EMPTY DAY

take back your smile,
the fish has died in my hands;
nowhere you have touched me
deep in the brutal corona of a black moon -

my sun spots were waning:
a hole in the wind, chased
adulthood of man for a frozen
infantile mutancy

something stopped you
to discover yourself in the rage:
what was it? I am refusing to believe
something between the unbuttoned
golden flesh of a mummy,

the old version dies hard, fear escapes
from amygdalae,
in mourning, comes the rainbow
of pain, the rain lashing on window
i am melting inside a cast

Satish Verma

TABLEAU

Again I scare myself
of the very thing.
Moon was landing on lake
for inward probe.

One presaged silence,
speaks, of the veracity of lovers
to grass, where no dropp drives a sun,
the red bricks build a shade.

Ragweed in a daisy field:
Ambrosia, I will not taste you
till the rainbow sits
in the meadow.

Round eyes
keep the dawn hidden /
under the lashes, sleep my saint
for a while, door was waiting for a knock.


Satish Verma

THE TANGO

Lips tremble
like sentinels
when legs burn like candles
whole night,

in the pocket a grenade explodes;
a girl gets raped in broad day light
to receive a compensation
under a leaky roof of frozen hunger:

the emptiness in bed
stirs a grain, a deemed birth of catastrophe
one classical tragedy begins

a lighthouse shuts when the ship sinks,
let us go on the bank to find the needles –
to start a dialogue with the moon,

when the tide comes
it will throw some heroes


Satish Verma

PUZZLES

hopscotch, retrieve a pebble
from the lake,

sitting under a tall tree
i will wait
for leaves to fall
on water;

i will see through my seeds
a relief of roses,

overnight
in the soccer field
tiny mushrooms
popped up, wearing white caps
to see the game –

turning the pages of a book
opens a museum,
i come on you
not accusative

Satish Verma

A DAY OF COUNTING

You gave it
when you were poor.
Today I went to unwrap the gift.
The soul! Ripping out from the body
to deconstruct my vernacular pain.

Pulling off the toenails to extract a promise.
Feet first; the birth of a child to die sooner in the crib.
My brother, tell me, do you understand
my imperishable grief.

For a future’s peace
sing my poem, sing ascendancy.
For laughing skulls in a killing field,
ideation will become a routine talk.

Give me a hand, brother,
am I insane?
Becoming teeth of wisdom was a crime?

Satish Verma

INDOORS

Today,
small things ask some uncomfortable
questions. I enter the eye of a wound.

Unscathed, will i obey the law
of believing; the round mirror?
It reflects the absolute truth?

Consolations,
they begin the attack in the valley
of thoughts; words, were hung
over the paper, spill the ink

like blood on the street.
Who will lift the corpse?

Words on the wings;
let them drop
like stones, like knives. The flesh is raw,
bones white a century is going to sing.

Satish Verma

DEATH’S REVERSAL

Coming to cephalic withdrawl,
sharing a deadly delusion,
O my world -
I will not ask,
I will not take back.
For my own liberation, I will set you free.

I am reversing myself,
my battles are still raging.
The flames have reached the tallest branches,
naked in sky:
Verga, why the drops are not going to come down?

Going alone in the woods,
to find the skeletons, in the shades of grief,
a deathless comp of apostates,
to start a revolution, we become
carpenters, carving totems.

The question marks are increasing
in wrinkles. On the shoulders of a lone tree
a black bird sings to an old moon.
Are there any worlds beyond the stars?

Inspired by a poem of famous urdu poet Allama Iqbal

ABHI ISHQ KE IMTIHAN AUR BHE HAIN
SITARON KE AAGAI JAHAN AUR BHE HAIN

Satish Verma

A CENTRIOLUM

Never in those sizzling conflicts
displaying the pink eyes
you were able to reach me.
Was it metagenesis,
forgetting your selfhood?

Fragments of a beast were floating on sea.
Was umblicus of death broken
in the crotch of a mother?
Lay the corn again on my palm
to smoulder in the heat of sun.
Hunger will take revenge now.

Burn, burn my truth, burn!
I was the creator,
and I was destroyer
at the helm of unbuttoning coal.

It was a black, black sky,
where the stars were hesitant to show their
centrioles.

After the sun rises in a black dawn
there will be no shocks.

