OBLIVION

A cutaneous drip.
The young moon drinks the dew
unbuttoning a rose.

A fierce wind rubs
against the golden triangle
to invite a violet sting.

Eyes armed with green thumbs
go for a swim in rage.
The lake unloosens a blood moon.

No inscense will rise
from the tomb of a lover,
unless he dies with a style.

Crossing the gray lines,
I will not take your lips;
paralyzing the silver tongs.

Satish Verma

A SAINT BETWEEN US

He was no longer angry
writing his own epitaph.
Fighting a singular brute
without repeating himself.

Midnight. Untouchable moon
drops the ear-ring.
A mottled face worships
a ladder expressionlessly.

A monk walks past an
oversexed monkey.
A hidden agenda in end,
shows a dirty hand.


You know, I do not want
to tame an exploding -
navel. Transfixed I throw
the bottle in a sea.

One more parakeet dies
in my hands. How do I catch
a flying saucer in the
alien body.?

Satish Verma

VERITIES

The moon was moving
stealthily in wilderness.
Time was running out
tracing the shape.

I let her go, the
comely thing, putting on
hold, the teetering
poem.

Running faster than light, the
words catch you in midstream.
A warlord wants to put on
a helmet in night.

It was raining sparks and
cinders. You walk along the
redoubts, obliterating
simmering footsteps.


I am not a loser
dancing in the pit of snakes.
Bring the sweetness of venom.
I am alive.

Satish Verma

THE MOSAIC

A leopardess dies on a tree.
No molestation was reported.
Exploring your breast
why were you throwing salt?

As if almost needing a space
you ran to top. A solid truth
looks like a quasicrystal
against the nature.

Unbosoming myself I am
traveling in vacuum. Empty
hands don't hold any ancestors.
I am carrying my unborn voice.

Now don't cry, don't. You are
reaching home at the end of a
tunnel. A featureless fog will let you in,
in a fatherless world.

Satish Verma

WHAT ENDING

In your limpid eyes
a pacifism slumps.
All I could say was, wrong sex
was ending in ice.

Dark energy: we were not expanding
Lies galore : we were casting
off our skins. I will not seek
afterlife. The hand carries the old coat.

Retrodiction. Don't want to shed
the charm. Waited for the change
which never came. Chicken,
wearing love, no bones.

Latest navel show. Walking on
ramp. Aphrodiasiac for the dangling
egos. Let us go for a
collective suicide.

Satish Verma

COLLECTING MILKWEED

I will not understand
the gift of hurting
in unsolicited encounters.

Will chase you around
the world,
without arriving.

O fear, my bread;
cannot feel you, unbirthing.
Life gives me many stitches.

A parallel face mocks
in the sky, unless the moon
cries for the kiss.

Wooden wheels move on
the laid body. Your venomous
tooth I break.

Satish Verma

GRAY DAWN

Sudden onset of an insertion
going for a kill in bluish green valley.

Pretend as if you are dead
and start disintegrating.

Your poverty of words disconnects
you from cogitation and you start-

walking in sleep. Cannot reach
the breasts jutting out like pine cones -

dismantling the invasion. You start
manipulating the seeds. Fruits

are nowhere in sight. The risk is
grave crossing the borders of virginity.

Pure aching and one thousand moons.
I have not reached the gates of truth.

Satish Verma

A CIVIL WAR

These were the children of
wrath, the fire god. What I am
watching was a subtle suicide
pact taking on the style of a civil
war among sparrows.

The transmission was offering a
dark vision of future. The skies
were not answering the prayers. The
old lover wants to come back in small
land to forbid the division of hearts.

No resonance comes after the surgical
strike. You remember the sunset on
the mount of your palm. I said, you
will survive all your enemies. I
distil the eyes for the coarse admission.
After all the poem has a meaning.

Satish Verma

PRESCIENCE

There was no colour in the nude
and skin deep fire was raging
not leaving much of a trail.

A Janus cat,
that is our man of polity
with two faces.

