BLINDFOLDED

A dented version of an old grudge,
blackened lips with an elite song,
your relentless search ends in
a terminal shock, nursing a green wound.

That anguish was still there, and the wild anger
sprawled on hidden fractures, false teeth,
and twisted spy glasses. Sky falling silent
in terrible gloom of centuries.

Blindfolded we are led for a ceremony
of total dedication, drinking opiates
from the cupped hands of a silver god,
with alien innocence and silent submission.

I stare at the changing colors of world
shifting like summer dunes,
dancing on the graves, in dripping
dew of midnight moon, salt of tears.

Satish Verma

CONDEMNED

For human face of death
umbilical cord need not
extend. The darkness takes care of
unblemished ghost of sun.
Intergalactic scan remains unseared,
trench warfare continues unabashedly.

Between brothers, the greed calls
for incendiary attacks, for total annihilation.
To achieve the illusion, the blurred statement
feeds the imagination. Deaddiction starts
a race. Deafness of the tunnel. The black
knees crawling on coals.

No night was safe from the condemned suicide.
The creator had the absurd designs.
Why not now the confessional stick,
to beat the darkness? Memory of light
becoming stronger. Give me your hand
to reach the ceremonial peak.

Satish Verma

GIVE ME

They were burned alive.
Most cherished to me,
betraying the functionality of a system,
interstitial asphyxiation took place.

In the garb of a garlanded saint
a gun booms.
The death is rolled from tongue to tongue.
flying limbs get strung on trees.

A faith was in flames,
somebody leapt from the inferno
with folded hands, to melt into a stone
reaching nowhere.

Non-particles were becoming visible
parting the sky.
Nostalgia was possessed with belief of non-believers,
a thought without a thinker.

I am taking liberty, O God
give me something to live!

Satish Verma

BECOMING NOBODY

In search of a missing clock
he went to the city of a fake encounter.
It was irrelevant to find
the lost tunnel.

There was no street without a rustle.
The sap of tall trees had bloomed
into jaws of death.
He stepped on a land mine
and blew himself
to reach the truth.

And his gift was an
apostate of me.
The tenth day moon will
celebrate my becoming nobody.

The rivals will have
a field day
dancing on my shroud.

Satish Verma

RECALL

The men were pulled out
from homes,
died on road,
burned to bones and ashes.

At the behest of tall,
unforgiving state.

Compulsion of armchair and mansion
distorts, the regrets
of centuries.

The stones,
blameless flowers,
spurting blood
do not recall any God.

Satish Verma

ECHO

He refused to yield,
and the stars were burning hot.
Night was foggy, and the moon was hiding.
His white, shriveled hands
held the center of gravity.
Obsessively he anchored himself
in the muddled egos and bleeding knives.

Somebody was shouting that the legend
was a big fake.
The pardon will not work. Death was
still sleeping. They were searching
the saboteur when the sun went down.
Winds were in coma.
The ink rolled back from the warrant.

Two faces of pain, right and wrong,
fear and agony, all were him.
He had nothing to hide, nothing to declare.
Walked away in the high tide
in raining abuses, in hurting slogans,
and found his past, buried deep
in the ravines, where only the echo comes back.

Satish Verma

CHARRED MISTAKES

Inside me, I take a turn.
By tightening the noose
hangman feels liberated.

In the grave, charred mistakes
waking under the massive ashes
of slaughtered sun, grieve

for the light. Time was death.
Every lovely tree was time,
leaving footprints on our existence.

Seeing the stillness in total eternity
like the calm lake dying on the
other side of the truth.

Of the dismembered faith,
and fear of future, and action
to move with the higher lies.

Satish Verma

ANNEX THE BELIEF

A dialogue with fear,
to end the thought,
was walking alone on the edge of death.
All the mercy of life was with it.

Gone were the waves,
whispering, back to the sea of mundane paucities.
The sky and the pain were there.
Again a question of collective guilt was rising.

So much noise was coming
without any resemblance
with the damaged certainties.
An act of voiceless jealousy was starting for the ethnic slur.

It will not disappear
a conjugation between light and dark.
Can truth annex the belief
with a half hitch?

Satish Verma

ANNOTATED FINGERS

Becoming myself, pricking the soles
staying alive, frozen, mistless eyes.
I bite my tongue,
chewing the forbidden peel of
what you are.

Can you move with me?
With my atavistic welts?
Emptying yourself of all the poisons,
while the space was shrinking.
The golden gate is silently watching you.

Give me your hands for a quiet journey,
they are shouting to blow the dirty dreams.
Every thing is done for the vanity
of the naked paper
fluttering in the annotated fingers.

