BLUE DIVINITY

In situ,
a pod holds a promise,
in the wake of a terrorist bomb.
Peace,
said a weeping well –
my bucket is empty again.

Because of a spin
in the rainbow
sky was becoming dark.
The hand on the trigger was trembling.
You are praying,
for a dying god.

And the golden dust was sprayed
on the sins, yellow wishes
to walk on water, killing truth.
Time was moving very slowly.

The flame burns low,
giving out blue divinity,
for resurrection.
New born grass under the feet
was trying to smile.

Satish Verma

FAILED PERFORMANCE

For death of conflicts,
and conflicts of death,
the coming of cessation, I was waiting.
Tomorrow must come
before eternity,
that inness, I will come to terms with one day.

The absoluteness of certainties
creates a danger of half-truths.
An intelligent mind suffers _
in ther era of hoaxes and contradictions.
The happenings of existence
continue without dignity.

Hand-picked rainbow is dumped
face down in shallow creek,
drugged, raped and abandoned
to lose colours in water.
When the sky hangs on the shore
the blue sea sends the condolence.

The sharp cleavage of silicon breasts
weeps for a failed performance.

Satish Verma

THE BUDDHA WAS GOING TO WEEP

For the fusion of minds
let the long vigil of night begin
for a cultural shock.

Prayer wheels were whirring
furtively.
The Buddha was going to weep.

Imperial march of hundred
thousand boots in fever
wakens the darkness under the milk.

Famished ghost of a town
can foresee the rumbling of
a dark moon behind the trees.

Bullet for bullet
in inner empire.
Gold lips cry at every reason.

Burnt-out shrine will tell a tale.
They were diluting silence of walls,
blood stained by the crash of towers.

Satish Verma

SHAME AND FEAR

Between the yellow moon
and black stones
pours the river of mourning
in maze of silent night.

At the top of the world –
blue eyes were buried live,
under the incense of palaces.
They stood, unmoved in the corridors of metal tracks.

Mowed down with concrete,
lights had gone from the windows.
Unlit walls returned the legends.
Dictators deferred the hanging -

Of truth. Decided to live in glass house
for sometime. Lilies were growing between the graves.
A green dagger was splitting open the wounds
of mirrors in shame and fear.

Satish Verma

GENOCIDE

King of sex,
the third gender
or hermaphrodite,
half male, half female,
existing on margin,
beheads the creator
to propitiate the deity of destruction,
starts a genocide
to create a new model,
new world, sexless, moonless
sunless.

How could you remain normal
when you were being robbed of every myth,
every truth?
And you were walking under the guilty sky
unmindful of the pouncing, long legged tarentulas
to bite off your elements?
All of your tongue?
And the heat will give up the slaughtered spring
dried up in eternal shade?
Within the memory will lie the pain
of million years?

Satish Verma

BURNS OF HATRED

You put up a price on all
the gifted items.
I was not ready to pay back in dreams.
Wanted to tell you
without telling.
Lips to lips we talk of a stillborn
space which does not crack.
Betraying the anger, words feel sick.

I was trying to decipher the moist
corners of eyes.
I will wait till sunset, when
I will call for the night and take off
my shadows and dropp petals
one by one and come out
in hot sun to receive the
burns of hatred.

It was not easy. Tulips were in full bloom
and my tracks were warm.
There were false shades
all around the garden.

Satish Verma

BABY FACE

Why did not you
cross the black river
and remained innocent?
Unhealed, failed inside, broken and honest?

You won the race,
the space, the heaven.
Moving away to the farthest blackness.
Your god sits crosslegged, clotting.

Brown hands on white shoulders, boneless
move in circle. Deportation
of words opens the green wounds.
Birds carry the snow on the wings.

I was confused, wanted to love
my broken vowels, for absolute you and me.
The baby face pops up again
in my perfection, speechless.

Satish Verma

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

Sky weeps, I was collecting clouds
from stillness of the sea.
A snake again wants to kiss,
I am learning to die
in arms of spiral mirrors.

Cannot forgot the cheating of umbrellas.
The stings, the twists, the hollow breads.
Foams are submitting the venoms
on golden plates.
I grieve for the dignity of a hangman.

The retreat leaves the blood
on the stones. My house was burning.
Will you marry me? I ask the dew
sitting on the grass. Don’t go
back to the sun.

A relentless bucket fills up, again
I am watching at the moon.
The icy sand, the fire, the heat.
Flowers will hunt the thorns
at rooftops of sleep.

Satish Verma

SHARKS

They manipulated the words
to cross the corridors of essence.
Crib was empty, child was stolen.
At blood stained altar
there was no clue to mystical death.

The contents now matter. Time
displays tools of murder,
snaps the sheet from the bed,
kills the neophyte at water hole,
unsucked breast swells, weeps endlessly.

Apes are coming.
Duplicates look brilliant like novae.
It was becoming crowded. Becoming
was destroying the matter. Fear
moves in water, on the earth.

Faraway a cuckoo sings
a saddest song.
Come, belong to my tears, drops
of my soul’s vessel, kiss the eyes
of planet earth.