Walking alone at midnight,
that is larger than life, on
death of a galaxy, where -

the crack of dawn meets
dandelion to decide the course
of bloody day. They were -

coming in huge lots to kneel
and kiss the hands of their master,
who will leave his signature -

in deep cleavage. Who was
guarding the doorway to
my sleep?

Satish Verma

INTIMIDATION

A chilled moon was standing
between the lovers
and night was cruising around
to extract the blood
of a hangman.

You want to go back and talk
to old house for selling the dreams
again. When the body ends,
the hunger lives in another eye. Let
me break the cycle and become
fodder of a thought.

Layer up layer aching in
half-sleep brings the frozen rain
falling from icy peaks. You bring
cherries for moon who wants more.
Give me a window to have
a glimpse of still life.

Satish Verma

IN ABEYANCE

Take my body for sail,
my wings to fly.
I am trying to find out
the meaning of a drop.

The point man was taking aim.
There was no culpability.
I asked, what was the need to
know the verdict of a rape?

The bed always suffers. The secret
of a muse overturns a disaster.
In insane sky a beleaguered moon
was taking a shower.

Unmasked, the desire turns to
fire and ignites the palace.
It was not enough to meet death
with empty hands.

Satish Verma

SCULPTURING

It does not work;
the manipulation of the fast.
The genomic fugitive
nurtures a home of light, windswept pyre.

Under the prophet
a gloom unloosens the absolute.
Now as you weave
a pattern of lies, the page hits.

The book is thrown into
fire. The words swim, break the grief
of naked sun. There
is flooding of wombs. Who will conceive a god?

Between you and me,
a river flows. I become voiceless.
You cannot build a bridge.
The spinning curve outlines the shore.

Satish Verma

IN A SOMBRE MOOD

Are you sure after the sunset
the hunger will find the mouths
in black alley?

I go to my ailing land.
Stand on a mass grave.
No faces, No names.

Brother, I am not bickering
I am listing on my fingers.

Was it possible that we could
count the virgins in the town?

Mudslinging starts. Who was not
corrupt? The prevailing conjugation.
How you will tell your kid who
was your mother?

I become restless, tossing around.
A single word shimmers like a
blood soaked jewel. I pick it up.
A baby poem is born.

Satish Verma

DREAM LANDING

Candle by candle
you burn your dreams
unflaying the blue veins.
That makes you still beautiful
hanging in sky.

On the dead land your feet
will not touch the pond. Stumbling
I bring botanica to cover
your innocent faults
for telling the truth.

That makes me feel guilty.
I pretend to be not what I am.
This is the time when I start
hitting the road, missing the
scandalous moon who will -

kiss me hard when I was alone.
Just a fleeting pain. I ask you
to become a tree, so that I
can sit under your shade
and write a poem.

Satish Verma

ANIMATION

The animal thing inside:
My half-brother,
was unsettling me.

Over the sunset I watch
the drawing procession
carrying the dead body of a tiger.

The light is fading. The stripes
were becoming a myth. The
guest was ready to depart.

I am holding the molten lava
in an urn. In the black sky
a satellite burns to undo the grief.

There is no death, no stopping.
A face pressed between the leaves
of a book smiles.

You come back to me in rains.
I call you by cinders dancing
in the mirror of whistling time.

Satish Verma

CULT OF LYNCHING

Mountains were coming down to
never-home,
in surreal rebuff to shaking earth;
emerging from the shadows of sky.

In groping for the legs
this was the myth of lynching.
You are drenched in the rains
of promises.

A kiss for each lethal penetration,
for global time-
you are becoming a wasteland
borne out of swollen fingertips-

who would not write any name.
The many words of pain are finding
a new meaning from the vocabulary
of conceit and betrayals.

A deliberate isolation brings
the sound sleep to ashes to become a thing.

Satish Verma

BLUE MOUNTAINS

The lesson
of sudden fall
and forgotten kiss.

Everytime I was afraid of me
unforgiving the gorge
of blue mountains.

