A RIVER FLOWS UNDERGROUND

That was unscarred night.
The full moon was rising.
A contagium had spurred it to go high.

A brazen assault bleeds
the painter's eyes. He sees only
red in the pubescent rage.

She walks out of the stain,
turning into ash, urchin's
brightest moon.

Standing on the crossroads
who was burning clouds?
Rains will never come again.

Phylogeny flattens the guns.
We were hiding behind the
rituals watching the fall of light.

I will make my own truce
with death. I refuse to walk
under the belly of smoke.

Satish Verma

OPTIONS

Enemy was within;
invisible,
biting into iris.

Sea was asking,
would you like to sign
on my waves?

I was carrying
the relics. Body wants
to take revenge.

Lifting a kiss
from your lips.
O my death,

I am
living again;
changing the clothes.

A swarm of honey bees
was decending,
near a volcano.

Satish Verma

Unsung Hands

How can you unsee an etched wound?
The name will tell the moon.
An empty sky now calls for
the rains.

What was it-
the ceremonial farewell?
A dependable pain now starts
pulling out the sharpnels from the body.

You may call it
meaningless. My poem now
moves between the stings. Somebody
was going for a merciless kill.

Satish Verma

BODY SCRIPT

Does it stir you,
a body bag?
Journey of million years
stops here,
decoding the numbers.

A humming bird
inflight catches a dilemma
before the sun sets on the
whirring wings.
The moon will never be the same.

Hanging by a thread
a suicide bomber memorializes
the unhealing land.
Who will cry
when he is gone?

Satish Verma

MORPHED

What a long friendship with
moon!
I refuse to accept the blast.
Papa is dead, he said and
latched on to circularity.

I don't seek the interbreeding
with terror.
It was me in reverse mode
of cryptomania.

Too stoic; stop. I think
I am wrong; stop. And a serenade
for the lady luck. This life
was too much for me; stop.

Androgynous.
The female body wants to eat
maleness, by almond eyes.
The old man was walking barefoot
with a paintbrush.

Satish Verma

Furious Wounds

A hoot at midnight
goes challenging the deaf.
You strip to bones.

The dawn persists:
Will the sun on the sea
kill the dreams?

Do you see the gap
between the clouds?
I am going to make a heap of
all the interstitial escapes.

Flesheaters were scrawling on
the cheeks. A revolution of
wheels has failed.

A baby dies in womb
without A leap into future.
The father carries the burden
of chimneys.

A godless moon laughs
at the stupid earth,
which was talking about stars.

Satish Verma

Glitches

It was more than
I could take.
The phallic paranoia.

Can I come out of
your body and kneel
before death?

Less than dark
I dream of the nipples
spurting out venom.

A pumice raft
of the crowd, sailing
on the waves of narcissism.

Invisible sharks
on high seas
open the lambs for salt.

Can you eat your
words please?
There is nothing left on the plate.

Satish Verma

SELF-WATCH

Have not crossed the street
in many years
to greet you.

A slice of moon
leaves footprints in blood.
Maintaining the perfection
you start giving names to trees.

Paraplegia:
you start dismanteling the life
in search of romance with death
for immersing the dreams.

Take hold of my arms
I want to invent your portrait
in sands of nocturne.

Drink the milk of silence.
It is dark, but soothing.
Go to sleep.

Satish Verma

WALKING TOELESS

Stone by stone you kill me.
Petal by petal I die -


holding a scalpel
to unwrite my name.

Violence
erupts among words.
A temple breaks.
O goddess! don't cry beyond silence.

The infant's milk
spills in darkness.
Antiquity raises a wall
around the mother.

I am vanishing now,
freezing my assets.

Satish Verma

Watchıng Our Warts

Sloping down in gold pursuit
of a bruised city,
sons of nameless fathers
were changing the generic mandate.

I am becoming fluvial
going on a muted odyssey
to find unmarked graves.

Slaughtering
your own lines, in praise of end-
which came very soon;
before the windows altered the moon.

Genes spilled on the road
recalling the wounded
son whose lexicon took him
to war with the meanings.

