DARK MOONLIGHT

Watching from pin hole
lamps of baked clay.
Every thorn was in my flesh.

I was losing my voice
in crowd of maniacs.
Dragonflies climbing on worn leather.

Through cracked sunroof –
skull splinters into million heirlooms.
Fever climbs the feudals.

Why were you impatient with me?
I was narrating a shocking tale.
Frogs had acquired the land.

Plot was thickening every day.
Take me if you can, in the heavy shower
of meteorites in dark moonlight.

Satish Verma

FEEL OF SHARING A GOD

It should not have happened
this way, or that way,
rendering breathing difficult
in the intense smoke of misunderstanding.
The granite wall between the doors!

You grope through a thicket of words
crossing the centuries of hate.
Sun, no sun settles for the hope
of a slain blankness, to properly
heave, a sigh after the childbirth of truth.

All the dead white bones, jutting out
from the ancestral incompleteness of
forgetfulness of man to accept gracefully
the suffering of neighbourhood. The very
feel of sharing a god.

You are what you are not
I am not, what I am.

Satish Verma

I AM DRUNK ON THE HEMLOCK

My lips are black,
I am drunk
on the hemlock, proferred by you –
my life. I am still in love with pain.

What not, the trial
tried to break my resistance.
I will walk on my hands
paraplegic legs lifting my eyes.

Why did you want me to fake a death.
She was my lover, my shadow
always walking along with me.

So, you did not authored the article
on my demise in ravines
watching the son eclipse?

Extinct, headless, corpse of a
thin warrior, obliquely refers
to the pygmy moonrise.

Grey plaques in white mind
like snakeroots, glittering
in dark gulleys of time!

Satish Verma

DEVOID OF FEVERFEW

Did not make anything
out of himself. He was afraid
from depth to depth.

Muzzled lock had hidden the keys.
Shadow of door loomed large
on silence, now touching
nothingness.

Lips move without sound.
Eyes become dumb. Hands were misguided,
cannot hold the pen.

Mobs with fire bombs
waiting to ambush at night
ignite the cart. Nowhere to go now.


Golden leaves tout the era.
I am emptied of peace,
my vessel devoid of feverfew.

Satish Verma

CONCORDIA

Peace at stake,
it worked.
Withdrawal of rubber dolls
playing with fire.

Empty bowls in lunar month.
Concords were flying very high
noiselessly crossing the peaks
of great grudges.

Pure golden hair –
of grief.
It really was miracle.
Bald eagle was waiting.
Enough time to steer a murder.

The irresistable desire
to rub with a paranoid.
Extracting a genius from mediocre genera.
Life had become too genteel.

Satish Verma

A MYSTIC PARADOX

Not superficial,
real inside,
something was ruined.
Tonight I will walk out in dark
beyond me.

Creased,
under tyranny of love,
wanted to unwrite the script
in the stampede of sins.

Impeachment
throws up the shock syndrome.
No wish to swim back.
Drowning, clutching my truth.

A mystic paradox?
Million faces of yes or no.
Wrinkles are getting larger.

Satish Verma

ALLIGATORS WERE DYING

I always differed
for the sake of semblance.
Feathers did not agree.
You flew away for your sky.

Impatience had killed the defeat
my elixir, the baby sea in my eyes.
Genocide of the figs, unlearning
the sweetness of life.

Yet a white python was hungry.
A heart rendering feat to dig-out
a home after the earthquake.
Alligators were dying in midstream.

I was running after the desert.
Why bustards were disappearing?
Trees were hung upside down.
There was no suicidal note.

Satish Verma

I AM SMILE WITH TEARS

He felt very guilty
while defending himself. Being nothing
in the times, he became so dangerous
for himself that the buttons were lost for
patriarchal connectedness.
The faces had become the permanent masks.

Now what?
Flutes lie broken in bottom of the pond,
stones had committed suicide.
A window lets in darkness.
I love the pace of history walking on the back
of alligators. It does not die.

I am emptying the urn, again and again
to write poems on the flyleaves of life.
Pure pain. I am smile with tears. My
knees carrying the amputated leg. A big
throw on the trash. I am thirsty,
not hungry. My hands reach for a strip.