When I usher you in sun
you flare up in color violet-green
I stay in ebony's arms -

with eye spaces
and everything turns water,
water of a lake.

I will not remember the shooting
stars when you are beside me.
Drifting curves had left behind

the seeds, planted under the moon.
Now they are exploding
one by one in the conch.


•


Tending to my pain
when you were unborn
O my poem

how you lay on me
asking for the whole truth
which would undo the helix

in eye long vision.
If the loneliness smiles
I will call you.
I will call you.

Satish Verma

A LOVE AND HATE STORY

I was learning, how
not to catch you.

Called the cloud
hugging a hillside.
Can you climb on the road?
No, it said, I want to play with the moon.

So,
this was becoming,
without presence.
An epiphany? No it was a crying
theme, discovery of the self.

When the tremors came,
you were flung like a doll,
opening the earth
one breath long.

Swallows were eyeing the sky.


•

The hollow tree
traps the light and sends out
the blue pupils of yellow eyes.

I am still counting the limbs
under the boulders.
The landmass was moving asking names.

The big vulture was watching
the end of the feast,
for schizophrenics.

A bomb hidden in turban will
kill a saint. You say I should
call for the girls.

Why don't you wear the skullcap
to cover the beautiful mind
which will not kiss the fire?

Satish Verma

Solitudes

The questions hang like skin tags.
A broken mirror, stabs
during birth of time.

We have got to do it, save it
in its infancy, before it is submerged
along with the temple of fake gods: -

before it is plagiarized by the
polity. The wives were fattening
on art of running the state

from behind the curtains. Would
you like to sign on my skin?
Your death wish? I am washing

my sins today. It is bit cold
here in the blue lake of tears. Now
you can hold my arm for final plunge.

Satish Verma

Night Light

That cameo was my secret grief.
He will make you sing,
the hooded moon.

Not a sacred thing
Kissing the toes of a traveller
for fecundity.

In doorway it was between
us and them for bargaining
for Dahlias.

Lips unkissed will call for
honey from bees.
Eyes will srarch for a candle.

In alien land of flames
and tumultuous desires,
the golden breasts will take revenge.

Satish Verma

GYRATIONS

I am lifting
your blood-soaked shirt
giving the latitude to planet
which broke the law.

The elite
wants to know, why you were
still here, when steam was rising
in golden night?

An extended
grief overtakes the wind
in the flute. You become a free man
walking naked.

The gyres
were calibrating the magi.
An empty niche waits for a Buddha
to take the re-birth.

Satish Verma

Sin and Prayer

I am pulling out from the committed
sin, cadaver walking,
digging the gold from the pit.

Footwears of dead men were
heaped into a pile when
god was praying.

Was it a perceived tragedy
of a man drawing doodles
to offset the sunset?

You were alone, dousing
the fire and shaping the clay. The
hamlet was less inclined to intercede.

Your flesh slips from my hands
for a rebirth. I was flying a kite.
I was dead before you were born again.

Satish Verma

AN ART

A calling from zietgeist;
when a flute versus beast
starts a power play.

My world becomes wet.
Amorous,
when I watch a moth in your fist.

A split moon peels off
the cuticle, for a mega show of the
cone, shedding cruciform sword.

The white tiger leaps with
precision, spilling the milk container.
It was moonlight.

The baked smile now gathers
the teeth for a final bite.
The diamonds now quiver like a fear.

Satish Verma

UNDECIPHERABLE

A little death comes every day
for the lost age.
The fingertips write your name on
ice, to burn in sun.
and still, I will say it was good.

Searing poverty of words
scrambles for a suicide vest.
No meaningless truth can save
the kleptomaniac. After the demise
of a sentence I can say, would

not go for an award. The struggle
to live in some pretentious
sexuality of the curves was over.
A trident will find
the torso of revengeful god.

Appearance was deceptive
in entire race. The father of waves
takes a bird's-eye view
of the verses flowing from the
icy lips of peaks.

Satish Verma