JILTED

A fugitive slice of moon
was preparing to leave.
From nothingness, tiny thoughts
flew out like moths.
I was watching the fall of night.

The wisdom kills nowadays.
Everyday a scandal breaks out.
A child cries endlessly. I might say
for a logic. Her mother had hanged
herself from a ceiling fan.

A celebrity enters the fluid world of pain
talks to the visionary goddess. Impatience
was coming to be. Grabs the wounds,
does not talk, prepares for the funeral
of human spirit and walks away with hawthorn.

Satish Verma

DECKS ARE CLEARED

You are dying inside me,
my little god.
I am awakening after a long pause.

The forked hazel wand
does not bend back, perched on a buried treasure.
I am disembarking from divining.

I stayed without body, nervous;
like aspen leaves trembling at slight doubt,
hearing footfalls of dew drop.

Fear of old fear arrives again,
when the seeds begin to explode
in the womb of a fallen tree.

For the spoken word, sting in the tail
becomes star-struck. Death zone enlarges on black
pyramid. Conscience is on its descent.

Satish Verma

REALPOLITIK

Under the tree of learning
of another life, the primitive father arrives.
Casts a spell of wisdom, between sorrow and death
with a speck of tears in circle of beings.
But a rain-soaked serpentine path leads to a ravine.

A talisman reignites the fear of unknown.
Panic grips the roots, branches, green-leaved hopes.
Cambium stops working, cutting the flow of nutrients.
The lady of darkness descends on the boulders
of truth, piercing through the layers of light ruffling
the winds of change.

Devotees splatter the red wine on the cupped palms
of priest and ask, who was responsible
for long life of knife. No reliable intellectual
wants to become a bartender.
Nobody dares to play the Realpolitik.

Satish Verma

A REPLICA

You go down in the dry pool
foraging for the political errors,
irisprints, a certain desire of revolt,
any skeleton to identify the victim.
An awful claim, the accuser was becoming accused.

For namesake somebody was dying
unceremoniously for holding tuberculosis.
Dots did not help. Washed and dried curses
went into the background. There was a cease-fire
for sometime but the guns will start blazing
any day on fake pretexts.

The ending of pain or pain of ending begins.
The past was chasing, future uncertain, present
is ugly. Peahen likes the tail not the crown.
Peacock is on tree and on fire. Deflection
of sun marks the beginning of eclipse.

A word falls from a crossword puzzle, makes
a history. Death was in crucible, dualism
will survive. The long beard of a terrorist
becomes brown with age. The train is screeching
to halt. There was a landslide.

Satish Verma

REASONING

There was a portrait under the landscape.
Whispering of clouds,
writhing body and
tense folds.

The sorrows hold out
a veiled threat.
Mortality itself will finish the epic abstraction?
I am not sure, and then the fog rises.

Afraid of flames -
a man was burning alive in inferno,
the red blooms of serial blasts.
A hairy bigfoot runs through the passions.

The fractured faith scatters wild words
like childhood screams.
The very living was night of kills
a freedom in movement of time.

Satish Verma

NEW KINGS

And there was history
to map the terror. A neoplasm
was arising suddenly in the aching skull.
Chorus of wailing: the burning will not go.

Clouds of dense smoke were mindless.
All the centuries were smouldering
in the hearts of waiting children
while the bombs were swaying from the tree tops.

The fat men and women were melting down
to define the master and slave in the
dark chambers of commerce. The ravaged
body of truth anoints itself with blood.

Satish Verma

AFTER SERIAL BLASTS TO MAKE A POINT

After seeding the clouds
they were going to buy wet lips.

Seven minutes to make a bomb:
a micro-chip, ammonium nitrate and a circuit,
one headless body squirts a long jet of blood.

Run, run for the cover, with nuggets of
wailing times. Black walls intercept the flames.
A nimbus suspends the door.

Cryptic commands fail. A body sprawls
on payment for wheels to move. You
hand me a child to find his bilolgical mother.

A long manifesto makes the cadaver shrink.
Clocks spin in frenzy. Mirrored people
look like ghosts. A city burns.

