STREET FIGHTING

Timeless pain and,
painless time were two colors.
On the canvas,
I was spreading, to open the heart.
Non-being touching the vast emptiness.
Life on the moment, played the abstract music.
Was it the fear of blindness?

Indecipherable handwriting creates puzzles,
my laments cannot read.
Truth marches on my bones,
dead bodies do not count.
The interrupted meanings
are taking their tolls.
On the track,
blueprints are fluttering.

Whom do we complain?
Foliage was without fruits
and roots were dying.
And land smelled of hurts,
sweat and tears.
Unbroken oaths and
tools had disappeared.
And street fighting
had overwhelmed the crescent moon.

Satish Verma

INCONTINENCE

Let me change the contours of life,
polluted mind-set.
Spider webs have
elective sites of emotions.
I want to open a new range,
to locate the corrupt moments.
Turn over your face,
let me find the scars.

The soaring pinnacle,
fatherless fame, were declining.
The rot was setting on
the fresco of the wall.
Aspiring for god-head
they have choked the fluiting.
Hands and eyes are cadaverous,
unmoving. Sun is burning very hot.

Not tomorrow,
today we have to bid farewell
to neutral day.
Life will not spare the casting.
Too much mist
has settled on the eyes,
raining madness on the road.
Month and years
are giving incontinence.

Satish Verma

BETWEEN TWO CENTURIES

Choice was washing the guilt
or keeping mind shut.
Microscopic deterioration
in the brain had set in.
The monologue of humility
was not relevant for the flame ritual.
They said the death was a dropp of wine.

Immoral alchemy had
broken the enormous myth.
The electrons went crazy,
they orbited like hungry eagles.
Truth was never the same.
Fading age wears new wrinkles,
black on black rose praises the air.

The return of grief, was very evident.
Eyes blinked endlessly,
I too lifted the pleated pain.
Enzyme of new creation
was worthless.
We were walking
into an epic, oscillating
between two centuries.

Satish Verma

SCENT WILL BE BURIED

This way it was
this way it happened
I could not run along the river.

Your face floats
like a skylamp.
Halfway rainbow was broken.

How did it happen?
I became transgenic
by the kiss of death.

This was my victory
I surrendered the cushion.
You sleep in my arms.

Again I will wander
in the graveyard
where my angel was sleeping.

This is my last letter
in the month November
Now the scent will be buried in snow.

Satish Verma

SKY WEEPS

My fear becomes the courage
to pursue the truth,
the basic abandonement.
I must go after the dark
stepping on hot leads of pain.
Truth does not stalk,
it burns the fingers on your face
for a self-portrait.

Evidence of borders gives
the catastrophic miss
let us abolish the centre.
No body will now
measure the distance.
We will move at periphery
on a trajectory of truth
within the eternity
of larger boundary.

Why you live in future,
opposing today,
to put away the past?
That was my eternal question.
You felled a tree with a terrible bang.
My heart aches.
Water moves in sudden spurts
of nightmare. Sky weeps.

Satish Verma

STENCH OF DEATH

Why do you run away
from the primordial fear?
Of tight emptiness?
A shapeless entity of drifting psyche?
This was your home
where carcasses of cliches
hang from the doors of wisdom.
Unplanted seeds
of vacant connotations.

Inch by inch you were eating
your prophetic pauses
salt had become tasteless.
Counting the kisses of
moths on the screen
a candle burned furiously.
I never picked the colors of cloud, of rain, of blood.

What becomes of happening,
of being, of reaching?
The stones of truth are very sharp.
The roads were conspiring
insects collecting, under the surface.
Circling winds had
a heavy stench of death
but words were very intelligent.

Satish Verma

GALAXY OF FAME

When you try to find fire
in edifice of whispers,
you are badly singed,
the wronged truths demand scrutiny.
Fabulous smoke settles
on false statements.
The tunneled thoughts sway.

Epithets rise and plunge
in clefts of chastity,
remedying for sorrow and grief,
for death and pain.
Between us what has been left of truth?
Life had been a travelogue of designs,
inwardly we all are burned out.

I am frightened.
The probing must be painful,
conclusions will finally
dissect the superlatives.
Gloved hands will become visible,
which killed the innocent sparrows
in the galaxy of fame.

Satish Verma

PLASMA OOZING

We listened deeply to the sounds
of seed power of duality.
I was very restive
there was no time to review
the veracity of benevolence.
It was a flight of songs,
a passage through silence.

The event and nonevent,
became burning topics enslaving the angles of lips
and splitting the smiles.
If you wanted to feel the truth,
you must undergo splendid mutation,
to read the grains,
the sun, the rains.