Satish Verma

FIERCE MOONING

Trotting along; fighting death -
with delaying techniques.
Chemo had failed.

Weeping Ashoka, how do I
name you differently?
I may not see you again.

I am hurt, very badly.
Absolutely rooted, firmly
in autumn. My leaves were falling.

Pushing back the interface
between smiles and tears;
the trespasser goes to moon.

It was traditional,
garlanding the poet-
who had killed his muse.

Satish Verma

SURVIVAL

Unslept-
hangman, flees from the noose.
The day had come to execute.
A thought had become a fear
but fear was not a thought.

Naked in the moon
a wolf wants move of something
leaning on the hills of thirst,
bitten by the views of cemetery.

The landscape
was changing. You want to cover your head
with a topi, standing on the edge
of a lake before you are drowned
under the burning eyelids.

A Buddha smiles from
the shelf. How can you fill the emptiness
of a bowl, which has
hundred holes?

Satish Verma

WALKING INTO YOU

Tonight
the nectar will be spread
to tame a random tormentor.

Black and white,
I never saw my father weeping.
Lonely he was.

I am
my own creation today
weather beaten. Confession to -

confession, unread. When the-
storm was tethered,
there was flooding and neck deep-

you were in tears. Am cannibalizing
my own poems, to write a new line.
It was a midnight moon.

Satish Verma

RETURNING FAVOUR

Will pursue
the star killed by a limb.
A black hole
is going to devour him.

What was ahead now
in the sea of reverse pain?
You were knocking out
your own creation.

In the hunger's wake
will you stop eating your own
words and say something
of the locked doors of eyes?

I cannot sing the scars
and unmask the fires.
It is gratifying when you are silent,
and still you are heard.

Satish Verma

RAGING SPRING

Siblings
will take care of the morgue.
I am going to hang my god
today. Howling winds
are crashing into my breath.


In the sea
of flags, the white death walks on
naked bodies of faith. Innocence
will take a back seat
listening to the roaring assault
of blues.

Was it a hymn to drink
the religion of rage?
The men sitting in the glass vases
worshiping the rising sun in awe
with folded hands.

Satish Verma

HOLDING ON

Bounty
of landfall.
I am collecting your berries.

The castle
has connived with the moat
to end an era.

The first step
ends the journey.
An avatar has accepted the bribe.

Gather the tents
and return the sky.
My morale is sinking very low.

The dream
will wash the eyes
to read the book again.

Satish Verma

STUNNED

Confused and wary like a
spermwhale, you are
nosediving; -

through the shadows
of terrible pain
ejecting ambergris.

Who was getting
the bribery
to fix the belly button?

This was not revolution.
It was evolution-
of a stinking city.

The gods were sleeping
on the lips of a pride.
Nurses were preparing the bed.

How far the sane voice
will reach, to deliver
the relics of a salted dynasty?

•

Unbodied, how do I touch you
groping? The message was not
clear. How to kill oneself on stage?

A beehive falls on
your head. Are you going
to scream?

Entire town was going
for a pilgrimage. The saint
was preparing for a self-burial.

A hundred thousand moons
were placed on your crown.
The sun was going to roll.

Charred bodies
were turning in graves.
Who was becoming untouchable now?

Give me a kiss of cobra.
My bandaged life
wants to sleep in peace.

•

His severed legs were
tucked under his head to serve as a pillow.
He was half-eaten.

Howling
was silencing all the shames
Woman, I am not coming home.

Satish Verma

GREEN CIRCLE

You are peeling me off
like a crab.
Time has sunk very low.

For the hungry kids
who was growing crab apples?

Creating art,
arriving between the pubes.

A microfossil
roosting within me.
I could live without oxygen.

Incandescent,
the liquid wounds.
I will not send any salvo.

Satish Verma

PLEADING

Mooneater, I am my poem:
fantasy of words
traveling through fog.

When light sneaks in,
would you like to weep
with me?

Dear death,
I am not ready to
close my chapter.

You are you
but I am not me -
taking a flight in dark.

Disintegrating,
I am collecting the spiderwebs
to catch the moon.

