying heights?
After all, suicide was not the solution.
If only life had appreciated his courage
and gave him a ladder.
I am following the trail of blood.

Satish Verma

HEIGHTS

After drawing a self-portrait,
I want you to believe
that I am not in it.
The style of rebellion cannot be judged by
blurbs only.

A chunk of refusal,
a narrow escape,
and thin veiled hysteria,
all go for a parody of exactness,
which had been really absent from our lives.

Can you find out
who is betraying whom?
where the tears are migrating?
And where the smiles have gone?

Instead of brutalizing,
I care for the tender torches
moving in the dark bush.

A precise definition is needed
for self-denial of molten lava
which moves like a river
but does not grab the heights.

Satish Verma

SYMBIOSIS

Perhaps you know,
that you do not know,
the moment of truth is here,
and we are at the cross roads.

Night is without a cloud
and crescent moon is questioning a star.
Ghost of strayed peace
has slided back in dark.
Pure chemistry of love is boiling.

Planting the tender flowers on lips
I find nothing. I think I will go
for a new lover.
Strawberry was your choice,
but I always craved blue berries.
Pulpy red and blue black were teeth apart.

Your eyes are unreadable,
a watery grave of pain.
Something impossible should happen
Poetry is waiting for symbiosis.

Satish Verma

SHORT MEMORY

Looked naïve, but he was
elevating himself on the heap of lights
unlearning the human commitment.
Hunger was his weapon
to level the uprising of underprivileged.

This monarch of darkness
picks up the best,
insists on low profiles.
We were searching fossils
under the rocks
to decipher the shadows of history.

Between the glory of hardened footprints,
we found the labels.
Contents unknown but enough to browse.

They were weightless
and soaring high.
But I was not able to survive
in jungle of praises.
You know, the world
has short memory.

Satish Verma

PARTHENOGENESIS

The way back it worked
the pretention,
the parthenogenesis.

Now we are lying
without any affair, in self-deception.
The belief has no walls.

The truth inside and the truth outside –
there is no placenta in between,
foetus dies in the womb.

Unpleading, immaculate, zen
bleeds in chips.
My god is lying dead.

My butterflies have gone,
perched on moon
I am looking for stars.

Satish Verma

TARANTULA

Do you need a sanitizer for contaminated hands?
They were busy in illustrating the ugly contours
of life.
Up and down you were out of joint,
and your feet were not fastened to the ground.

Untainted a shrill voice prepares to rise
from the sullen men
huddled on the floor,
for the sad demise of a grand master.
The green truth was nowhere to be seen.

People are getting down for a feast
to invoke peace for the departed soul.

I am miserable,
cannot blast the fake ceremony.
Year after year the doomed city performs a ritual
for the coronation of a new king.

The sky is divided by domes, towers, minarets
and tall turrets.
cannot see the moon clearly at night

I reject the old abstractions
draw the ink from the blood
and paint a tarantula.

Satish Verma

CHASTITY

He turns, forgets the hollyhocks
tries to become human
accepts the stupidity.

When he could not help the hops
closed the door
and gave sermons.

A horny hooch
or judgement on honeydew
was tossed in dust-bin for integrity.

And deep in river
a crocodile dies
for underwater truth.

Chastity was in peril
tormented by creativity
of the underground.

Satish Verma

EDGE OF REVENGE

It was not like life.
I am worried,
they were hitting the womb.

Social support for surgery.
The hills were crying.
A ring of fog was disturbing.

The elements and spasticity.
Brain leaves a trail of acid.
They were killing the genes.

For the proud generator
over the deaf and dumb
lies the chanting crown.

Terror and the battle of garden,
edge of revenge
annihilates the light!

Satish Verma

HYMN

When glacier recedes,
Your eyes start flowing,
and by the swollen river
an island is swallowed up.

You swim from the lake to the shore
of grief to err again.
Water was your home,
water is your life.

Soft marble swells up in deep crevices
of brain, shaking the foundation of
thoughts, naked as it is.

The fog sleeps on the sea for eternity.
The wrath of sky will burn the skeletons
buried in sand.
Summer will bring the violence.

You cry for forgotten greens,
and kelp and sailing ships
full of hops.
When the hymn recedes,
your eyes start flowing.

Satish Verma

THE CONDEMNED

Heart’s ache is getting worse everyday.
May be I go out in this brutal world
Of scuttling lies to seek the one
who left the body to trace the wound.

