A PRIMATE IN DISTRESS

Putting the sun behind me
I walked into the stars, beyond the
succulent lake.
A bitch drags you

on asphalt, walking with lipstick,
purse and follies.
Changing the daylight on every corner
you drink a toxic juice
in the recess of darkness.

A theater goes in frenzy
after the bloodbath and inferno in a tunnel.
The spray of hormones will cool you
and I will remember
sadness and sugar
hanging from the bright moon.

A fallen hair, traces the path
of a gorilla.

Satish Verma

PEACE AFTERWARDS

Was it a summer storm of sexuality?
Only the chaste statue stood in threads,
and then went down the cuticle
with nipple rings.
The demand of namelessness was rising

in the dim shadows of brisk tones.
To step down from sanity, a clown
was ready to become a hunchback.
Inserting the name of cupid in the missing years
the theme will encircle the house.

First conceived as a rose, its petals
are covering your cleavage
and our poor kids are slaughtered without
a surveyor. Do not read between the blood streams,
the solf face has become a bomber.

Of eternal rage, colours are moving
from red to gray. Ash was filling the empty bottles.

Satish Verma

FURY OF JUGGLER *

A primordial fear takes over.
These pathways are not reaching anywhere.
I am leaving blank papers
for you.

This was dark matter,
you start dying from birth.
A fireball sails through you
reaching for the shadow of the soul.

The seawall collides with hurricane
shattering the window panes,
of temporal lobes.
And I am the salt,
I am the eye.

The sky is stepping down from heaven
which never was.
Man was the destroyer
man was god.

* On the eve of HURRICANE IKE striking GLAVESTONE and HOUSTON on night of 12th Sept.2008

Satish Verma

THE LOST GENERATION

Sitting on the lap of a moonbeam
transcript of a gender
plays with the gun.
Manhood was at stake
I will meet you in a cauldron.

I was arrested in the house, was
moving from planet to planet. Cavernous words
seek the letters in right order. Puns
revert to mud-slinging. The heart spills
red wine.
No more beats.

What next after albinism? Dark was beautiful.
Waiting for the light, which never came.
A devout survivor brings hope. I will
discover my god in particle.
subatomic, expanding.
I want to walk in mist and snow
over the bridge, on the bald clouds.

Satish Verma

ANOTHER CREATION *

Detaches,
a part of me. To find some space.
Time cracks a dark matter with unknown speed,
colliding to release the invisible. Chilled
particles land on distant psyche. I will
give you blue rains.

It hurts when I think between choice
and will. Light was arrested in the stone.
At dusk the stone becomes a star.
I kiss a beam and bid goodbye to stilled doors,
of my ancient past.

This universe,
after the bang
plunged in a dry desert, moving
through dooms. Yes and no confirmed to uncertainty.
Another explosion will expand into
a fresh galaxy. I will watch the rise
of hundred suns.

* After the LHC successful experiment to simulate the creation of universe by colliding beams of protons on 10th Sept 08.

Satish Verma

A DREAM AFTER THE DEMISE

Man becomes a bee
assaulting a rosebud.
Death, do not punish for unlived years
when Budha was sitting inside me.

At center stage a dance begins
wading through salvia and absinthes.
The soil craves for the roots,
lake was not deep enough to sail.

Stem cells resume the debate
tapping the amniotic fluid.
Salt lick becomes lethal in midnight syndrome.
It was a tall claim.

The beards hang in rows, testing
the impatience of the system. A line
of funerals becomes longer, on burning beach,
where god and beast meet in dark.

Satish Verma

ONE SAINT WALKED OVER THE RIDGE

Death will not listen;
still, the candle burns,
in blue dark
and sets free the sun.

Will you hold me tight
when I shed my identity?
I was going to start a silent prayer
for this earth.

I forget, that I always remember
the green pain
which lived in the bones of winter
when dawn was breaking.

Night settles
on secret thighs of shame.
I still smell the scent of blood
flowing from the lids.

Satish Verma

WATCHING A GALAXY

I collect the unknown fears,
better than the known.
Winds start a virgin dance
of reeds.
There was a music for a monk
I prepare myself
to run into the storm.

You are not, what you pretend to be
and I also don’t need to see the ugly inside.
Enigma for apology,
to erode the authority-
for which you carry a mask, to beat the truth.

Where and when we will meet
for interpretations? Sleep may bring
a quick death of a nova
unravel the secret
of a flying prayer.

Satish Verma

FOR A DENIAL

It rained all night.
Heaving up the dawn immaculately, at my window
the lake crashed on white sands.
A lone tree
smelt of mist and grief.
A fury had submerged a road
leading to a forgotten childhood.
Knives and pins
clouds and bins-
a hate crime erupts between the teeth.
You meditate sitting on an anthill
to recover the lost bones.

Why don’t you leave the country
for good,
the empty vessel, incense and dirty coins?

For conceptual pain, the snake licks the breasts
of a white goddess, with a forked tongue
for sweet milk.
The hungry womanhood cries holding on to morality.