Satish Verma

SHIFTING PAIN

A silent wrath sits in a pool
of blood, will start a battle
over the footprints of sponges
who soaked the history.
The flow of endurance, lava on
the tongue triggers discontent
for a riot of spawned hunger.
One transparent self under the rocks
moans, falls to explosion, sways in
dim smoke. For the authenticity of future
we are killing the serpent
who drinks milk
from your hands
and protects your treasure.
The tranquility is little bloated
like grape seed extract.

Satish Verma

THE OTHER SMILE

Death will not measure
the height,
from which we fall.
Not being,
the psyche of primeval fear
finds its conscience –

subverts the softness
of moon-eyed life
with wealth of green blood
in brown bread.

And the white candle
burns at night
to send aurora borealis
in blue irises.

Satish Verma

THE SAME KIND

Pseudoscrubbing was going on
the scripted drama, words apart.
The tears were denied to him
and the moon slowly made peace on the white
marble of a cult,
and the river had scored a victory.

He was very upset by the absence of
truth. Stupid god did not stand in the
witness box to testify the morality of
man. Genes were deciding the number
of queens. People were still worshipping
a pair of black Najas.

Neanderthal skull marks a step in the
evolution of art. The jaw bone still juts out
to define a mafia don. The slit eyes make
a good pottery class. White poison settles
in the breasts. An ovarian carcinoma
now spreads in bones.

My toes are burning. Cannot walk straight
I am not here. I am not there. I am not anywhere.

Satish Verma

DRAMA

A fugitive chameleon sits on my window sill
daily, ceding the space horizon to thickness

of delusion; wants to decimate the infamous
rotting image of man, shining everyday in lush

fucking gossips. A perfect imperfection of treachery
to attack the hapless blade of grass who cannot

stand erect in a gale of glory of tall trees.

The star-glint overwhelms a prophet of dust.
A goddess enters the labyrinth of anthologies.

The smile that sets to sail a thousand slogans-
flies from infinity to the branches of flesh.

And the rivals collapse like dark alchemy
without qualms, naked and speechless.

Satish Verma

FIGHTERS AT LARGE

A nebula rises unfazed after fission:
after a fractured debate, greed crouching on
the wrinkled noses of rugged bouncers.
In remote history someone was burning itself out.

A black eye surges forward, sings an ode to
championship. Ankles swell up. Veins become
jelly. The thyme is absent. Stink bellows on
your faces. The green pond becomes red; tragedy of wounds.

Speaker in bloody silence quotes the black sun
out of despair. Everything was in disarray.
In mating of souls flesh flew in rage;
a pink river swamped the inmates of tomorrow.

Enough! Time marches on the dead leaves of sorrow.
My candle burns at both ends. Alien moons
keep a watch. Bloodlines are obliterating. We
seek the graves of unknown soldiers!

Satish Verma

EXPRESSIONLESS

A silent war with oneself
devouring all the cells,
the gory remains of words
and grainy kisses of tears.

A curved hook in the mouth
to start a prayer for the freedom
from whispers of brand and labels:
liberation from the weight of testaments.

Bruised glints from the flesh dripping,
wriggle on serene rocks of resolution,
before the sin was discovered. A poem
was awarded to me for excitement.

An eye and a mirror, a gulch and a stone.
The smiles are fatal, the blood is pure.
Hot sun bakes the sand, nudges the
skull and a pal of gloom settles for eternity.

Satish Verma

SUICIDAL WISH

For my water god I entered the wetlands.
Fog was increasing and me becoming incoherent.

The swamp throws a high tide of rolling wave
I lift the burden of bones and take a plunge in darkness.

The holy moon gives the company in yellow mood
smelling of honey and rusted-red mulberries.

A maxim inside the solitude hurts the path
where I lost my innocence for a son.

A breeze, a cloud, a beautiful sky
I carry the dust of my home wherever I go.

The wreckage was intact, past was shining.
An octopus was sending the suckers for future.

Satish Verma

KAVA KAVA

What that I am left with, impaled in jaws
of mantis, starting a tug of war, for the

otherness in me, seeking a bloodbath between
my poise and incestuous blue hole of black walls.

I gave you my voice, my roses. I am not afraid
of an impromptu death, but I was connected to

time-space of killing grounds of truth to save
the tears salt. I promised myself a zero gravity.