Satish Verma

CRIB OF SUN

He faked a letter to god
and slept whole night.
(Fallen in a creek from a moving train.)
Indeed, he saddled himself with luxury
of oblivion.
The success around him was most obstinate.

Pretending to condone the arthritis
of social limbs, he walked straight
to become what he would be,
a fakir among riches without fanfare. The
absolute renunciation, slapping the door –
shut, for blackness.

It was visible, the nakedness of brazen lies
falling like cottonwool around him. He touched
coral eyes of truth and wept, never to speak
again. Cosmos would split
for his journey to home.

This was meant for you, he said to himself.
Your own choosing without any regrets.
His fingers traced the figure of a mother
of the thin moon, who was assaulting
the crib of sun.

Satish Verma

GOODBYE

He had only one vision now,
as he chained himself not to be set free.
He was afraid of living.

No, he did not want anything from world,
or god.
He was not him always. Somebody in him
was watching.

Any gratitude he did not want to expect.
Not obliged anybody.
Wanted to go, but stayed.

Sons and daughters, he loved them –
for not getting cash mentions from them.
Some debts he would never pay back.

It is time for a deep breath of relief.
Empty house, empty soul,
and mind full of hurts.
He wanted to say goodbye.

Satish Verma

I DO NOT DIE

Manipulating grief, dirty hands -
open the lid,
release imagos. Eyes are blank.

You unravel the last of roses.
Surface tension wavers. An imbecile
sky pours the eyes, nose and ears.

Courtyard fills again, morphed resurrection.
I am persona non grata
in my own home. The moon does not cry.

Mystical lights. Headstones not legible.
Lockjaw. Waiting for morning-glory.
Stars are blinking.

Still I am stupid, courting my failures.
Cushion of thorns, I am weary of heavens.
Me, this earth, I do not die.

Satish Verma

COMING OUT OF SKIN

Banded I walk
on the dirt road,
when discreetly, your shadow falls behind me.

Melting the distance
a voice loses the sharp birthmark,
becomes perfectly an onlooker.
Where I was going?

Greed was splitting the fat.
An owl creaks.
I pick up some daisies to walk into a crypt.
New mind was some steps away.

Coming out of skin
nakedness, brings out the tears.
We have stopped speaking. Only whispers
are parting the blackness.

Satish Verma

I WILL GLOW MORE

A river was frozen in my chest, O god –
I choose a burning boat to reach you.
My planet has become a broken bridge.

Voiceless hymns are haunting me.
Standing in a remote village of words,
my poetry beside me.
I want to cross the thick woods.

The hairy legs of tarantula –
I am ready to meet them on my body.
A skylark ejects a lyric at my terrace,
I become a flame.

Pour honey, pour water
I will glow more. The sparks will stay hidden.
When the sky would be overcast and dark,
thousands of stars will come out.
Suddenly there will be light.

Satish Verma

I AM WALKING ON SHARP EDGES

Hold me tight, my friend,
I am going to sail in damnation.
Between devil and saint
I have lost my home.

A wooden ship is on fire
at the turbulent sea
and I am going to welcome you
on the starboard.
I would keep the funeral in waiting.

Flowering of the ashes has begun
in urn. Sitting in semicircle, you watch
the spilling. Bones meet mother earth.
Death creates the challenge.

Go for a tree, watch your silence,
we are going for a contradiction.
The thoughts are same, but not similar.
I am walking on sharp edges.

Satish Verma

HUNGRY ANGELS

Tonight I will not sleep
I will call you in my eyes.

My hands were trembling
when I opened the book.
Words you uttered long back
tumbled out ashen-faced.
I started burning inside.

Where did we take a wrong turn?
The oven had baked a burnt-out
face. They are altering genes.
Suddenly it is going to start
a riot among the gods,
a pure kill.

Frightened I move in circles around
the little black hole in the center.
Martians would throw the boys
to appease the hungry angels.

Satish Verma

MESSAGE WRITTEN OFF

Any need to stitch an acid,
bare designed, in endoplasm,
when moon was walking like a full-breasted bride?
The synthetic feat was neat and clinical,
yet I want to turn back and talk about
something which heals the spirit of winged sorrow.

Marrow implant blooms like pink dough.
Can you walk straight,
think clean?
Organs for sale; mannequins are real flesh, bones, heart.
Roasted incense of sick birds floats –
you become a possessed iris.

