PRIDE OF VALLEY

When the battle lines were drawn,
the only mandate
for the human torpedo was to blow up
the silence of time.

Sick was the death-struck
new born, praise of the ghost of tiger
in the name of glory of green eyes.
The orange moon was absolutely naked;

the snow dripped in a cave to form a cone
and the valley was burning wide.
The bag of charcoal given
to a shephered had turned into gold-

nuggets at home. The vultured sky
was claiming more bodies.
A miracle was swelling the crowd
and the crown was proud of deaths.

Satish Verma

BLACK MAGIC

He was still paying the price
for ultimate unbending.
Before the black icon locked the waves
to start tremors for an apolitical murder.

He took the call and stood straight,
stopped the melodrama of drinking the venom
and became larger than death.
This is the story of a common man,

who remained silent, went on looking
for the invisible marks on the ornamental sword
carved after every farewell to the severed
head of another clan.

Satish Verma

NAKEDNESS

Dying piece by piece in shock –
a life without a mutiny.
Walking amidst blue kraits
you never raised the stick.

Of extinct possibilities in the night
of unmanned crossing-
the blood streaked globe goes on
revolving round the blazing sun.

Short legged pygmies waving
to tall peaks of ice from the
burnt-out shelters, to learn
obedience again.

Crushed and upturned, we lost
each other in the jungle of
uncertainties. Peeled off skin
made us afraid of each other.

Satish Verma

NOTHING VERSE

Night was not worth
selling the womb. Biological warheads
were sufficient to take on
the gender eugenesis.
People were busy again, in worshipping
the archaic weapons.

What is holding them together?
The fear of extinction? Or the celiac trauma
depriving them of all the healthy nutrients.
The warrior is dead, only his long nose
is still smelling the foul odors
of hate and strife.

The beetles are coming and the caterpillars,
swarming over the beds. Where will you
sleep now? And beyond was the life wasted,
and darkness. On mantel are standing
the empty frames of future, trying
to hold the lava, back and forth.

Satish Verma

A FRIGHTENING DREAM

After a sacred kill
you thrived in scriptures.
Many centuries have passed for us
living without you.
Thyme will preserve you body,
your brain, syndrome, for our children.

When the apocalypse starts,
Arctica would keep the seeds, grains, alive
and every death will be accounted for.
From mars the ice will come.
And people will bow before
the chariot of sun for breaking the stars.

Why the sadness is pouring?
I was not afraid of falling saints,
of big poles, but the masks of bones and skull.
Those veils are burning. The grandmothers
look at the blue sky and again we are
distributing our secrets to poor.

Satish Verma

AMEN!

I would give anything to die
in you, in your belly,
innocently. My voice of dissent
should hold the wings atop the kisses.

The wards in between fall on
choked Eustachian. A global grief
encircles the fallen gods, prophets
of sins.

My other self silently awakens me,
this very night as I swallow my pride
and walk through the corridors of childhood
to learn again the alphabet of death.

The shadows are lengthening.
One by one the friends have departed.
The hour of loneliness was stretching.
So it be!

Satish Verma

CRISIS

To drill a hope in the drowned soul
was very difficult,
winds had blown away
the talisman.

Stress was palpable,
you could tear the weather with empty hands.
Mists had walked into the houses
to pick up the burning cheeks.

Man was playing with nature
until death time.
Stones piled up,
burning tyres on the road.

Visionaries were celebrating the all blinds
day, in an echo chamber_
and all the people were standing
on no-man’s-land for peaceful coexistence.

Satish Verma

FIREFLIES

A pagan will search for antiparticles
after a collective wrong:
some tantric will throw up the smoke rings
before the poean starts.
Come, stand beside me,
sadness is going to find me again

on the oak tree. A hairy spirit climbs up
to give a call of a touch wood for a voyager.
The viscera has been packed for the
final verdict of a forensic lab.
Now I have nowhere to go
between myself and truth.

It might not end, the poor conversation
between life and death.
The eyemask saves the guilt of sleepless
nights at old punctuations. Makes
the words ferocious for the lamenting cause.
From tree to tree the fireflies swing.

Satish Verma

LINEAGE

It was set on fire, the market place:
from a distance I was watching, the
hieroglyphic climate of the cutouts;

some shoes with yellow human feet embedded
in them, were thrown on the images
of gods, lying on the steps of tanks:

on hills the sex workers were doing
brisk business in private retreats
of the holiest of towns, a golden dome

was being erected as an insult to poors,
the streaked priests chanting the sacred
hymns, hurling the abuses on red faced

simians waiting on the rooftops,
ashamed to share the inherited lineage
but why one should kill one’s own daughter?

Satish Verma

KNUCKLED DOWN

Fearing the haze of ending
this body does not behave now.
Puppet show was over.

Punch – drunk we move
amidst the psychopaths, who were
foraging the aroma from armpits.

Loincloths hanging on the strings to strangle
the pigeons.
Everything moves with precision.