Here comes the moon
sailing on dry bones
of our trivialities;
of our banalities,
shutting off our thoughts.
Multiples of our arts,
our performances,
had the plasma oozing
from our buried themes.

Satish Verma

THE STINK

Eyes will speak, not the road.
I am going very far.
Ability to suffer was me.

Landmarks had spinned,
the art abducted.
Was it unlucky for defying life?

Who wore the guilt,
for choosing pomegranates,
for the blasts?

Now I am struck on midway,
annihilating the adequacy,
the thrust for good and bad.

I survive the stink.
Blood spilling on quivering lips,
that God was nowhere in sight.

Satish Verma

BLIND WALLS

Icons of evolution and
loud men made a circle
of nihility, leaping high,
splashing the black perfume.
Nicotine reclaimed ne plus ultra.
Lurching thrusts reached nowhere.
Dirty fingers held the prosperity.

The dialogue of root
and earth started a nameless fire.
Hunger stunned the leaves,
brutalized by unmanaged truths.
The sting operated in dark.
Let going the lights,
phantoms were starving.
I saw my face for the first time.

I accept my responsibility
for closed drapes.
Doors were banging in terror
and there were sparks on the roof.
The blind walls squirmed.
It was time for your roadmap
to show the lines,
sign the winds.

Satish Verma

NO IMMEDIATE TOMORROW

said the path
missing the trail of truth.
Spirituality remained unconnected.
Cunning lies kept on
popping up like bush fires.
Non answering provoked
a wordless war between tall trees.

Non sleeping fears
held the linear perceptions.
Tirelessly the thoughts mapped
the doubts and plunged into grief.
A name was engraved on nevertime tomb.
Show me your tattooed skin,
a proof of a dream.

Don’t push it down, it is always there.
Your basic fear.
You want again to cook a slice of past.
A tragic penetration into darkness.
There is no immediate tomorrow.
You are seeking a burning star,
smacked of revenge.

Satish Verma

UNDER THE COVERS

Learning something about
a cause with remote effect
you will have a soul
connective to the body.
Near the end of the home
lies the river of fire.
Time to bid goodbye
to blind walls
and enter the arena of lashings.

It was difficult to unremember.
The mind rambled and you were chewing
the kiss of death.
Time traveled in circle,
dealing with fear.
I waited for the space, to widen between us
to breathe forgiveness.

Nothing stirs the waves.
The water reflects the elegy,
a poem for the trapped one.
Nostalgia for the brood,
the age gives way. Half aloud
the evening settles under the covers.
Brute claws kill the span.

Satish Verma

CATCH A BUTTERFLY

Deep lies the truth, unfathomed,
you cannot touch it.
Crossing the faceless matrix,
do not reach the level,
reasoning flattens the spikes.
On sand, elixir falls
like drops from awakening.
Arising from sorrow,
mustiness fills your eyes.

This was truth or untruth,
two strokes of madness,
wedged between night and sun.
Silence becomes an eloquent speech.
Each day brings silly
statements wearing artful masks.
Commentary on a vision fails.

Right versus wrong.
The conents of conflict always
linked the fear with poverty of a Being.
The involuted self uncurls
a scheme of war with a big world.
Now the smiles catch
a butterfly to immitate the colors.

Satish Verma

FORGOTTEN HILLS

Again I was giving chase
to a mirage.
Wiping off the transient thoughts
oozing from every orifice,
I will sell my dreams today.
Limb by limb,
the naked and brute will buy
the bonanza.

For a lost scent
I wandered from moon to moon
flitting past the sky of doves,
and the lonely winds
of crowded griefs.
The trampled earth
will not soak the joy of burning sun.
The tree and the flowers,
and the seeds falling in a heap
went unnoticed.

Now I will go in the forgotten hills
through mist and rains.
Give me some more pain,
it makes me move faster.

Satish Verma

WHEN YOU PEEL THE MOON

Turgid freedom of nondescript
energy moves on the
secret circuits of nude gods.
Thy body politic breaks into splinters of million thoughts.
When the dusty winds
settle on our faces, it is a holy bath.
The neutral sky perceives it,
lapses into silence.

Poor vision of builders,
carries an abstract frame for the silver screen.
We peer in dark
to find the blasts,
culture of giant legs was the essence of truth
descends deep in crevices.
The technique brings the broken images.

In your mind lies the whole history of a tree.
You don’t remember.
When you peel the moon,
your tongue falters.
Of several centuries
the grief stricken bird recites a poem.
Come beside me,
I will tell you the name.