Can you do something?
My limbs are aching, terrific pain.
Want to run like a stricken buck,
go for fasting like a schizophrenic,
become a letter undelivered
and message written off!

What is the truth then?
I cannot afford to accept the defeat!

Satish Verma

DISTANT VOICE

Today I will shed my body
and meet you halfway at watery address.
My eyes were not blinking to hold the clouds.

To live or not to live was a great pain.
Two small hands and two bubbling eyes
glued to a broken wall was my hope.
And glitter of the road,
fallen trees,
dead panther,
had sacrificed my sun.

I think I live to die daily,
and die daily to live again
over the enormous property of shame.

Melting in my own blood
I was becoming dark.
The night was dancing on my sadness.
Now it was me, shaking in remoteness
of a distant voice!

Satish Verma

AUBRURN DAWN

I believe, I had not arrived
when you were arbitrating
between naked steel and the truth.
Violence were you. I was watching
the burning pyres in a row. Small hands
were collecting the ashes,
casting glances on the falcons.

Why reincarnation of the reaper again and again
arching the helpless life in terror?
Half-filled cups of tears are spilled
on the marbled smoke.
We made the truce with slaughter
in moonlight pitying the survivors in sun.
The face watching from the window disappears.

An auburn dawn wakes with swollen eyes.
I might find a lost child of the empty womb –
wandering in wilderness of three dimensional sorrow.
O mother! somewhere the roots are waiting!

Satish Verma

CLOSE THE CIRCLE

Why are you packing up for final journey?
I am not getting the signals from the stars
through the amnesia. The moon will rise
on the desolate landscape of broken dreams
A shudder gives away. You always pursued incompleteness.

So the striving continues, for wholeness,
without sitting in meditation, remaining restless,
churning, agitating, creating comets on the lips,
touching the tulips, red roses, scented air,
traveling all alone through the black memories.

Talking to yourself in emptiness, wading in the
green eternity to find pure, unblemished truth,
the secret of eternal youth. Which fear had
perverted my vision? Why should I be afraid
of meeting you in me? Cannot I maintain my.

Integrity? The wheels are moving and your
gifts are lying unclaimed. Where do we meet?
No temple is safe. A foreign land where the
clouds bleed and sun unloosens the threat,
I will seek to close the circle.

Satish Verma

AGAIN FALLING IN LOVE

I don’t belong to me,
to you, to her, to him.
Who are you, I ask myself
again falling in love for a tender shoot,
uncoiling under the debris of unfaithful corners?

I was watching a small birdie
hopping against a mirror, cracking the beak
to kill a rival.

She was pulling at my arm
white death in red scarf.

This is for you my fellow-traveller,
a beautiful sector of my hidden garden,
where I have permitted you to come for a walk.
Hand in hand we will watch the peerless evening –
sitting on the wings of gulls.
Will you like to break a promise
before I implode on the moon?

You light the earthen lamp daily under a tree,
to possess me, trap me, digest me. Voicelessly
I melt into smoke, fly away in small huffs.

Satish Verma

FATE OF THE KEY

Watching the charred remains
of the toys
you want me to search for another house.
Eventually I decide
to go for a voiceless door.

Who was calling whom?
Eternity hurts me.
I want to come to a stop,
pause for the evening
and climb up the hearse.

A howl is waiting for me
to engulf me in myself.
The blind statement will sit as a judge
and decide the fate of the key.
I cannot open the lock!

Satish Verma

DIG THE FLOOR OF THE MOON

A fear stalks me on the road.
Sun was very aloof and cold.
Cannot stop the decline,
give me prayers of your lips.
You talk of dark children dying
when I was losing consciousness.

Will not question the ink of death
or silence of night.
The random greed of man walks
in golden ruins without listening.
I am counting my years wasted
in pursuit of crazy dreams of climbing a watchtower.

Hunger had become a great teacher.
Pain becomes a face. Limbs and shadows
seek justice after rape and murder.
Something seeps in me. Wounds bleeding
on my hands, I dig the floor of the moon
where God was sleeping.

Satish Verma

FIRST WORDS

Tie the knot with my mortgaged life –
I have started the self-descent.

Don’t leave me alone –
I have to unload some debts.
It was very disturbing. I have again forgotten
my alphabet and become illiterate.
Your consent is must
for starting a new journey.