Sex on the mind.
The master wants the untouched flesh,
quietly without any sound.

Satish Verma

WANDERER

It was a taxidermal view
thousands of fawns on the lake.
Can you handle the die-off
of the whole truth?
I have nowhere to go. Genes are
turning on, turning off. Bare hands
holding the bruises.

Hungry, but cannot eat
looking at the tattoos on the back of
starving children.
I am sick these days in the midst of glory
and shame. Faithlessness is a prize
wrapped by shadows. The snakes
are climbing on the walls.

Human things, like chimps
kissing and hugging to calm down.
in memoriam of a lost tribe.
The body of a chaste god
lies buried under the debris of unholy secrets.
Homeless I wander, beneath the high sky.

Satish Verma

CONTRAST

Afraid of each other
we are hiding from farewell.
At stake was our nest,
you did not want to leave.

I think of kissing the dead eyes
of a phoenix,
I am a flame and I am ash.
The clouds will come as a curse.

Scissors: your lips had tormented me.
Why are we separating the grains?
transparent hurts?
Something we did not want to say?

A parting gift of silence
will haunt the blind memories.
I am walking on the rough terrain.
You are sailing in the sky.

Satish Verma

RAGING KINDNESS

Suckers of an octopus arm
entwine
like ziplocks
around a bleeding artifact,
for signature erase
on shared bed.

Few oily drops
simmer down
from the wheels,
the raging grief of the centuries.

Arrival had been delayed
of charred remains
of toxic news.
Repair of the ozone layer was garlanded
as a birthday gift.

I did not want the variety of answers.
Snakes and lizards have entered
into the skins of dark men.
You kill a snake,
a bruise comes on the face of the moon.

Satish Verma

SLEEPING BUDDHA

Happening?
you heave a sigh.
In peril, mother of peace?

Real threat
to ice lingam? the Creator?
Falling apart?

Cat’s claw was not healing.
Where the greens will go?
The pods, the seeds?

Tara, Tara!
come again,
we are waiting on the hills.

Glaciers were shrinking-
rivers are sad
and trees are weeping.

Satish Verma

DEPARTURE

Your absence was left beside me
for the white salt,
unsolicited, unbroken wants.

Asking to return
the dried roses
pressed between the pages of talking book.

Counting only the dying fireworks
the hissing sparks,
left in the unwrapped bones and skin.

In my solitude I reach your smell,
your lips still warming my vessel,
my drink.

Vindicating the tarred hurts,
the never name,
and twisted lyrics.

Satish Verma

STILLBIRTH

Between want and desire
few crumbs of words
will not satisfy.

Facts and perception
build a latticed smile
between tears.

Discreetly life catches
a miasm, a fault
to commit suicide.

When will the exile end,
of hope, a holy womb?
The stink was rising.

Amnesty for amniotic fluid,
fetus was dead
Godmother was crying.

Satish Verma

SYMPHONY

I have dipped my fingers
in the blood of the victim
and asked for the version of the surgeon.

The precocious death?
Do I need another witness?
Who was trapped under the fallen tree?

Only the passer - by was hit
not the bulldozer
which comes from the palace.

After the rain, tortoises will come out,
parrots will be shot down
without any qualms.

Molten lava flows on the thighs.
I come before the symphony and shout:
our homes are burning.

Satish Verma

CHESSBOARD

dark matters are floating
like bowls made of leaves
spilling hunger, make me upset, figures moving
like ghosts wrenching out the fish plates
from rails, nothing will move now except
the eyebrows of stone faces, bodhisattvas
sitting in scorching sun, unshaven, crosslegged
waiting for realization to come, not to
them but tormentors, a milky way in ever
night, the dry wind slaps on the faces
to remind them not to sleep, the shade
of the Cacti and Acacia seldom stubborn
to give you the shadow of the blades, the
sun ultimately compresses you in the
waist- high grass of death trap.

Satish Verma

ETERNITY

Pearl – drops
on your upper lip:
heat –
of a stand-off
between
inside and outside.

More spiritual
I become
forgetting
the black eye,
I want to go back
with empty hands.

My home
is far away,
doorless,
roofless,
where dark squints at the moon.

Satish Verma

FROZEN

After dousing the bride to a nice flame,
in between the howls
there were songs.

On mud path the hoofprints
came out prominently. On bullock carts
they had come for a sit in,

to resist, rebel or kill.
All day the heat, dust & winds
blurred the vision.

Hills between us
to feed the hate.
It is nothing like the good old earth.

The nascent bleed.
Time of non-movement.
Shadows of snow-peaks.

Satish Verma

THE VISITOR

The wait begins adorned with symbols
for shadow to fall
between hope and pretention.

The moon will talk
when the dew returns
and clouds are hiding.

He will come in a black cloak
for a final assault
with broken promises.

Is he untouchable?
You cannot embrace him?
Walks like a ghost between me and you.

