31 August, 2009

THE SILENCE OF ETERNAL FLAME

you were stealing me from myself
my mitochondria, a little under the name,
while I was unmoored, talking to a mirror
who did not recognize me, caked in heat and dust
touching my tissues and blood
under the ignited roof of the tower,

walking with crutches to wipe the tears,
religion, open pyres, I am still stained
near a lantana thicket, amorous, talking
to death, pirates grabbing the winds,
migration of a whole waxed population
in black air

stalkers have a corrugated mind and
serial killers a mournful voice

Satish Verma

30 August, 2009

SANDPAPER

let me start a * bid for the right
to light the pyre of the bond;
who would not believe, the benign bony fingers
had written off the desires,

from lips to hips
may you go to find the sludge at the
banks of fury at sunrise, I am making
some adjustments with violence in mind,

the human race was acting clumsier
by skirting the tools of death and laughter,
it had become a rage with tiny kids
who were playing with bombs of hate,

missed abortion of faith, a baked infertile
baby opens the darkness with white teeth


* A community ritual to perform the last rites of a jain monk.

Satish Verma

29 August, 2009

INNER VOICES

traveling backward in dark to meet
my father I held the hands of my grandchild

in broken dawn of random spring to collect
the lost years of old house where we could not

meet and he sat feet resting on the thighs
in the valley of unwritten letters and thin

silence, you left before I knew my thumb
had your skin, climbed to despair I untied

the knot and had a fatal, pure wound, which
like a lantern still burns in the eyes of

my offsprings unabated, the seeds and salt
and bloodstained umbrella will cover the street

Satish Verma

28 August, 2009

ON THE NAME OF ………………..

only the half-truths engage the
nightfall the thing of dawn asked to wait in pouring
blows sponsored by sin of brutal torture burning
the genitals pushing sand in mouth blood rimmed
stool I become you sit on eat your dinner howling
the election time you come hands folded
me a hummingbird suspended in air
waiting for the cage to open a little girl
punished to stand in sun carrying bricks on
shoulders slapped to fall unconscious give
me another sky to behold
restraint from whom

Satish Verma

27 August, 2009

UPRIGHT MIRRORS

for beheading the raceme
three bullets went into the bubbling chest the assassins
had come when she was alone with scars
on wings she sailed on voices of silence the melody
had kissed the moon in night without veil it was
dark night for blue hills they killed a bloom
of white jasmines why are you upset my love
she has gone on orange wheels towards the sun
the black sea mourns by throwing the wreaths
back on shore to protect the virginity of fishes
and waves a bleeding god disowns
the green earth

Satish Verma

26 August, 2009

A DEAD SONG

They were ready
to suck the crowd. The child was pushed
into lentil soup, boiling, to appease the rain god.

Shining masks, the celebration starts;
surging a myth, crown of hawthorn,
hallucinating dance.

The people lick their fingers,
feast for claws and incisers
I run for the cross, please wait.

Emptying tomorrow in the lifting
hands of blunt queen. The watercolor
was casting the vote.

A freedom descends on the wounded
legs, as they drag with nobility.
Thumb by thumb you clutch the tree.

Satish Verma

25 August, 2009

CONNIVED

Weaving fine fibres of unripe
beliefs, from a fire base, a blue bird

scrambles, shading the stone valley.
There was no thrift for the cadavers.

The burnt relics were eating away the greens
of tearful eyes. Sun was slugging again.

A gag, a prison, a list; the trial was not
ending. A smell of burning leaves from a

guilt of smouldering garden, seeps through
the procession of thoughts, something which

cannot be questioned. Red blossoms of
clouds distract the blue flames of stars.

Satish Verma

24 August, 2009

A SECRET SELF

Every night this body
becomes a dissecting knife

a crime scene of blood
and unstrung flesh,

the lamb spreads the wool
for a deadly charge of skull plate

with a gift of mathematics
a moon cutout in sky

before the shadow of myth in the depth
of tortured chemistry:

the endless nothing will kiss the darkness
my blindness becomes a diet.