And you might take Kava kava to resolve
the conflict between round tables and square chairs.

I will go on starvation death in moon washed
landscape freezing my breath to release my soul.

Satish Verma

ANCHORED BRIEFLY

While melting-down he was going to cheat
the death. So be it, bribing the inevitable.

In search of me, you and self, life was
coming to an end. Standing on sharp edge

he wanted to go back to beginning of era,
to try again his fear against coarse future,

to be versed in or not to cease, to yield
to the butchering-ground for salvation.

He did not want to pick up the droppings
now with butterfingers. Let there be a revolt

against the buyers of wallets. Gods have
left the caves and crowds are thinned out.

Prayerwheels are broken. Sky was overcast.
The morality heaves out of bush and steps

up to find a new crisis.

Satish Verma

ART

Indulging in self-obsessed navel watch for greedy eyes
like a cloud of saliva around the amygdale, they

walk on sands fudging, seizing contradictions,
smelling of raw flesh and salt, an extinction spring.

The seeds are floating an parachutes between the
burnt-out lures. Everything splits into sparks

charging the air. The guilt looms large, arches
like an octopus, riveting before an artful design.

Just one lump of sugar on peripheral fields to
dilate the pupils in dark baking the bones.

Let us swim up to the wall, wild in our groins
tie up the shoelaces and climb the portrait.

Satish Verma

NEW APARTHEID

A skylight begins the apartheid
in ironed out differences.
At the shores skulls have reappeared.

Blue flames were eating away the green carbon
of the dying giants. Fake photosynthesis
was canning the skimmed breeze in books

and encapsulated euthanasia was available
over the counters. Eyeshadows were hiding
the dying grace. Tempest would go for a classical dance

only. Counting of heads had begun. Price hike
of black arrows would decide the fate of a nation.
Hunger was writ large on cheekbones of

roaming rocks, shining the landscapes.
The chorus spreads like eau de cologne
over the solitude of my homeland.

Satish Verma

DEVIL’S REALIZATION

O flamingo, your pink is fading.
Pick up the spirulina, it was caste-based.
It hits there, where it hurts more.

You were chasing, standing on one leg
salt was dwindling in the lake.
The stink unlike you is going to stay.

I am learning the hard way, the
blue island of ice is staying with a thread.
A sweet flesh comes from the mountain from other end.

Whose gold was melting now?
Sucking the milk tinged with blood?
Breasts are shrivelling in monoxide.

Satish Verma

WITHOUT QUALMS

He resumed walking with the sun
propelled in river of fire of blunt red
and striking yellow to resonate with the pain of her,
who sleeps on the thighs of a temple tree.

The vibrations still follow the echo of forgiveness,
a shadow of palm rises on white wounds.
The snoring of blood letting winds break the
bones crisply, on the jealous shores.

Where was the need of sharp edges to slice
the heart? The words spilled on the table
like blood curdling bats. The candle light
turns black with a guilt.

Small gods are weeping inside the tear
scorched eyes. Somebody prays for the fallen
monuments of tongues and bullet killed bells
of tributes. Stars started hiding their faces.

Satish Verma

STONED

It was a mid night knock.
A cloud laden sky
had sent a message.

The moon was trembling
like a collateral pain
in the blue.

I had not slept the night,
if I could bleed.
A toddler had drowned head-on

in a half-filled bucket
and some rodents had sheared
away the toes and ears of a sick child.

You give me hurts, for glassy eyes.
The claws on my neck,
I can hardly breathe.

The severed paws and intact canines
of a skull morph into a roaring beast.
There is no water in my eyes.

Satish Verma

IN OUR BREASTS

Taut flesh of toxic seductress
comes out of the skin,
rolls in the dream.

A century buries the neck of God
and creates the words
of unbroken greed for useless faith.

A path stuns the sharp thorns.
Nothing would stop the seeker,
he has to annihilate the rival.

Somebody takes an aim
at the dancing egos
and brings down the marvel.

The bitter feud continues, between
stars and moon.
The molten lava moves like a snake.

Satish Verma

MILLENNIUM CELEBRATING

I was ready to board the ship
laden with terror on mortal waves.
The patriarch was dying inside
the sleeve of hidden rocks.