Satish Verma

LOAVES

When the street was becoming alive
man had become a charged bull,
goring the god to death.
My father wept, took the corpse home,
that was his child.

In the wild fire, a tall eucalyptus
had burned, turned black.
What did you think, this year,
spring would not come?

I remained very sad those days.
When the self was me, my image
I was dying without death;
through the veils, I would not see.

Was the pinnacle of your is, was becoming
empty? Tell me when we would learn,
the tiny truth of a primate? Or become
snakes eating our own children?

Satish Verma

BLOODSCAPE

Monologue of a monolith
to live in a moment
was futile. A young house was in disorder.
Not listening, I would find the missing links.
Grey ash to be smeared on forehead in horizontal
lines for shifting the planets.

The age creeps quietly, irremediably poor,
unchanged in hysteria: after hysterectomy
the womb lies in dirt. Ethnic violence will fill
the carts of mutilated bodies, move to market,
selling the rage. Be in today, or tomorrow,
the blood brings honour.

Do not complain of weather, these arthritic
fingers, crooked toes, you will end on a cliff
after the logic of war fails. A bald year
moves, untrusting the noble men, I ascend
a coin to find the circa of topless democracies
destroying the pillars of feet.

Satish Verma

FLAMES OF SONG

Tonight moon will write a poem
on my hand
about an almond love.
I find a breeze.

Nightmare: I was caught stealing words
from your lips, a lark
flies into death, paralyzed
by peace!

I will have the baby, I cried
at the insult to a rape
of truth, after the brawl
Pyramid was not made in a day.

Who slept in the arms of ambers?
Look, it was an atomic illusion of a guilt
of centuries. Time walks with bowed head
like a blind man.

Baked brown in heat of wars like
a salted pistachio, perched high on dry
grass, a swallow watches the rising
lake with no stones floating.

Satish Verma

BOLD STEP

Night enters into the drift.
I get through a fossil, quite beyond
the light, a search begins for a tortured
being in some ideal’s mire.

The battle begins, of fears and doubts
and upon the trampled sun-blind truths
of past in dry desert of hungry sands
where the veined clot rises to the lung of moon.

Revival of black magic takes place, marking
the boundaries of denial, you will not cross
the line of fire, till the shade between evil
and good was obliterated and sins become
bones of dreams.

Will you wait on the gate, till eternity
accepts you as a forgotten child of
wronged parents? I shall start calling
the names of innocent bystanders.

Satish Verma

PURSUIT

the solid rock, from its tallest perch
was tumbling down, after navel – gazing –
in songs of darkness; had the hidden
aloofness in space and time,

i have become a tree, intend to teach
the truth of roots; eating the body
of gods, one prayer changes the fright
of depth, meanwhile you become the ethnic wait

in sprawling riots, the inside of ire was
very red; screams, bends, shakes, takes away
emotional blackmail, hairs standing like
candles burning, the conditioning was over –

in granite falls, it was rain of tears on
flames of freedom at the street, a crowd
becomes a large leaf swaying on the waves of a red
river, flowing sensuously in a young city

Satish Verma

FUGITIVE SWAN

a moonache levitates
on blue lake
you shot me at close range

predictable encounter
the whole truth had plunged
between two eyes

self flagellation
of the waves on beach
i was walking on marigolds

your body becomes a flute
when i was writing an epilogue
on the life of a gold leaf

it was raining on the rose
like gnawing illicit drops
on the upper lip of a virgin

Satish Verma

NAILED

eyes will chew the words
i will not see all day along, do you hear
my thoughts in the icicles of flames, my bones
jutting out of knuckles,
i will go to memory lane once again:

where the stale smell of yellow pages
throws up invisible thighs groping for support
climbing in vain,
half moon floating on lake of tears
in fire of dark night –

drenched, he was escaping without legs
in white darkness of unaddressed pain,
sorrow of locked shame …..
victim of blisters on blasting flesh,
knees give way,

what was the date of surrender,
i was meditating on the ashes of serpents
beneath the ocean of protests in voyage
of solitude, as your lips quiver
in resilience of benign submission

Satish Verma

RED AND WHITE

blemish of the needle in eye spreads:
do you still see the moon in the hills,
outstripping the aura of midnight?

resilient, waiting for a renaissance, for
a finger on the lips in dark, to read the
symptoms, feeling floral in wilderness,

the reclining Buddha will speak now,
on stillbirth of a truth in valley of lies,
telling them the god was sleeping

in sorrows of world, the spider looks like a
man’s face, moving with large belly on the
dried corpses of hapless ants, the art of

dying, without pain, when the plane was
diving, splitting into two, unconscious of
pins and butterballs, in the mouth of mantis

Satish Verma

A LIFELONG JOURNEY

On the night when vessel
was empty
grackle did not sing.