Satish Verma

BRUTAL TIME

Innocent inside the circle,
you reached nowhere.
Dirty hands on the knob
kept the century locked.

Carbon footprints were deepening
under the sun, blue bird
circling in vain. The jealous
moon exiled to black hole.

The dust of the brutal time
settles on the umbrella. I am shivering.
The lies, the religion, the horrible
facts smell of the million deaths.

Who mode the tapestry of violence
into boneless truth and hairless
legs of prayers? Freedom escapes
through the scrolls of flames.

Satish Verma

BLOODIED MOUTH

Tonight I lift your eyes from the face
and paste it on my window.
Even death cannot claim the space
reversing the age.

A bra bomber blows up herself
in a windowless cell,
to get her a name on the wall of silence,
sort of a miracle.

Roses are in bloom
perfume of your life.
Do you take for granted
a claim for the sun?

Over to next moon
I will wait for the night,
to start a turf war
for the bloodied mouth.

Satish Verma

BEYOND TRANSCENDENCE

Breaking the boundaries,
you released energy.
Life was an immense emptiness
with dotting of pain and sorrow.
Counting did not help.
You had to escape
to painless unawareness.


Nameless you moved,
unacknowledged, unsung.
Humility became a meaningful dialogue,
reverberating in the creative minds.
The contentment
did not need any followers.
The occult gratification,
did not need any fame.


The cessation of agony
and anguish was important
for becoming.
Love and compassion became palpable;
when your heart poured,
when silence became eloquent,
when words become phrases.
And intelligence moved
beyond transcendence.

Satish Verma

COMMENTRIES

This was my book of pain
with no ending.
Life had two meanings-
Anticipation of today,
and fear of tomorrow.
Time was running out
like sand from fists,
mists were rising,
commentaries on setting sun had begun.

Mind was calculating, computing all the time
the duality of desire.
I wanted to catch the words,
the movement of grief,
the completeness of a thought.
It came as a stroke-
the revelation of self.

We did not want to break
the bondage of problems.
It was complete annihilation
of our identity.
We loved conflicts
we loved to hate.
We adored the disorientation.
The violence of our thoughts
created an empty wasteland.

Satish Verma

LAKE SCENES

DREAM

Ambling on beach in dark
when the lake laps the feet.

Sometimes I wish to walk away
on the water like a dragonfly.


MORNING

Trying to figure out
what happened?
Lake Huron went
into flames!


MOONLIGHT

Up, above
a white ship was sailing.
On water,
thousands of boats.

Satish Verma

LONGING

Oh God
I don’t believe you
for irretrievable sins in me.

My grandchild was asking
why did you have to go?
I had no answer.

My eyes were damp.
Okay, cannot hold you grandpa,
will you come again?

I was the end,
I was the beginning.
I kissed the burning tears of my small chit.
I said, let me go,
Set me free,
I will come, one day in you,
you are me.

Satish Verma

MORNING STAR

There was no beginning
no ending.
Beyond tomorrow
you will be, what you were not.
Words would disappear,
only meaning will be left.

The interval ceases to be
from ’wasness’ to open pathway.
When you are not ready
I will be there to lift the veil.

My total pain surges forward today.
Quietly death opens the door
to welcome the lost child,
whose burden was his taste.

Farewell to the visitors of night.
The morning star is rising.

Satish Verma

SILENCE

Go, my sun go.
Collect all your golden leaves
and leave me with pink wounds.


Go, my son go.
Collect all your lies
and leave me with bare bones.
Lying in bed with saddened eyes
I count the mistakes, eternities
and chew the years.


It had been a long journey
from cloud to cloud,
time to dropp on dew again.
I return to silence
feed it my body.

Satish Verma

TEARS WERE NEVER SWEET

It drips -
my ocean.
One dropp at a time
from the eyes of a grey stone.
Flows the anguish
in a cave.

A fallen grace from sky,
flickering like an earthen lamp.

Do not go
heart broken into crowd.
Tears were never sweet.

Satish Verma

VIRTUE

Simple light I assume, I needed
nothing more, nothing less:
as I felt tired under the battered shade of a
tamarind tree.

Sour sweet pulp, sticky and acidic
life had held me by throat;
and I sang like a blue bird
in a golden cage.

The voice in me was different
neither of a stricken lamb,
nor of a green childhood
but a roaring sea.

From the surface I was rising
in sun, before ship comes
with cargo of grief,
and sorrow and pain.

You know, I don’t think, I think.
Death is taking lease on my name.
in other world,
where my counterpart is fighting for virtue.