The memory leaks.
You go back to your gods
for renunciation.

Satish Verma

LAKE SONG

Nothing makes or breaks now.
I will not know you
on the lake. The clouds and shoreline shudder.
There was no speck of endurance. The wind
falls with agonizing thud.

The dusk was hoisting the white waves.
Time to make peace.
Moon will make an appearance
with a veiled threat.

A bleached skeleton on the sand
wriggles to become alive
like the bitterness.

After a midnight death of a battered
probe, it was time to give a final call.
A fire will freeze like a rose
in the wraps of black waters.
The folk singer was coming.

Satish Verma

WHAT COMPARISON?

The displaced years
cling
to your body
like an extended death.
I wanted to see
what could not be seen
by clutching.
the lifeless doubts.

Emotions play:
potentials are threatened.
Remaining alert becomes a
punishment. I grieve for the dementia,
the night yawns. The walking trees
start swapping the roots. Folds of sorrow
whisper of morality.

The apocalyptic prophecy wants to know:
“Have you ever seen the hell? ”

Satish Verma

APPLE PICKING

Immenseness of the contrast –
from blue eyes to red apples,
(we must stop apple picking!)
from smashed leg to a stone wall –
squanders the soft toys of time.

A peach colored queen lies in state
from centuries
to be buried in a golden casket.
Poverty of words,
hunts for the meaning, rhyme and consonance.

I drink darkness from the white lips.
Green eyes will find,
a sun at last.
The urn is broken.

The scented hairs cover my face –
tendrils of a brute fate.
A mutilated mirror will reflect the distorted history
of man, through the ages of dust
and wounds. The earth was riveting the god.

Satish Verma

BROODING END

For the bird,
I knocked the cage to set it free.
My tryst,
with a nightmare begins.
It was me, dismembered
in sour death
where sorrow meets the sorrow.
Now rising, now falling, the delicate frame
on unseen wings
beneath the stars, above the moon.

The killing circle
of trampling wishes takes you nowhere. In cubicles
you are lost, recycled. The theme of projecting yourself
looks straight in your face. What next?
The time infects you mercilessly. Vaguely
you become aware of imminent chaos.

The hollow drums will beat endlessly.

Satish Verma

YOUR WAKING HEAD

Your impressionist,
rift, comes through
uncontrolled hands of fear. The snake

was shedding the skin.
Not walking,
flying like a rage
discharging the burns
in the river of blood.

I shudder,
in the cleft of a grain.
Hymns were howering over the book.

One by one
the leaves fall, to unravel the secrets of
unvoiced grief of earth.
A thin faith crumbles
unfinding the lost shroud
of a messiah.

Satish Verma

BEAUTIFUL

A cinder,
neither coal nor ash,
my life,
clogs the roots of swaying carnations.
Fear, like a cheetah, runs faster than discretion.
Helplessly you tear off the last page
of the book
without reading the end.

One petaled coral, green,
hides the white death,
drowning the hope.
The river has changed the course,
without meaning, purpose,
meandering, engulfing the cardinal designs.

A homeless god wanders,
in my garden, to sit for a while
in the ruins of burnt umbers,
till the shrine is completed.

Satish Verma

WOODROSE

The whole truth was porus,
a hard punch on my face. We stood
on the edge of lies. Body

twisted at several places, mutually
hating, yet telling sweet nothings,
bored umpteen times like eroded hisses.

The shrieks belie the red wall of flames,
reddened lids. Cannot enhance the
blackness of night for stars to shine.

They butchered a symphony. A nude
cries. The tongue slips. Bonanza for bats.
And I resume the hunt in starlit jungle of birds.

Blue lips surround a pink hole.
Teeth were not visible, but bite was sharp.
How do you love a distanced friend?
The beauty of Raflesia?

Satish Verma

CARE

The noise of a crescent
climbs wordlessly.
In the night of dew and wind, for
its native starless beams-
holding the thread of a thought, walking
through wall of disbelief. Before and after
the murder of a spark; the heart misses
a beat. Cold sweat rustling on forehead;
you bend to pick up a coin,
a fake one. Possibility of becoming rich fades soon.
You want to say nothing. Troy, Michigan, USA

Satish Verma

ETERNAL WAIT

Fear of becoming sane
inherits the hate of earth.
I wake up in the rains of time.

Fire of soul
extracts the thought shapes
like stark naked truth
in the desert of pain –

unbirthing the child of wisdom.
I hardly think, in my failures.
The house will go up in blaze
by the earthen lamp of fading glory.

There was no light, a quick death
of lips and speech. The human touch-
prints had avenged for words.
Inspiration will wait.

Satish Verma

LIKE A CHINESE LANTERN

At the end of the thought
was sadness.
When temple lies broken
a little white lotus comes up
on the tranquil lake.

A cute word enters the lone voice,
stands down, collapses, retreats into silence.
A chaste tree becomes a sage
and tenderness of the ash turns into an elegy.