Satish Verma

Flickering Dream

It was your
integrity

at the time of ubiquitous pain
of separation, you want to move the home
away from home

coming
to terms with the trauma
your shadow was not following you

playing dead
nuzzling the earth, racing to fill
the void, entering the truthlessness

this world
of violence, of mayhem, of self-betrayal,
the flags are not able to cover the nudity

Satish Verma

Battle For Madness

I see it coming
the end before the beginning.
Of dawn.
The midnight call.

Impeachment was fragile.
A satanic cult
overwhelms the freedom
of negation.

Do yoy think we can
move the tree of wisdom
from the altar of ethics
sending shots to the sky.

From the grief of paradoxes
Can you run away? One
moment you exhibit the caked blood.
Next moment it is dark.

•

Standing on crossroad,
do we end the walk
and wait for rumbling
surge of anarchy?

The anguish is writ
large on the tanned sun
who was moving along with
porcupines.

The wild berries
have colored the skull caps.
Swarms of red ants
are running behind the heels.

Satish Verma

SOVEREIGNTY

Living
someone's else death?
Was that an explicit experiment?

Starting with an Adonis
to stitch
the wounds of angels.

An unlikely
walk through the tumor
of breast, where

no milk ejects
the ancestory. I hold
the words without meaning.

It was a tragic
flow of history.
The echo was searching a sky.

Satish Verma

Smiling Buddha

A rapt moon was listening
a tale of two murders.
Across the caste, fingernails
were digging in to give -

a putsch to darkness, unhappened
in vain.
A word tears into the untouched
pain and I bleed for the golden birds.

Can you transcend an apparition
alighting on impermanence?
Time was brewing
a revolution of untold jokes.

Death moves in a circle
to negotiate peace with unknown.
Skies were indifferent bidding
farewell to cracks of dawn.

Satish Verma

REGENERATING

The trembling hands were
ostrasized for living more
than the mafia.

Why the marigold
will not use the magical potent
to understand the conceit?

Wounded by street
an unease settles on devestated trees.
How the broken moon will rise now?

The giver will not distort
the truth for the sake of bleak landscape.
Seeds were waiting to sprout.

You can bend the rainbow.
Night was raped for nothing.
Sun will take the revenge.

Satish Verma

Taking Off

Outraged film
and dirt life.
The descent was complete.

A shadow under the moon
walks past the lake,
comes out of the body.

Every dream
leaves an imprint on the glass.
Will never drink the moonlight again.

The blank surrender
alongside crutches
loses the tolerance of question marks.

Like my fear
enveloping you in blazing sun
for a candle.

Satish Verma

Confessional Hurt

Holding the ladder
I was hungry
looking at the waiting dawn.

Raw landscape:
narcissism
forages the belly.

Picking up the figs
from passion flowers.
Is that right?

Can you sow the seeds
on a cloud?
Unclothed words?

Stealthily
a guerilla smashes
a summary of centre.

A falconer
releases a prey
to feed an anarchy.

Satish Verma

BOTANICALLY

It was a slant love.
Back to back,
lips to lips.

Lethal and dark
strong yet delicate
like spider's web.

A dark side of the moon
sending conflicting
signals to bacilli-

of dirty lane, pink
and blue. My pug
licks the toes.

The pugmark on
green body. I am now
flowering. Hydrangeas.

•


The primrose half-asleep
Calendula was burning
in veins.

Unisex. The clenched
fist of a desire. I will
not accept a half-lip.

The chaste tree was sending
a bouquet of
steaming pistils.

Where the sun will sleep
tonight? Till the love-making
was over on tangerines.

The loose skin now
invites the red ants, crawling,
wearing your nails.

Satish Verma

Monument

A pithy moon
climbs
on a skull
to unmask the alien,
blacker than coal.

A pregnancy reduction
was needed
to prune out
the motor plan of the moving
target, who had-

a neural circuitry
for obstructing
the light. Can you
transcend a prude who will not
accept a celibate?

Not so sad, a beautiful face
abandons the darkness.

Satish Verma