Satish Verma

23 August, 2009

EXISTENCE

A toddler unrobes the secret
of death. Modifies the circadian
rhythm of honeybees, opens the
daisy clock. Cage of tears.

The virus had the acrid odor
of sulphide. Decay. It never happened
before. Spring was helpless. Primrose
forgot to secrete the nectar.

Stones were everywhere,
on beds, fabrics, eyes and berets.
The white walls were painted with
blue camels. Smiling?

A cold moon walks on coiled snakes
consuming the venom of incendiary itch.
The grey people were dancing on broken
glass. Blood will make the visitation.

Satish Verma

22 August, 2009

DARK CORNERS

On a wrinkled trajectory
the blood averts to abstract remission,
I am out of place in time and history.

Try to nudge the jumping ants
with their cyberweapons
ready to strike the antique nectaries

of judgements. The predators were
coming. Killing for long necks and
pinkish lips. You envision a period..

of dearth for visage, for phrases
of dead skins: I start dismembering
the past, contained in future.

This was a total disaster of unknowing,
adrift between the fingers;
sands of time, ungrained, unwatered.

Satish Verma

21 August, 2009

LOVING A STREET

A lead goes nowhere,
a ladder, a snake, bloody steps;
a city mourns, while blackened walls
of a house search its owner.

Shadows of grainy straws move
under the eyes. Scent of nails bites
bronze silence. Sips of cold statements
for parched lips.

Everything was hunger bound. Eyes on
walnut chair: snow flakes of grammar,
this time the monarch does not speak,
only brown skin wakes the fear.

Learning to listen intensily, inner voice,
time caresses the feathers of forgetfullness.

Satish Verma

20 August, 2009

DRUMMING

in hired spring and naked thighs

the eternal sorrow did not go, it was living in our
memory under the gun of an unknown soldier. The
mania

had brought the overwhelming jeopardy of artificial
smiles, the swords, and ropes and different

tools of torture brew abomination, my clay
absorbs the shock, the abandonement of pain;

I reach for the icicles of veiled fire to burn
the generosity, the sacrificial amputation

of one’s own neck in service of opposition

Satish Verma

19 August, 2009

THE RETREAT

The heritage. Storm of violence
in our chromosomes: perverts the senses.
Spooky fear of burnt houses, broken limbs,
utterly committing as witness of silent
unbuilding, as the future defies the
stunt of withdrawl.

Not for tomorrow, the mother weeps
for the exiled trespassers on dead sea.
Drowned corridor of sinking ship. The explosions,
feathers destroying the direction of winds.

Life picks up the rags of pride, of ‘me’.
Terror waits on the lips of sorrow
like an obsessive maniac, ready to jump.

Some candle, bring me some light.

Satish Verma

18 August, 2009

IN REVERSE

Just unbound, the death rate.
Red roses had no qualms. Numbers,
unapologetic, they die or commit suicide.
Death had no tombs. One by one they
cross the stream, sinking half, floating half
in a cynic system, heedless, emaciated,
eyes looking beyond, cavernous.

They kiss the doors, will not comeback,
pilgrims of grapes or hemlock, dead on the toes
of rehearsals, dried milk in breasts and pounding
of metaphors. The mankind stripped of songs
drifting from one forest to another.

Satish Verma

17 August, 2009

MOLTEN TEARS

savage was the bond of weakness;
we were hiding behind the pain
of decline, abdicating the singed shrine
of nameless opposition, nowhere the roots
were reaching the bottom of truth, I ran
like river of life amongst the flames, you try to
resuserstate a dozing century by burning
poems, every wen fighting the jinx,
counting the tiny deaths

give me your locked secrets of fire
let me face the cold-blooded murder
in caldron of dead lips

Satish Verma

16 August, 2009

HALF-CLOSED LIDS

This nothingness was overwhelming.
When words fail to tell the facts,
only silence talks.