I am neither afraid, nor worried
but fever is rising, like a flood
and ridge was collapsing.
The death was unknown to me –
it will come one day as a guest
and stay with me forever.

Times have rattled me enough
and sword hangs from the roof.
Why do I dream such?
The dichotomy between gold and lies
will start one day. I cannot go back
to my dilapidated house where I met the first words.

Satish Verma

GOLDEN VALLEY

Blackened silence was holding the reflectivity,
reality was on the run.
Exile was complete.
Dark secrets, standing on head
remained buried in your chest
absorbing all colors of sun.

A night remembers the friends
who went over the hills one by one
to find the pugmarks of panther
that was killing your infant biographies.
The world stood bodyguard
not allowing any immortality.

Your speech was clear, but unheard
in terror of burnt-out principles.
New sleeping cells are coming up for a
metaphysical revolt. A heron was
stabbed by soaring kites
in the golden valley.

Satish Verma

GREEN VISION

In a starry night
an adolescent thought starts
a rivalry. A baby moon squirms.
No hour was safe from terror in dark.
I climb the stairs breathlessly.

The great divide deepens in hearts.
Incisors bite the tongue,
grey cells bleed inside.
Thick ash has not stopped the cinders
smouldering under the veils of flushed peace.
Cupped tears wash the feet of death,
a caravan of words moves desolated,
cutting on the edges, before you say
goodbye to green vision.

Today I am pulling out the nails
from the walls. No hangings of departed centuries.
No portraits of exiled flames.
Only the face of truth, burning
at the interface of unthruths.

Satish Verma

CREATIVE SHAME

Neglecting the presence of choiceless
pain, I became singular and I said
I would not allow the life
slip through my fingers.

Looking inside, beneath the rags
of awakening, makes you to rebel
against the decadent forgiveness.
Belief in dying was a reversed nightmare.

Till the arteries explode in the limbs.
A robot kindles the hope to walk
without a brain and I grieve for the
death of a nightingale in the woods.

I will knead the invisible universe,
roll it to the stone wall of conscience.
Age will undo the million dreams
behind the creative shame.

Satish Verma

FLAMES

You went blank on the line
between sand and water,
between seizure and assault.
The tribes have unwrapped their torches,
they are coming in numbers.

Who was going on trial?
Fierce fidelity is demanding vendetta.
The drummer announces the fight.
Justice parts the lips for
peace against tragedy!

The golden voice caves in.
Time moves as a profane octopus -
suckers clasping on the vital stomata.
Green blood oozes from eyes.
The truce was transient.

Childless earth throws up the flames.

Satish Verma

BLACK MOON

He made me move on the rough edges
to the abyss of ‘ I ’, persuasive, but strong
for a thrilled journey, on the snow-clad
relationship between disquietening
follicles of wants.

Completely alert, still drowning in fear
of abstract river, of fire, of nodal pain
of self-destruction. Suicide was below dignity.
This was annihilation of the present, past and future
in realm of faith versus asexual love of sin.

Only one moment was sufficient to disturb me,
between me and my flips, between captive
and captor. The quiet honing of silence
for breeding vowels and petals of narcissus.
Black moon, I always loved you.

Satish Verma

GLORIFIED DISCREETLY

Living on margin he was deceived again.
A grasshopper was perched on door
shedding green pigment.

Granary was empty and he was,
worried about the health of nation.
Glare and splendor always hurt his eyes.

In the name of prosperity, leftovers
set the dirty houses apart
from polished faces.

He was again afraid of interior –
bursting with statements of elegance,
releasing the bald answers to nettled questions.

The stench was glorified discreetly,
giving a pause to sorrow.
Who was destroying the sweetness?

Satish Verma

BOWL WAS STILL EMPTY

Trying to follow truth
his journey was nightmarish.
Alchemic fusion with past and future failed –
his bowl was still empty.

In the inner space
a largesse, free of present,
becomes the pain of perfection!
Now what to do next?

More afraid of life than death
he tried to manage the fear,
the futility of becoming somebody,
the nihility of ripening in celebrations.

In the darkness, an eye looks
beyond the stars, at timeless silences
of hope, waking, slits of dreams
like lasers, creating new designs.

Satish Verma