Satish Verma

BURIED SILENCE

Blaze on the horizon was spreading.
No peak was left green,
time was running out.

Courier had left without a message
carrying cyanide capsules,
to kill or get killed.

My grey sky stuck with silent clouds
will wait for the stars.
The bride will leave under the shade of shine.

Serum was darkening
its milk of poison.
Blood was thinner than water.

The buried silence was turning
brown with pain.
Bruises had outraged the words.

Satish Verma

TRYST

I will watch the field,
but not play the game.
Do not want to win the toss,
for no one to loose the chance.

When you go for the final swim
rules must change.

The ugly knocks have resumed
their pilgrimage through blood and bones.
Timeless flesh will decide the event,
death of the soul.

The tryst with unknown begins
charting the resentment on hearts,
clinging like sorrow. Sun has sunk
deep in the blue lake.

Satish Verma

SPROUTING SEEDS

Turnover my secret past
I have to dig up my future
In the hour of crumbling walls and dark
clouds.

Pale moon becomes a beacon
in another version of solitude
where nobody speaks of sores and premature
death.

I stay away from twinkling stars,
from the blossoms of traveling night
and winds which are moving towards the
sky.

Sullied words will go for a conspiracy
making a ghost of my garden
where seeds are sprouting.

Satish Verma

SNEAKING GODS

Reticent were moon, sky and birds.
A pall of gloom spread on the trees.
Stoically I rode on the wings of pain,
to watch the descending values.

A timeless truth separates the charm from lies,
and I long for the generosity of past
which could connect us to future.

A flame burns the eyes.
When we took the wrong road?
Still the fever is rising.

Gods sneak into our affairs.
A firebird flies in the space with long span of shadow,
the helpless victim lies in wait, to be dispatched.

Satish Verma

FALLING SEED

This world was too much.
in him.
Sometimes he wanted
to go insane.
(He was talking to himself) .

He cared too much
of things and people around him,
but it splits
like a dry pod, the life,
in throes of running
to save a falling seed.

Yields his whole earned silence,
starts turning the pages
of a soiled book
lost in the attic of grief.

Satish Verma

A TEAR DROP

Dying daily in eternity
for it to be,
a tear dropp held all the pain of life.
You were lost in words,
between the phrases
time was in, time was out.

The color, the theme was fading,
a seduced century
contriving the reasons to commit
the destruction of self-being.
I was struggling to empty my mind
completely.

To remain human in the loneliness
of ruins
I want to walk straight.

Satish Verma

NOW

He, making his own cast. You knew it.
Unique mystique of transparency.
You could not touch him.

Walking ahead of the sun,
long shadow, sweating it out,
pungent odor.

Innocence hung from desiccated tongue,
he preserved original speech
before falling prey to polymorphism.

Certain amount of tears, some sadness
make life sweet for a while.
Phrases are not hurting now.

Satish Verma

COLLECTIVE GUILT

For the sake of lake, I climbed
on the weeping hills
to see the other side of moon.
The precipice of hunger weighs heavily
on shoulders.

Capricious time moves inwardly,
Strikes at the chest.
I set free the love-birds.

Conflict of trees tramples the grass
All summer the smell of dry winds
was scorching tear drops.
Every word was crying.

Dark in my city
I am wandering alone in alleys
of hostile homes.
The collective guilt of the flesh
blazes the mind.

Satish Verma

DEATH AND DUST

Looking beyond the window
I always wanted to shut my eyes.
No sky could hold my head.
I did’t want to see the innocent smiles
vanishing from the moulded faith.

The smell of burning leaves waftes through
the catacomb of dead thoughts.
The time does not spare any overflow of poetry.
Life extracts its price of tomorrow.

Nothing will change. People will laugh,
weep and mourn. A candle for those
who jumped from minaret of silence. A
bonquet for them who died on waves.

I will hide the kernel under the mud
by stealth. One day amongst the
spikes a pink spirit will rise. A double landmark
for death and dust.

Satish Verma

RETRIEVE THE MOON

He did not depart
or reached anywhere,
and did not realize himself.
When words could not find the meaning,
where the man will go?

He thought he did not believe in ‘why’,
the limits of purpose,
dictating the sentence.
Stones were still floating on the sea
and he was standing on a shipwreck.

Thinking and unthinking do not solve the mystery
of human turnings,
the malignancy of artificial intelligence.
A rebirth of enlightment can take over?

The objectivity becomes the subject.
You trot on the grass
to retrieve the moon,
fallen midnight.

Satish Verma