That brutal interrogation of self
to undo the decline, like a
a viper in your home.

The mortgaged glow of stoned infant
in the exiled land, brings
the exodus of shrunken legs.

A shadow survives on the debris
of frozen voices,
sluicing through the cries.

Open the stitches of night.
Death was skirting the prison.
No ropes. No ropes.

Satish Verma

15 August, 2009

ENOUGH

A leached amputee
living with stumps of flawless
dying.

Round and round, blindfolded
moving in circle, drawn by rhyming
bells.

Perhaps you need to suffer
with the drunken race of
snipers.

I am in the silent valley of
barefoot secrets where moon waits to
die.

The poppies will buy the bullets,
a gift to unending kiss of
grief.

Tell every vulture on the tree,
there is endless arrival of
feasts.

Satish Verma

14 August, 2009

BITES

One wardrobe malfunction
was a blast, a kill;
undressing imagination.
I was ready for an ambush.

Like boa’s grip, entwined, strangulating,
hardly breathing. I am in blue water
like a humpback whale;
donot go for the revenge.

It was not the fabric of flesh
hair and bones. I was tasting
the ash falling off the forehead
of a fallen saint.

The smile was going up for sale
in a gulp of greed.
Tomorrow morning I will find
amnion shaved on street.

Satish Verma

13 August, 2009

BEAST AND LOVERS

In the orbit, fear was invisible;
was not seeking anything, just wanted
to become a stone;

break my body into seven rocks,
each one becoming a rhyme
never to die;

said, I am, now, is, not mildewed
past, not grizzly future.
Every moment myself.

Tree, river, cloud and mount
become aboriginal alphabets.
Sun walks alone.

Behind the death, another miracle
seals the lips of a dumb;
Only eyes will speak now.

Satish Verma

12 August, 2009

WARFRONT

The spectre of falling towers in night
unfolds in awe.
A reclusive star rises in east at dawn.

Heart of pig was being readied
for implant, tallies with the seizured
hollow of a man.

A young girl of seventeen, comes for
a rendezvous with a terrorist,
eats the bullets for a damned nether land.

Every one was angry after
the explosion. Only truth had a slit of smile
in the smokescreen of contenders.

A dialogue on violence must start
to know the reality of nirvana
fear will not end, ending of fear.

Satish Verma

11 August, 2009

VEILED INFERNO

Take it to the doors of heart:
features are same,
of whores and nuns.

Small steps, big hands
move towards the blood-gates of ropes
to pluck the thorns from books.

Tomorrow was yet to come.
Today it is bloodbath
in river of slogans

Afterword was mine.
The candle will burn for whole night
in different colors.

Who was outsider
in the shivering crowd?
Let everybody shed the mask

Satish Verma

10 August, 2009

DEATH’S WINGS

Tryst with enemy
bakes the earth.
I am standing firm on dust of times
with rising threat. In vloaks, under the fading
moon they had come,
plundered my yard of truth and blackened
the face of an ancient statue of sun god.

The terror walks on streets
sequencing the genome of unborns
in womb; soot was settling in the lungs
of windows. Tomorrow night word by word
memory will be mauled, uncovering
the pyramids of fear.

Satish Verma

09 August, 2009

LOCKED

Stealing stones from skinny faces
snipers scratch the colors
of a withered moon at night.

It was anti-rape rally, the footsteps
falling in unison, the blood running out
of strange fruits

and we topple the golden grass under
the toes, hissing at tall trees who could
not protect us from descending fog.

There was no truce. They will not
lay down the arms on table before
sun rises to resuscitate.

The pilot has died on controls. Snarled-up
fingers will not let go the wheels.
The pain has no other name.