Satish Verma

ECSTASY

A pink rose was set to strip
letting the leaves fall.

The roots were jealous of a thorn
for stealing the blood from heart.

It was the last page of a book,
no more commas, no full stop.

The dead tongue now seeks syntax
of the lips that smell like enemies.

Two hard little breasts start a dance
like geraniums on bush.

Between the shadows of thighs
slept the pride.

Satish Verma

DILEMMA

There was the hunger
and suicide.
In favor of my brutal truth
or virtue of my failure,
I do not want any comments on my trauma.
Morality has a dubious equation
with power, provoking my anger.

The days were full of abandoned kilns.
No more shaping of containers
in which one can put the moon,
and honey and roses.
Everything was turning brown
with infinite, sulphur smelling teeth
ready to bite into golden flesh.

Convicts behind the walls were playing
with mirrors to throw the light on slick
towers. Death was laughing, waiting on the trees,
eating black berries.
And I was forced to taste the blood of sky
with sodium –
in sanctum sanctorum.

Satish Verma

I WAS CLOSING THE WEEPING CHAPTER

When terror strikes,
fear inside you
makes a hissing sound,
breaks the vessel.
Pain spurts out.

Your limbs swell like sapphires
in a naked suffering.
You were searching the face
of your dead brother on burning ghat.

And then on, it pours.
Babies were burning in incubators.
Blasts devouring the eyes,
ears and noses.

But the dredging will continue.
Irrespective of ocean of death
leaping to fragile shores
till the waves send back the relics.

Whom shall I call for condolence
in the thick of fog?
I was closing the weeping chapter.

Satish Verma

DOWNPOUR

Your lips were me.
I wanted a kiss
which never came.

Insertion of a word, was committed
my wings took a flight
for anonymity.

To keep suffering alive
truth was accepting the hurts.
I was not speaking for myself.

Who was me to want a praise
for the custodian of morality?
Something for my name?

I must salute the fallen fingers,
who did not write death –
for my hugging blankness.

Satish Verma

KUPFERNICKLED

Looked downward –
the granite face,
to see imprinted kupfernickeled
god, lying in dust.

From where to where
we have come sleepwalking?
In freezing winds, like brown angels
with swollen lids.

White moon-poised to commit suicide?
Blindfolded heavy as lead
in the trade of spared lies?
Back pain will carry us not very far.

Green stems have yellow leaves now.
We start blaming ourselves
to keep the winter away,
in torn shirts.

Satish Verma

DOVES HAD STOPPED FLYING

Somebody had put the feet
against the flame,
the street had become a wall.

Commitment had failed,
the doors were locked.
Collective guilt was seeking favour.

Repeating the same story
blurs the sky.
Sun will not come out.

You are speaking.
He was speaking.
Truth was speaking.

Solitude and silence
come before the summary.
I was responsible for myself.

Earth refuses to conceive –
fire in veins.
Doves had stopped flying.

Satish Verma

BLAZING TRAIL

They swim like tadpoles.
Thoughts!
I was waiting at the far end of pond.

Heartburn increases at dusk,
fierce battle of blazing stripes
on blankets.

On the scarlet face
a bridge was burning
in wide open eyes.

Somebody takes an aim
hauling a runaway bruise.
Blood comes out roaring.

Weep, my stars,
ice was thin –
drowning the lake.

Satish Verma

DIGNITY

There was existence,
without space.
I was afraid of my unborn child.

Inheriting the stammer
of history
I could not think of any brand abuse.

On the contrary, fumes
throw you off the road.
Full moon rising on the cleft.

I was, as I am, never being
to any threat of drowning
in contradictions.

A dignity in withdrawl
and coming back after sunset –
to walk in night, alone.

Satish Verma

CHASTE TREE

A poem writes my name.
I am trembling
on paper like salt.

Flowing like moon
on the black wound.
The lamb and the skull.

I know the saint
invented by masses.
You need a fresh awakening.

A vastness from nothing to nothing.
Later the pebbles will dance
on the bay of death.

Sometimes the scales were jinxed,
sometimes the weight was light.
I was sitting under a chaste tree.

Satish Verma

BALD SKY

The fall
was imminent
on the moment of complete truth.
I was talking of annihilation
standing on scaffolding of fear.

Walking on burning coals
was a sacred commitment,
a spiritual solidarity,
with lake salt –
to lift the spirit
of sagging trees.

Of freedom of body
in camps of violence.
Without sound, I wanted to see
the creation in nothing.

Anything was happening
under the bald sky.

Satish Verma

DIALOGUE ON NON-DEATH

Drowning her children
back in her womb,
a big tear rolls down the cheek of earth.
She was sitting on broken bones
to watch the terror,
ear for ear to listen,
eye for eye to see.
Hope was becoming ephemeral.

Nostalgia for breathing in,
the scented grains of death’s fruit,
no analogue, no relics of blood
and a ceremony of water, soil and wood.

All gone. It is a battered rubble
back to back, autoclaved, clean.
We walk back, heads bowed, shaven,
absolutely fouled with no immediate answer.