Hope and death,
death and hope
flicker in dark. What if the blasts
start again in the cool air?

The planks lick the salt of earth.
Lipless mouths cannot speak.
Departure of sun was blameless,
unanswerable to human wails.

Satish Verma

LOST MEANINGS

In mangled bodies
and severed limbs,
the blood gives up its claim.

A twisted window blocks the landscape
of silvered faces.
No body talks with moon.

Night burns the fat
floats on the dead mouthings.
Death has the foulest taste.

Darkness looms overnight,
very false under the lamp,
eyelids are closing.

Dirty maps unfold the mystery
of religion. The longest book
has the restless words.

Satish Verma

FAILURE

Sound of footfalls was drawing near;
the tiger has been set free.
In the wild landscape you need

some feverfew. Death was constantly
stalking to trade off the dolls in
lieu of sameness of the stones.

The shifting sand drips in the eyes.
Face to face we come near the blind
ruins of today, denying the questions.

Who was responsible for the dark
skulls in the ragbag and explosions
near the granite temples?

Your face was not on the poster, but
you write the lessons to interrogate
the past. The gods are not visible.

Satish Verma

NO-MAN’S-LAND

Sadness was invading my wounds. Again
I will dip my fingers in bleeding heart
to write a new poem.

A scythe cuts a cloud
that it was not. I reel under
the unexpected rain of wards.

You go up on top ladder
to jump in the hot cauldron,
no pain to drown in bones.

What was the meaning of living
with death daily and still smiling?
A candle makes a hole in your palm!

The brain has an infidel tumor;
if fails to grow and erase you.
You are absent to your being.

Satish Verma

NOW AWAKENING

Always working out the territory
to find out the limits on the right
to live or die. Why not to get

an assisted death when you choose
to go unnoticed without fission or
folding up? Time was becoming a book

you cannot read like a polygraph.
The carnivores are increasing in
numbers and destroying the eco-balance

of human relationship. The dry bones
are piling up and the gouged eyes were
gaping in ethical failure under hot

glow of brightness, the naked god
chasing the helpless man. The coming
of age of a dialogue on fear was

important for a debate to start.

Satish Verma

JUST BEAUTY

Today I want to take a lethal dose
of black lips, confronting the killer on
contract. Time dithers to escort. May be
a cold-blooded murder of a handful of
sick shadows will give a transparent
memory.

Planting a sad kiss on blameless
insomniac, I rub the sweet tenderness
of morning blossom, a work of a faithful
artist, an unnoticed grief (for the sake
of old promise) . Meanwhile the blue moon
splits into thousand splinters.

From the height of insanity flows
the chaste river of history. I defy the
laws of gravity and climb with death
all the time, becoming dark to myself,
finding the shape of light in
beauty of death.

Satish Verma

KILLING ZONE

If you walk straight under the
shadow of moon, to the salt lake
death will blow a long whistle.
Everything was ruined in war of words.

There was no peace in the heart,
even after meditation, the mind
drove for the flesh, caressing neither
blameless womb nor Oedipus.

The dead forefathers goad the hypocrisy
till the blood spurts out from
the black navel of centuries
and the forgiveness stands naked.

Satish Verma

STARDUST

Out of the cleft lip comes
a muffled voice
on the turn of events,

to interrupt a call.
Then the panic rises,
the blood was oozing from the larynx.
The winding mountain path goes to the end
of blessing where the prayer drowns.
What was happening to the golden land?
Did the green worry about the iced peaks,
from where the glaciers take a bend
to enter the valley?

Who was negotiating the winds?
The logic between the stars and moon?
Huge gods were speaking to the men
in black, wearing eye masks on the highest terrains,
not heading my grief.
The dust was crying.

Satish Verma

SHACKLWS

Spark of libido was doused
in golden dust.
Let the darkness decide
the ascension of ice.

The possession of naked rose,
him, the pure jewel
panicks in the manipulation of hands
crawling on the purple sea

of corals. A battle starts
for a mystic wheel, for opening
the door of heaven. A sooty
entrance in the hall of sins.

The gathering of queens, a flock
of serpents; the failing guts
of the hero, what if the city
that never wakes.

Satish Verma