The moon-face has frost on the eyes.
Tears blaze the lips.
Unbounded grief holds the space between
sobs, a bodiless spark.

Moons ago when sleep was a fragrant
gift, the song never touched the earth.
That dream sways like a Chinese lantern
without enthusiasm.

Satish Verma

LABYRINTHS

From the ramparts of a castle
a wallflower jumps.
A lynch mob discovers a prehistoric sex.
Silent roots crossing the deniability
endorse a fluid dynamics
of a scandal.

The fascination of a fairy tale makes
a lover seek the revenge.
He hates, he strikes, but fails to impress
the horizon beyond the galaxies.
Black laughters of fake seers
make an entry to plunder the stars.

A tremor in the voice betrays
the ambushed faith.
Now where to go, find the peace of death?
Time’s white hands are snarled in pain;
cannot write the elegant script
of surrender.

Satish Verma

DAY OF JUDGEMENT

In last journey he wanted to have
a free run without rumors
of reconciliation.

From years back he watched –
friends, disappeared one by one. He
became his own enemy. The ravines

were waiting for the sacrificial throw
of a bound martyr.
Between being and action

he was ready for the kiss of death –
from a ferocious opponent,
whose chest spread like a hood of cobra –

ready to strike. His ghost will walk now
on the clouds, days in, days out,
to read the black lips of blissful time.

Satish Verma

IMPERFECT PRESENT

Priests of cave temple
go to sleep. Street urchins
drink the thinner, eat nail polish,
crushed lizard for a kick and then
go without food for three days.

The valley burns. Of what consequence?
Sting of truth overreaches. Another committed
icon walks through the bodies
sleeping on slimed stones,
somehow.

Do you hear the wails? The sirens?
Whole life spent on margins of future,
drinking your own salt. A shadow
wants to know, what was the hour
of destiny?

Windows tremble. The owl’s hoot hangs
in the air. Fearful dawn fails to
disclose the identity of death’s kiss.
Green anemone engulfs the king crab.
A cloud brings a message.

Satish Verma

A GRAVE REMINDER

The green hills are drinking
the clouds,
keep pouring out
the scented breath.

In capsuled hour the wind was its own rival.
A slant on confessional suicide:
the charm obliterates the solitude.

A gray shower of thoughts outside the window,
I forget, I remember in coyness
my sparks are humming.

The plundered land
by advancing columns of hunger
tosses around the dead lips of tropical
hues.

The fear demands learning,
finding the uninvited death
in the manipulated existence.

Satish Verma

I will deceive the immortality

He was wading through the frozen pain
unhappy at himself.
Staring vacantly at the blurred stars.

Who was not guilty when the staircase
collapsed? The half-men were busy
in arranging to open the trap door.

Amplified hunger was spilling like
acid rain, changing the colour of
fault-line, kindled bellies.

A twin murder has yet to be resolved.
There is no more pursuit of the menace
and the fear lurking under the dirty eyes.

Green stomach sends the odor,
becomes a reminder of stones in the bowl.
The thick men are walking on air.

Satish Verma

WISDOM

I will deceive the immortality
in my inadequacy, between myself
and a messy belief.

The sky cracks open.
One unreal moon
slaps the dark clouds.

You want to rest on my shoulder
till eternity.
The silence leads to nothingness.

Over the rifts, space and time
eyes stalk the hands.
You cannot write your name.

You will not move a step,
I will not stay for long.
The distance will defend us both.

Satish Verma

UNLESS

That tribal instinct sits in the denial.
Words fly in fog carrying absurd meanings.
I was ready for the impeachment.

Like a pinned butterfly
you lived several times, repeating
a dialogue on a mindless thought.

From nothing to nothingness,
you reach nowhere, over and beyond.
Where now? A state of deadlock?

Too insignificant when you climb down
against the black magic of language.
You loose the center by waking up.

Between this death and the next
you throw something in the ring,
to show my life was deflected.

Satish Verma

LIFTING

Again the panic grips.
Clones from the frozen cells of rot-scented
rafflesia growing in abundance.
Huge pitchers are swarming the landscape.

You walk into the trap.
The lid falls, blocks the way out
and sharp spikes pierce through you,
so suddenly that you cannot even cry.

The white darkness of the gray ash
is covering the limbs of history.
I am the past, I am the future.
Where do I enter the present?

At threshold they lift their arms.
Neither in-nor-out.
Begging to walls to close in
and let the roofs fall down.

Satish Verma

BROKEN DAM

Let’s not go,
let’s not reach anywhere.
The toenails have started digging in the earth,
to make peace with the distress response
of the bruised hunger for transactional surrender.

And the surrogate mother will abandon
the child for the father who had
run away in pursuit of pleasure, like others
sowing his wild oats in rags
unwashable in the milk of mercy.

It has spilled again my full heart.
The pain provokes the stopped clocks,
in the wake of explosions. Unstitched
fissures bleed, I see the ashen face
of a floating wisdom.

Satish Verma