Satish Verma

STRIPPING TO THE BONES

Now me, now not,
a thought is always there.
My genes navigate on collapsing walls,
words, dark mind, broken dreams.
But thought is always there.
I hold on firmly to sounds,
voices, tongues,
the thought is always there.

Brain goes into a nameless friction,
of aimless voyage
I rediscover the myth and abandon the zone of thoughts.
Distance becomes a wailing music.
Sitting between the flesh and bones
I recognise the relic of a window.


Let us dropp the years,
become timeless, empty and hollow.
Egocentric wind violates the lungs.
We cannot sing in praise of earth.
I walk through the body,
stripping to the bones, to find the seeds.
I refuse to pluck the flowers.

Satish Verma

THE TRAGIC INTIMACY

A crisp moon rejects the night,
the words retreat, like fallen truths.
Stillness was palpable
silhouettes moved in vacancy.
And we did not know where to go,
how to find the cause of life.
World surged forward like a spider.

The dust, the heat
and a breathing sorrow
met in the twilight
of immaculate pain.
I hated the drooping lights
and burning of feathers.
Birds were dumb
to say how cruel
the benevolence had been.

I fell upon a thorn
who witnessed my incarceration.
A fire in my eyes, I glowed like a volcano.
Fogs were hanging
like veils on eyes of moon.
I tasted lichens in mouth.
The tragic intimacy
of an old poem.

Satish Verma

CONFESSIONAL TRUTH

Liquefied version of pain has started working.
human material constructs
a floating emotion at last.
One by one I rediscover
the children of sorrow
among the ruins of ancient prayers.
The fear lurks
under the trees,
under the stones.


I can read it,
unwashed stillness of a revolution.
It was real yesterday,
but collapsed on the rim of today.
My wrinkled faith gets
ready for a proliferation of rites.


The land suffers.
My solitude remains unmeasured.
In despair I latch on to
sounds of pursuing light.
Impatiently the dialogues
are thrown around.
The philosophy of confessional truth
becomes very auspicious.

Satish Verma

MICROTHIN SMILE

Stage was set for the god of death
to alight in vertical scoot.
Then a wall of fear was raised
to outrage the door of saviour.

The receptors were removed from brain,
rejecting the manhood
to join the queue of media barons.

Truncated lord becomes unbuttoned;
truth condition wavering.
Not again the ride through fire

Me and you are untying
the nuggets of tomorrow.
Death and dew will decide the venue of the event.

Go on beating the microthin
smile on the face of the moon.
Clouds are rising without me.

Satish Verma

LIFE DEMANDS ONE THING

The brain will not cease.
Agitation explores
the hypocrisy of paths.
My myths burned, I spinned and tipped
over the inverted truths.
Again I skip the swamps.
Body becomes a frozen lake.

Take off the mask now, tree is flowering
solitary shade is beginning to enlarge.
It is arrival time.
For you it is difficult geometry.
The stolen dreams collapse at your door.
Exhausted, you are grateful to defeatism.

The moth eaten rags cover the polarities of words.
Faceless fear is ready to strike.
Your eyes are filled
with civilized tears.
The weaning from wings was difficult.
Life demanded one thing,
death another.

Satish Verma

DESIGN OF DEATH

You said you were grief,
the marbled tears will not flow.
Was it not much softer
to accept the life
as a design of death?
You needed the continuity of the sorrow.
Why were you seeking the ending?

The visible effect was mirage,
the guilt of genocide.
We emptied our tatoos
on the road,
driving the emotions to insanity
Everything moved towards
the precipice, rejecting the sky.

Sorrow was part of joy, my adversary.
I wished to separate
the fear from the cells.
The pain of perennial setbacks chipped away the ladders.
I stood there at the level
of death, demanding rocks.

Satish Verma

LEFT THE BODY TO WATCH

In the ending, there was beginning of fear
of unknown.
The pain of malignity,
evil punctuation of
a serene landscape.
Life moved from one landmark
to another in alien waste.
I shuddered in a patch of sun.

The impulse was very strong to find out the answer
I was violated by many questions.
Words could not tell,
migrated back to their scriptures.
Time altered the names
of fear & death.
Waiting grew into self-knowledge.

Like pleated oxygen mask
life gave me a bump.
Saddened, I played the mutation game.
Failed, tried again, left the body to watch
the death of the self.
Beyond the mind, away from sorrow
and grief of world.

Satish Verma

THE HUNT HAD FAILED

The symbols delivered the hunger
and desire cleaved the hearts.
Fragile peace for collective
anguish was not a substitute.
Moment to moment
truth revealed your hand.
In desperation I searched
for destiny, not path.

