LEARNING

Can you freeze the years? 
Untrammeled mind? 
Why lost in consoles, for 
hurting odyssey? 

Why we did not meet 
in unhearing range? 
Like the grassy lips 
of silken stings? 

A moon? 
behind us the war machine 
was walking. 
Sunflowers had gone in a 
beauty contest. 

Tree lighting had begun. 
Who was the night-sentry?

Satish Verma

ABSINTHE

I was a non-believer in exodus 
of nothingness. 
Here you are, 
I am. 

In crimson sky 
talking of nobody, unbuttoning the moon. 
Fill up my glass 
with tears of joy. 

And sleep I must 
in the arms of sorrow. 
There was a shipwreck in absence 
while chasing the eyes.

Satish Verma

HAD BEEN

The most wanted moon 
was writhing 
in black sky, after a star 
fell for a pebble. 

The nymph had become 
a golden nugget in east. 
Sun was rising. 

Guilt of burning the sea 
was writ large on the face 
of purple clouds. 
I am collecting the garments of dew. 

Sitting in a night 
of waves, watching the theater 
going in flames.That day 
a cuckoo did not sing.

Satish Verma

NOTES

The absent moon 
in a tea cup 
without milk. 

Lips reaching moon 
like a reprimand. 
A spider’s kiss. 

Unmothered story, 
contempt untitled: 
Surface-tension. 

The speed of 
space in motion 
like winter smoke. 

The sun 
buried the snow 
in your eyes.

Satish Verma

UNTIL PAIN

Like a snowfox 
it stampedes. 
A mass panic of legs 
after the flame festival. 
Language moves like a landslide, 
without vocabulary. 

A love sperm will not go 
into the test tube. 
Baby was waiting, looking for 
mother. The wetland was boiling. 
The pain was worthy of the lamb 
sacrificed. 

Like a lantern, herpes zoster, burns. 
The ganglia in memory of sick embrace.

Satish Verma

FRIVOLOUS

Motionless within the ambit 
of moon, 
the rain squirms and flickers 
under the street light 
in the vacuous silence 
of a monolith. 

A cricket walks on a cloud 
and starts the lightning. 
The urn was blind, fills up with grief. 
The goddess climbs out of rainbow 
and accepts the message 
of fireworks. 

After the pain, there was 
frigidity. The lips will not move under 
the mortgage of unvenerable words. 
An innocent deal was brokered 
with stings about the truth 
of the wasp. 


Satish Verma

SLICES

Unimpeachable, 
the shrine wants to move on 
with snippets of pain. 
Man has failed the god. 

Teats were becoming omnivorous 
devouring the faces, ears and eyes. 
What would you like to eat 
stings or thorns? 


The curt bruises. Are you ready 
for the horses? The journey is long 
and tough to reach the citadel of truth. 
My hands are already bleeding. 

The betrayals. The foxes. The hyenas, but 
one love tigers. The majesty of kill. 
Why you are hiding the pen? 
Moon is riding on the church.

Satish Verma

BAILOUT

Moon stepped gingerly on clouds. 
Apples were painless. 
Yes, centrifugal goes the truth 
on a ploy, unveiling the sky. 

Pain of the dreaded times, 
was visible through the invisible. 
Tremors in the mountain range were 
palpable passing through the spine of faithful. 

I am not. But I am non-beliver 
in me. A real transcript of a restless 
syndrome. The oranges fly in all directions 
to gallows for humor. 

A false poem. Sexless. The uranium was 
getting rich. Bang, the hypocrisy again 
rules amdist the shaved heads. Exactly 
the truth lives far away.

Satish Verma

UMBRELLA

Like a brazen 
dancer of night. 
A phantom? 

With heart on chest; 
floating in air, 
like a death-scarf. 

You have donated 
the body for an angel- 
petrifying the moon. 

The hairy saint 
was unquiet, 
in a glass house. 

Who had delivered 
the letter to god? 
I pledge to stay alive.

Satish Verma