For the sake of honey,
smelling a dead city, after
the rape of a daughter.

A black buck jumps on the
queen of roses, stoned after
the death of a green house.

A python had wrapped around
the child on bed,
come, save the red crying moon.

A soft drizzle wets the eyes.
I can see only stars -
disturbed by the winds.

Satish Verma

TERROR TRAIL

Shedding the wholeness of negation
you arrive: fear was sweeping the floor
when smoke screen of love was hung on
blue morning, you groped for a hidden
coin, lost in the woods of mania. Distinguishing
a chaste word, without thought, ejected in a
traffic of terror, you want to join a primitive
tribe where a motherless fawn will harvest the milk
from the breasts of a women.

Talking of a global sorrow into the green
eyes of a snake, an awareness breaks, sucks
you inside the hole of a wronged motherhood,
the anthology of big nails on the walls of
understanding, where the traditional colors
throw up the wasted bodies, making you think
tall, and you were running in a dark tunnel
climbing and falling to attend the funerals,
of moon gazing children.

Satish Verma

BREAKING FROM PAST

Fighting with his ghosts,
intimate dirt,
disseminating pain
he was going home.

Finding a panic room
in pectorals, for numbness of toes,
lifting the door of burden
in dying vision,

his father comes in daylight
of old age, climbing the stairs
of bones, swaying
like an ash tree in frost.

One counts the annual rings of
old trunks, depicting
mighty happenings, black and white
green summers of choked life,

tasting one’s own decline, filling the
cups of rosemary, a child learns to speak
thatched words of wasted birth in
tune with younger years of grief.

Satish Verma

ANOTHER LOVE

Give me a moment of pause
in this eerie lull,
I do not want to call it a day.

The blind fist had provoked the shrine,
before the lips started demanding
the dazzling kiss of a knife,

pure cut-out neck of high volted
embrace of a tall pole, black and white
like moon-struck anchor.

The strip search for tear-salt
under the unripe breast of dying flame.
Like a trembling peacock attended by hawks.

Not the comfort of street stone
heals the cleft of forehead, split open
by a shower of dancing missiles.

Satish Verma

BLEEDING DAY

Bilobed ginkgo resolves the conflict
of soul and body on the right side of truth,
laid out on a table visited by desolation;
here comes the crash of bodies.

You stand up against the end of beginning
to lock eyes with destiny, answer obliquely
to raw questions about the baking in plastic
cauldrons, when heat was rising in blue veins.

Engulfed in fumes of muscular words, resonant
with agitation of black banners at the door;
who will stop the sea of whispering veils
defying the shower of bullets coming from windows.

They were out in black night, impoverished,
burning inside, in grass green mud, covering
the ornate faces. Folks dissipating
on blunt shades, your sun outraged.

Six steps to reach the house, you take
six hours. It was naked and desperate aggression.

Satish Verma

* VOICELESS

Crisp and tight, a parallel voice
of black stars talks to sky, protesting
the presence of ultimate outsider, when
everybody was a partner of collective
guilt in nightscape.

What was the center of fight in elite
members? The unhindered ego or claim
of bland crumbs of authority? The innocents
so many, on streets, surrounding a red
smudge, liberty, watching her personification, who
sleeps here!

Whom it burns? As the blood spurts
from the chest of a white stone.




• On the death of Neda Agha Soltan in Tehran on 20st June 09

Satish Verma

WOUNDED PRIDE

Generation grips,
I am the street
in dysphoria.

You run, shout, the arc
bleeds, you become your enemy
that kills the alphabets

A statue was hung
upside down
to eject the violence from plastic lips.

Blood stained sidewalk
throws a challenge to send
the skins of martys.