Inadequately I clothed my fate.
Did not believe in organised mirrors.
Less than a peak,
I climbed to happiness.
No idols, no idolatory
my passivity took applause,
hungry thoughts
indulged in deep search.

The imperishable freedom,
a road to absolute
oneness was so close,
you faltered.
The transcription of internal peace went crazy.
Poorly lit blood in veins circulated in circles.
The hunt had failed.

Satish Verma

CROSSING THE SEA

Till the end story
hope was not visible
to others.

Lie neutral truth
and road side innocence
died under the sun.

End in view was shifting
from error to error.
Statements squeezed between departures.

Steaming cup of patience
dazzled the penniless.
I was sick of hypocrisy.

At the end of my forest
dawn of my child
was peeling a rainbow.

Pedlars of worn out boats
were standing at the shores.
Two little feet were crossing the sea.

Satish Verma

SPRING WAS MAULED

The crisis,
a distinctive nothing,
swaps the dignity with blood.
The world hogs around
your palatial words.
The throb drips from your temples.
Hate or love it,
the barren prelude looms large.
I am going for a drift.

It comes back again
and again the debris of dream
of circling wolves.
The crisp moon outlines the contours of hills.
I fight with a stiff translation
of a truth. Deep rituals will always hound.
I escape from my body,
unfreeze my ego.

The stars did not help.
The space widened between doors.
Illusions outlined the
shadows of dead years.
Must we praise the seeping
poision in our bones?
No God had been spared,
the spring was mauled
by prowling summer.

Satish Verma

FRUITS FALL LIKE DREAMS

We were absent from ourselves,
the stillness roared
like a mad sea.
Keeping a night vigil didn’t help,
we felt protected in blazing sun,
quality of answers were deteriorating,
the truth existed,
beyond our beliefs.

In non-aligned manners
we disengaged from pain.
It had become a habit,
to walk in swamps
instead of asphalt road,
which was leading to peace.
We watched the rise,
and fall of attitudes together.
Language failed to find an asylum.

Ataxia of windows,
cannot barricade the light,
the fruits fall like dreams,
on hard ground, to crack open,
and disperse the seeds.
When you start the
voyage to distant realities,
your days are over.

Satish Verma

D-DAY

It was the centre of inferno,
where we met -
the chaste tree was burning.
Beyond the time,
we opened up our memories,
churning our minds.
That was without
space & measurements.
I am again turning deaf.

The stillness had a vocabulary,
and the words hummed a silence.
I emptied all my rooms,
came out to listen to otherness.
How thin was the happening,
the thoughts drifted out,
visibility became poor
and ending of pain came soon.

Pure tearless eyes,
became loyal to truth
which eluded the prayers.
I did’t want to hurt the lights
or myths would glorify the herd.
When the sun becomes cloudless,
I will come for D-day.

Satish Verma

APARTHIED

Offspring were preoccupied in their spiral career,
you feel sorry. You don’t get the sleep,
core-feelings flee from
the windows of an ailing house.
A cloud softens again in the eyes.
Wronged truth has created
an aparthied in ranks of candles.

Inner pain gropes towards
the spot between eyes.
You survive by the
whispers of absolute bliss.
Looking becomes a sequential text.
The self divides the darkness into hot flames.
Outpouring the anguish, the frailities.

At dawn the blackness
of dripping night fades.
The earth wins the moral nothingness,
beyond the regrets of inspired sermons.
The psyche is rooted
deep in the mud, topless
dust spreading the
message of preferred truce.

Satish Verma

BOUQUET

Come in the evening,
on the lake.
Together we will watch
the sunset.

Some unsung lines have been left
on our lips.
Some fractured smiles,
and some unwashed tears,
on the misty cheeks.

Sadness was stuck
in our reddened eyes.
Layer by layer
I want to wipe it.
A song, a reed, I will arrange
in a bouquet
in the name of redundant past
holding the unblemished time.

Come, when it is dark
in the night.
Together we will watch
the moonrise.

Satish Verma

DARK PERFORMANCE

An empty indulgence,
tortures the deep imagination
the immutable name of unuttered grief.
Gradually the fear of unknown,
takes hold of the lungs, spleen.
We don’t put the,
solitude for soul-search.
I am hearing myself now.

The fake overtakes the acuity.
Death looks the sacrilege from a distance.
The saffron clouds create
the opacity in transparent green.
Once we were all colorless,
full of dirt now; storing
our memories in empty hearts.

The vigil was over,
rains scattered the seeds.
The hours and days were littered
with bruised limbs of shaken faith.
No body held the banner.
The dark performance of believers
was sheared off by sharp lights.

Satish Verma