Satish Verma

08 August, 2009

GENERATION

untouchable that bleeds, lonely
in black sky, that haunting moon
walks gingerly on quivering sea:
lovers killed in shame in broad daylight
by gunshots before a crowd; some possessed
maniacs turning the clock back: history
lets go the leaves, the autumn,

trees stand naked, not malevolent
but want to poach upon the wrong side
of faith; my vision starts failing,
crosses the river in ancient lingua franca
joining the broken hearts

i was apprehensive, clouds come and
go, each death becomes a daisy

Satish Verma

07 August, 2009

GREEN NIGHT

Deep down thighs, unhoisted,
what was there, harvesting the sperms? At dusk
an inflorescence breaks into myriads
of fireworks, wrecked apologia,
interned unlikeness, insanity, kissing the goldenrod
to start the flow of bare grief.

I deserve no nobility, my moonscape
has a blazing truth about a shooting star
which went into a gape groaning. Somebody
is done for, for a fragile skull. The riverbed
buries the dead child in white sands.

That lump rises again. I said, I never carry
the death on my shoulders. Wrap up and play
the drums for I lost the pathways to enemie

Satish Verma

06 August, 2009

ARROGANCE

Sometimes it pours like hot
drips of melted wax from a candlestick;
your migraine.

I wanted armistice.
Untangle the lies,
I am not in your firing line.

The tulips in the barrel of your gun
cannot forgive the bullets.
There will be no ceremony after the funeral.

Give a slice of blue departure
of moon to light the beach,
there was a brutal murder on the lake

among the muffled waves of protest
in the home of insanes, who were
praying for the sun to return.

Satish Verma

05 August, 2009

HAND GLOVES

today i am not one whole, placid;
blood streaked globe of full moon
was hovering over me all night
to freeze a ruined landscape, i was
not ready for the departure, untying
the knots of water, like the storm opening
the mouth of a hidden cave in a deep sea,
there was anything unsaid between us,
a new verb joining strange nouns, the lips
swimming in coral tears, amid the frail
words of assaults and wounds of fractured
signatures; in the end are left only the orbits

Satish Verma

04 August, 2009

DARK PRISON

unhinged i wake
tying ribbon around the tree
of amnesia, the butterfly startles,
despairs the blue of humility,
all i wanted was the silence
of ceremony to greet the prosperity
of death in valley of graves, the hungry
hyenas appreciating the art of killing
and the mourning fathers chasing the
shades of walking palms in rains
to remind the commitment of clocks
for stopping the fury of times: love,
let it go, it sucks the eyes, starting
convulsions, the moon hangs low to
feel the demon

Satish Verma

03 August, 2009

PULSATING VOID

like walking in a tulip garden
i undo the aquablue,
how many steps you were away,

entwined like mangrove:
our roots were standing upright
to breath in moist silhouette

of equatorial sun, blooming
in anguish of separation: come
one day to leave me forever,

a train in desert going nowhere
on ancient wheels of time;
and i will aim for a perforated flight

one day to be reborn and the shadowed
ride under the truth will open
the husky lips of pain

Satish Verma

02 August, 2009

DESPAIRED

nothing is left to say,
the wandering cloud was bleeding
for white moon,

the elements, the purity, the ligaments
are fake, joints are festering
with fever on burntout resins;

the name floats in millions of veins,
tell me the fault line of tremors,
a mass burial was on way,

the surge of deadly intent
in this night of black spiders
in eternal pursuit of murder, unpalming

thousand hurts, poppies kissing the eyes
of ravaged shutters, locks broken
and ivory taken away

Satish Verma

01 August, 2009

FUTURE SIGNS

arriving to shun that wolf
on your blood’s trail,
you comb through rubble,
tormented:

………………………………………………………………………………


glimpse of fear,
fixated at otherness of yellow sin,
threatened, panic white,
suicide note;
now you have come out from your tremors
stillborn, sine die

………………………………………………………………………………

with umbilical cord around your neck,
squeezing,
choking,
after shocks settling on interrogator:
I am running aground in deep waters

………………………………………………………………………………

and your body becomes a boat
of terror, disbelief, later a collaboration
with seeds and birds, this smelt side
of truths, I regret my art

Satish Verma