A red hibiscus enters my room from the window
and smiles at me.
Outside clumsy blasts are ripping apart
the tranquil day.
I wrench the emotions out of the poem
for the big mouthed kindness
which sprays the bullets.

Terror strikes suddenly on the swollen ankles
We do not know the cure.
No foreign hand will help,
No foreign face will smile.
I have to go for inward journey
My lips will kiss the condemned.

Satish Verma

LENGTH OF TIME

Cell to cell a trapped apocalypse moves
breaking the taboo, deconstructing
the secret of body in chains

The myth explodes, offends the knowledge.
I know that I do not know myself.

Lacerating, ravishing the soil
the roots come out of air
to find the imprint of fruits.

I concede, I stop at the door of pain.
Hold me, when I tremble with stage fright.
My turn has come to speak the truth.

I have not made up my mind
to consume the light.
Garden takes a nap in the dark.
The boldness will face the dream
in length of time.

Satish Verma

TEMPLE OF HOPE

Long night will start the pincer movement;
pyrexia is rising.
Something like an extraterrestrial hand
digs deep in the mind to open the tomb
to unravel the tragedy of nuts and bolts
which could not fix
the mutation of the hour of death.

Dark blinking lashes of soul
measures the cliffs of silence
and then pours the hot red
vermilion in parted wisdom of sky.

The clang of bones again penetrates
the liver. The green flaming jelly of
innocent bellies.
The hyacinth is choking the village pond
hiding the corpses of precious flowers
with green blood.

One day foundation of skeletons will build a
temple of hope.

Satish Verma

PEACE FOR THE LIVING PEOPLE

A useless space between the sentences,
ghastly story does not end in black and white.
Again the heart cries.
I keep on knocking on the doors
and then return to blackness.

Sometimes people become insects.
Cockroaches, ants and spiders,
weaving their webs and hills,
crawling, creeping, clawing.
Flesh eaters. Pouncing upon hapless victims.

Depression. I am devastated.
Something churns in breast, dousing the spirit, lines and words.
Cannot sit quiet. Agoraphobia. Don’t want to talk
Somewhere a name crops up. Saint or beast.
Under the trees there is no shade. I walk barefoot.
Hungry dogs chasing the flies.
Humidity fills the eyes.

Silence of the night.
City has stopped running.
All the dead will speak now.
Not asking any revenge,
but peace for the living people.

Satish Verma

RAPE OF FRAGRANCE

I will ask you no more.
An answer settles the question.
Let myriad questions remain in air.
Thirst is larger than the river.

Silence! Ghosts are walking.
You can hear footfalls of time,
past is peeping from the windows.

Dyslexic kids are not able to decipher,
the code of gifts, the sweet tongue.
Powerless hands are tied behind the back
and neck is broken with precision.

The rape of fragrance,
petals are curling up to storm,
flying homeless in sky without speech,
ceaselessly searching instead–ness.

Half-burnt bodies for feast, roasted dreams
for taste.
But for fire, a single tear drop
frozen on the cheeks of mercy.

Satish Verma

TO BE NOTHING

I was not capable of
contradicting the quietness.
A silent emotion was insulting me.
Forgetting the self-denial
I went for choosing the impossible.

Am I sick of myself?
The agony overwhelms me with mystic relief.
Here and now I feel the human spirit
outsmarting the gifts of revenge
in the eyes of past.

No hope of breeze. It is hot inside,
the spirit burning. False peers
were scoring with debts of darkness.


Tiny ideas crowd the mind
flying straight through the mist of anguish
I elect to be nothing.

Satish Verma

TRUTH WILL NOT MULTIPLY

Space has all the silent approval,
truth will not multiply.

Another funeral takes place
in the barren field of lies.
Fire burns the life’s hopes,
while town mourns the death.
Sunshine bakes the eyes
but truth will not multiply.

Desireless peak of thoughts
sets out the smoke,
towards our homes,
trampling the shame, guilt and hurts.
We were still indulging in useless talk
but truth will not multiply.

Virtue has a unique impulse
a drone in the ears.
Fog was waiting for the sky.
The planet empties a bucket of sorrow.
I will favour the faceless name,
but truth will not multiply.

Satish Verma

………….. Afraid of whom?

Coming out of the cemetry,
Faith, does not tell you the truth.
Becomes chaste innocence,
Of imbeciles.

