WHISPERING SPARROWS

The native walls 
were hounding me- 

out of game. 
I was playing chess with god. 

Was stoned to death. 
A small boy’s arm 

was crushed. 
He stole a bread. 

What was the truism 
of unheard voices? 

Groping in green darkness 
I was watching 

the lethal plunge of man.

Satish Verma

AFTER SUNSHINE

Be my soul in outrageous 
sunshine of knowledge. 
I need a shade of tears. 

The barrels were still smoking 
after the war. 
I will not wake up in morning. 

Lightless the day will mourn 
for the fallen moon 
on the breast of a hill. 

Tear down the curtain. 
Let me sea the face of death. 
I have a long debt to pay.

Satish Verma

CIRCLING

A bucketful of moon 
falls on my door 
with the smell of a salted night 
on frozen shoulders of a punctured landscape. 

I start expanding 
unseeing a sentimental lake. 
Life was asking a very high price 
for the purple bruises. 

Why do you land on the sea of names? 
Only one face sinks in the spill 
of words. Would you put the green 
rain in my glass of absinthe?

Satish Verma

NEXT NIGHT

I hate the self-immolation 
of orange sex. 
Weather was leaving 
blue strings on the skin. 

Redemption was incomplete 
by sharing the legs 
Lips will not knead 
the ears. 

Like wakng in darkness 
for a passage to grief. 
Black moon will step aside 
for a flame at the end of tunnel.

Satish Verma

BLACK ROSES

Wading 
in your memories. 
Through 
an orange smoke. 

Against 
a mirror, 
a lake 
shrinks. 

Days are smaller now 
licking 
the night 
I will count the candles 

Of your birthday. 
A haunted landscape 
scoops a wedding 
of a flame with a gale

Satish Verma

THE WALLS

A green smoke was rising 
to ferret out 
the elusive pain 
without body. 

I went in search of 
fidgety words 
to patch up the conflicts 
of flesh. 

Bold as Passiflora, 
Crucifixion was complete. 
Today a gift of obeyance 
will arrive. 

It was a fake. 
The eyes on the hump. 
Camel has to cross 
a steep desert.

Satish Verma

REMEMBERING

You shall read me 
when I am gone 
in green pain. 

There had been gifts 
unhanded. 
Unwrap them in dark – 

when moon was 
yellow. 
The beams will rub your body. 

A bared stasis 
will stop the fluids. 
Wash your face with tears. 

It seems a long time 
when I touched your eyes. 
My clouds would not find you.

Satish Verma

MESSAGE

And that did it. 
Many voices in a mayhem 
lost the face of lightening. 

The starlight woke in rain 
untainted by dust of beds 
encased in wilful folds. 

The tremors will not stop 
the knocking of speech, after 
an intimate kiss of the void. 

Talking of lonely peaks, 
whom I will not touch them in morning. 
Let the night take its revenge.

Satish Verma