Was there a dialogue on non-death?

Satish Verma

HISTORY WAS WALKING

Death in meadow
on leaves, under the sky.
History was walking over the bodies
of those who were in service
to move the wheels of sorrow.

The horror sinks slowly.
They were killed without war.
Unpaid debts of life, conflicts
at home. Amidst the laughter
somebody hangs in a noose.

Cry, cry, the possessed one,
your script had failed you.
Your chosen god was fake one
your unknown fear was real -
under the veil of sky-blue peace.

The faith has a price now,
put up for sale on the combed street,
from the opening of a number.
No wages are fixed for lying deep
round the pain of centuries.

Satish Verma

ASIA AT THE EDGE

I wished
a solitary temptation,
to write off karma
and become responsible for the spattered blood.
You were generating hatred, Asia,
in the land of Buddha.
I can hear the glaciers receding.

Answerable to belonging,
the change of generations,
makes me free to become deaf and dumb.
Only I wanted to see, and see through
burning walls,
the hands, who lighted the torch
to burn the transparent shame.

Rejecting the original script
of fighting a god, in the midst of
non-truths, how far the time will decide
the destiny of man? I break off
from the cliches, wait for the leaves to fall
and its drifting darkness on the open land
of wounded whispers.

Satish Verma

ALONENESS OF FIRE

He was asking for, at least,
a passive euthanasia.

Rage or hostility
was giving pain to phantom limbs.
Race puts forth,
a trembling version
of ethnic choice.
A piped dream
which never took off.

On middle of the road
a dragon rumbles,
hissing flames.
Something not on the left
not on the right.
Cannot keep the sky open.
Nothing moves now,
not even leaves of a lone tree.

There was a random cry
unheard in the aloneness of fire.

Satish Verma

OTHER GOD WAS SLEEPING

Time within the earth hour
was lengthening.
The other god was sleeping.

Becoming was inviting the death
while climbing.
Frostbite amputates the memory.

Ending without beginning,
I was asking the seeker to stop
searching the answers.

The houses were burning on the road,
silence, had a vertical sound,
no words, no tongue.

Death had tears of blood
riding on the horseback
it was charging on the wandering incense.

Satish Verma

ACTUALIS

There was a strange carnality
in flowing robes,
a waiver penetrates
in incorporeal ellipse.
I must speak of him in his absence
combating for the actuality.

Knowing lust manifolds,
yields a prayer,
primrose opens the eyes.
The knowledge liberating -
you cross the inlets.

Anxiety peels off your mind.
An obnoxious presence of unbeings,
the weeds, the vocal generation
of priests, are anything but art.

The body blooms, in suicidal note.
Birds shriek, before the moon climbs
on the dark trees. I let go the orange,
only the white spreads.

Satish Verma

DEATH WAS VERY GENIAL

In the service of flesh
new vision was perfecting a cult;
silence was going home.

It was not there
freedom of defense for bread, but
I must pay the price of hunger.

The oblique afterthought
compelled by nocturnal infidelity
picks up the black threads,
minute by minute.
Death was very genial.

Comes silently behind the cacti -
across the intelligent green.
One has to pay for touching greatness.

The thoughts will never go
from the unwinking eyes.
I was listening to the footsteps.

Satish Verma

I AM BURNING MY BRIDGES

To search you
I am burning my wheels.

Put your hands
on my shoulders
for opening the book.
To read the message
between the words.

When the time comes
I want you
to smear my ashes
on the stones of footpath.
I want them
to walk on me
and dissolve their steps.

Stop looking
at me.
To reach you
I am burning my bridges.

Satish Verma

THE ECHO REACHES THE WHOLE SKY

Wages
of alienation
were increasing.
We were afraid
of reflections.

Shifting
of landscapes
will hurt the river.
I was blinded
by blues.

Relationship
becomes a speech
impediment,
bonds start
breaking.

I wanted
to call your name –
in solitude.
The echo
reaches the whole sky.

Satish Verma

CAN YOU TAKE ME TO MY HOME?

The valley holds on, to murder
of moon, behind the trees.
It is dark and clouds are meditating.

You think of a perfect horror
and a poisoned arrow flies straight
into heart of a blissful sun.

It is red, splattered on the wounded sky,
scrorched by shrill cries of crows.
It is dawn.

You feel intense penetration of separateness,
from the beauty of a drop,
reflecting the wholeness of an ocean.

The stress starts breaking you.
Can you take me to my home, into abeyance?
My wakefulness, reaching by silence?

Satish Verma

DO NOT THROW DUST ON THE GRAVES

Your gifts, I do not want to keep.
Shapeless doves on the grass,
were ready to take a nascent flight.
My small hands prepare a daisy meal.

Dahlias will bloom when the sun climbs.
I pass the door, that moves like a
stranger, between the people,
looking out for black roses.

One by one the tribes are changing
the colors of flags.
Conversion into sleepless towers
watching the whistles blowing.

Do not throw dust on the graves
in the valley of golden stairs.
The voices are growing louder
after trampeling on the bones.

Satish Verma