How shabbily life treats you sometimes?
Tossing you on garbage, squeezing
your brain, smashing your marrow
and turning you into pulp.

We are all eyes, but no vision.
Ownership of a spinning pain,
does not entitle you for a liberation
and a gift of guardian pendant does not protect you.


Brutal hanging to sever off the neck
was not crucial.
I wanted to know
who was afraid of whom?

Satish Verma

A LOVE STORY

Have not asked much,
still attached to you with subtelities,
I wanted freedom from you,
For removing stings from the flesh.

Anxiety was the darkest color
of floating buds on lake.
Sitting on the edge of panic,
I started counting the waves.

Mixed emotions always subtract a smile
Just lonely, I went for the swim in rimless agony.
Have not heard much of you in ages.
Still memories crop up for a while.
I wanted nemesis from you.

Talking of blue and white clouds
love has many moods.
Devastated by a burning moon
I was wishing a watery burial.

Satish Verma

LAUGHING SKULL

Name was more beautiful than the face.
It was charisma of night.
A dream without the eyes.

Laughing skull on the road
opens a wound,
and dying footprints were neither consenting
nor refusing.

A faticity clamps the flow of blood,
I was counting the stitches,
somewhere the pain was reappearing.

Interpersonal hate had a story to tell:
greed, anger and bullets.
The legs were chopped off from truth.
He was not faithful to sun.

In my heart lies a trapped river.
Its history is old, its water was humble.
Uncontaminated was the knock on the door
to a melting of white snow.

Satish Verma

VALLEY OF TEARS

Beyond the gaze there is a time zone
of rumored agitation
when you cannot sleep.
You open your eyes quietly to complain.

The caretaker has prepared the shroud.
Smoke is rising on the hills.
No body walks with you,
it is a lone journey, where
centuries throw the dust on your hallowed gifts.

The pyramid of signs, symbols, signatures,
disappear in penultimate flare.
Time to leave the waiting room.

The resurrection will take place now;
of fear; of despair; of foot steps in dark.
I will hear them, holding my breath.

Landscape will change into valley of tears.

Satish Verma

WOODS OF CRAFT

I woke up clutching the dreams
in deluge of tears.
Night had a brackish taste,
the other side of moon was dark.

One by one the stars were dying
Ideas were no longer candles in gale.
The final thought of liberty demanded
a tribute to partners in revolt.

I wanted a sunlit corner
in the blighted sky of hopes.
Instead of scorched impulse of a mob
injured truth, walking alone.

Give me a bitter fruit of certainty.
I don’t want to loose myself in fogs.
The truth must meet the lie-
alone, in woods of craft.

Satish Verma

DIMENSIONS

You were sitting on a honeycomb
I wanted a life
without stink or stain.
Intently staring at every celebration
listening to every sound,
and warding off the hissing reptiles
near my ladder.

Nature, I do not want to fight with.
Grief brings psoriasis,
the eternal itch and restlessness.
I scream at every red patch,
my unreadable pain forgets the date.

Mutism was not the answer
to protect the purity of tongue.
Silence was not a golden word.
Without becoming hoarse
one can shout to tell the dimensions.

Satish Verma

I SEE MY OWN DEMISE

Anxiety was touching the mime
I cannot hold a reality.
We were playing with each other.

The creation and hunger of living
takes you to unknown fields
I am, what I am not.

Always bluffing, puffing on the road,
counting the milestones
in reverse osmosis,
feeling proud of mighty mistakes,
talking to faltered ego,
going against the sun.

My climate merges with hot desert
A story reappears again and again
like a dried skeleton in sands.

How long I will run
chased by planetary fears?
Barbs pierce the tender zones
I see my own demise,
body floating like a flower on lake.

Satish Verma

NEIGHBOURS WATCH

Riding the back of a sensual saint
a white tiger
was turning the human genome
into ashes.
The moon was climbing up.

Snips were becoming tainted.
Decoding the helix has brought down the god
into a module.
I am encircling the basic truth.
Sky is turning dark.

Saffron bull has broken the golden gate.
Blood is spilled on the sidewalk
lined with marigolds.
I am standing alone on a pathless beach.
Sea has sent back the harvest of grief.

From the periphery agitation starts.
Center has no choice. Absolutely
self-ending-in-self. Each breath comes discreetly
deep in the ravines of soul.
Neighbours were watching.

Satish Verma