Our past, open-eyed, the truth
happens on road
in crowd, in our home.

Satish Verma

FARTHER AWAY

To disconnect oneself
you push apart, from the stasis,
like flesh from the bones.
Coming home becomes dreadful
when you discover yourself.

A dark energy impels you
in a cosmos which was drifting
towards eternity. A fight between
space & time ultimately settles
for a second life.

Paralysed mind goes into dementia.
A riverbed, waterless, where you can dig out
the ancient marbles, edifice of a great flaming past.
It was obscene. At a hunger meet
tables were set with delicious cuisine.

Satish Verma

FUTURITY

The show is on.
Sedition will play with death now.
Deceitful black knives, white gloves.
No hope, battle lines are drawn.
The wasps are whirring at a furious speed
stings ready to inject venom.

Bronzed body,
huge turbaned skull.
Eyes looking beyond you,
hauls you through slumber
of ages. The autopsy extracts out a bullet
fired at close range, poured into chest.
Death had a party.

Frilled guns,
yellow metal
are ready to kill.
Extended pain of centuries haunts the future.
Give me the tearful farewell
for another ruined journey.
We will bury the present, forget the past.

Satish Verma

SLAIN ROSES

The reverse gravity pulls me
into timelessness,
holds me to become free from tremors.
The truth of zero morality
hurts.
I am pathless, secular,
godless.
The blank paper decides, how the fingers
will move. The uniform
has a secret rendezvous
with golds.

There was a dark zone,
the chimney, the indifferent smoke
curling upward.
The torch fails.
At the center of the conflict
rises a desert boom, instead of roses.
Non-violence, a forgotten word. A group
of shaven heads mourns. Royalty does not
want to leave the palace. The bodies of
slain innocents –
are placed collectively on a huge pyre!

Satish Verma

REMINISCENCE

That grave alchemy
of cold fusion,
of turning mercury into gold,
makes me undone
in a fit of anger.
Punished before the crime committed,
of saying no for yes,
of disobedience in the face of a command,
I am becoming a beggar again.

The land of gold dust
evokes a disquieting sadness.
Smell of hunger and blood, takes
me to concrete nothings,
collects the emptiness from the wrinkled eyes.
The lake-salt, dry loaves and onions for a quiet dinner.

Fear in absence,
starts a fear of future,
the sound of unblinking darkness whispering.

Satish Verma

ART AND DESIRE

Living on fringe
he was stealing genes.
Fear of rebirth
started a dialogue with death!

Ignited by an asexual urge
the belly went into flames.
The super star dived in sea
dragging down his old father.

The sleek content of million years
defies the water, the wind.
The godhood remains a mystery
in the blue shapeless sky.

The impatience becomes the godmother.
Like mushrooms we grow.
Nobody will notice the change.
A white shroud stuns the artist.

Satish Verma

DESTINY

Nomadic moon was roaming
in the maddened fear of night.
A wordless journey in silent dark.

Betonica
for a painless being,
sustains the blues of separation.

An inverted green
puts the roots upward
to send a message.

Fear breaks the bones
to mould the claws.
There was no oblique answer.

Nobody was blameless.

Satish Verma

THE END

Lines on forehead are deepening.
No signs of abatement
of fire in our bellies.

The hunger we inherited
is only comforting
the mouthless.

Broken laughs.
Strange bedfellows
chopping off the murals from the lips.

A body rots,
stinks.
Maggots fly.

Negotiations are still on.
Who will dissect the legend
to find the cause of death?

Like a clay model, a soldier breaks.

Satish Verma

HE

Walked into the sun,
He. With weak flesh.
A storm was raging on burning sands.

In hollow of his knees
gravel was hitting hard.
He moved onwards in trance

Visionary, homeless, life in open
was blessing.
A huge crowd followed him, voiceless..

Hushed silence breaks the dam.
Valley of timbers was ready to receive the blood,
from epicenter, from fields.

Satish Verma

ANOTHER STROKE

On the hay stack lies my body
brought from the shooting range.
Brain dead, I exit, to watch
the blood drenched earth. Foot prints of eternity.

Window is shut. No light enters.
In tiers, the cadavers are lying in a heap
of stinks. Violence has brought the perfect
insult to bubbling life.

A naked truth sweeps the floor, burns
the statements of filthy peers. I was
young with small eyes, full of water,
in the face of crime, looking at the stars.

Death will walk on payments now.
History will ooze in spurts.

Satish Verma

JUXTAPOSED

Give me a piece of your body
before you go.
A tooth, a nail, a curled hair.
A relic, my sadness wants to keep.

By your absence I will live
in the bones of tangled bodies,
who were shot down on their tracks
under the sun, eyes apart.

The trembling does not stop.
Bread loaves were lying uneaten.
Wailing rises, reaching a crescendo.
Blood splattered soil, my hands collect

for god, to show a dirty game,
when I meet him as a witness.
Wanting to know, why not the right to live
was the most sacred thing?

Satish Verma