The taste of endometrium confronts
a fortune of calories in pink
for an unconscious hood.

And the language of golden teeth
hides the backdoor flight
of a fallen god.

Satish Verma

GOLDEN LEAP

at cremation ground
the flames were creating
strange words

he stood still, in void, between unfenced tears

there was no need to question the answers,
kicking up the history, of crossing the bridge
over the river of annihilation

of self, making a gift of forked tongue
of cobra, spiteful, as an old virgin

it was over without thinking, scribbling
on the margin, his name in different inks
a young smell floats an funny rocks of

events and the fish swims in eyes of dead
foetus in womb, with unclenched fists

Satish Verm

MATCHMAKERS

non compos mentis
my monologue,
non-believer will say, it was
insult of salt,
under the bark, white ants were climbing, boring into sap,

kneeling,
at war with yourself,
disinheriting the loud blood,
you want to thwart the murky ariel
to scour the black mass
at belly,

the dynasty ends in obscene hugs,
grievers want to be forgiven
for the sake of kneading truth
on merciless palms:
it kills the headache, the eyes, the vistas
of bleeding expansion

Satish Verma

NIGHTMARE

sometime I watch
the fear held aloft by you, possessed,
you try to protect yourself from you in vain,

very thirsty, white
hydrangeas on your lips tremble, exhaust
their need for clouds in blue eyes, pale

fountain gives up
tumult of sand grains for high skilled
white god of snow who could not prevent

a land slide all morning,
my bones still do not agree for a
marrow withdrawl for an emptied leukaemia

hidebound, rapacious
in the chaste tree, stuck by night grab,
the bright stars fall one by one on ice

Satish Verma

MY GOD

it was widening,
the rift, between waves and ocean:
the resilience of depth was going
to challenge the height of winds

on the beach
i stand against the sun
empowered to face a solar eclipse
unreal, something was sinister in the

shape of the house,
the child walks whole life to find
a door, the shock of the rape of a
moon in a prayer room, i drown

in birth of vision,
the hump of knives, in throats and
speech, you want freedom to pack the
dead body of floral tribute of words

Satish Verma

FAITHFUL

Basking in brothels of mighty corridors,
who was seeking an annulment
of lemon grass for enquiring into the
genesis of mutilation?

It was a terrifying situation for
a smell, drifting on the tarrif of
polity when fingers were busy
to dig in the flesh of victims.

Cleric wants to dictate the rhyme
of poetry distilled from anger.
Hundreds of thousands of monarchs were flying
in defence of dementia. The age was awry of death.

Close your eyes and listen to the sound
of melting. Somebody is drawing the green blood.
Dismembered, I swagger barefoot
on the steps of black clouds to take revenge.

Satish Verma

WHAT YOU SAID

Sperms spilled on thighs
When moon was hung over trees
To engage reverberations,

Contesting erratic moods
Outside echoes
Stitching white milk into black tears,

It was not for the deliverance
From pain of separation
And drink the eyes:

The waves died in immensity
Somewhere a dolphin dips in mind
To pick up the music

Of fences, separating ethos
And gossips of terrified oceans
Searching the sunken ship.

Satish Verma

PIRACY

Otherworldly, tactile retraction
of rainbows,
from the eyes of believers.

Detachment of restless mind
at twilight, pot starts
boiling.

Sundowning, a paranoia
takes over, you suffer a childhood
near the pyre.

Thing is not a thing
exclusive of an extremist,
something burns inside me also.

The age of a tulip
moves backward; I, untethered,
float thoughtless in speech.

Satish Verma

RIVAL ENTREATIES

climbing on the umblical hill
ahead of the contours,
a denier
alters the chemistry of hate in negative space;
fauna of the earth springs black stones,
man made, on the glistening sex of
lotuses, a forgetfulness ensures
the conceptual withdrawl of the red bull;
hand in hand a sea walks towards the tender beach
to dazzle the hidden sun,

light was inside his body, but he was still
groping for the sleeping lips of a virgin,
into her broken promises; the debris throws up
the severed limbs to negate the will
to live, words must betray a step down, maintaing
a clueless trauma, there was fearlessness,
but no dignity, you have drawn a horizontal
line hugging the boundaries of truth
and lies, I recall buddha to smile in the
eyes of death

Satish Verma