IN NARTHEX

Leave me with abba
after devastation. There was
blood before the dawn.
The feathers were floating.

And why should one weep
when the lake was dry
and there was a corona
discharge from the man's face.

I remember not, all the
ugliness of life, when I was
growing roses in my books, like
a moon striking my pen.

The road was there, the tree
was there, but your footprints
were not to be seen. Where have
you gone my words, I was waiting?

Satish Verma

My Battle

After self-immolation,
what has been left with me
except the poems.

The tree will not speak now.
There was a good run-off
from the surface of golden leaves.

I will not meet the music
of sunset. There was a constant
flow of murmuring thoughts at night.

The narrative remembers the -
departure, but does not expect
anything from moon.

I will remain awake till
the dawn, then go
to a long sleep.

Satish Verma

SANITY

Being alone,
writing poetry
to meet the infinity
on paper.

The words will not come
to me. I am trying
to catch the moment.
One by one-

I light the candles,
watching you slithering.
A transient truce
with my hands.

Collecting the broken
light years. Enter
into the eyes. O river. The hunger
to trap you is increasing.

Satish Verma

HANGING GARDEN

Decanting the soul
to achieve the silence
of the moon.

Can you find the peace
after the screams? Celibacy
after the violence in bed?

The pleasure's guilt
and pubes failure have made
the Mars glow brighter.

Do not do anything.
Become a fake and
unveil the statue of a stonehenge.

Spring is back with vengeance.
The sky was still very bitter.
All the colors had gone to water.

Satish Verma

Trespassing

What was the legitimacy of
an alchemist digging
up the earth for gold?

The yellow lips will tell the whole
mystery of this strange phenomenon
deleting the blue words.

There were walls without windows
and a lake without water.
How you will decipher the -

epitaph of a white
moon on a black mountain.
There was always a smoke-

screen on the earth
and light refuses to penetrate
the mind of trivial gods.

Satish Verma

TILL THIS DAY

Spare me a moment.
Can you anticipate the innocence
of tomorrow?

Someone wants to bare
her breast to protest
against the concept of black and white.

Tell me where the black ends
and white starts? The glass and
daffodils always go together.

The fake colors. I look at the
sky and start a monologue
with a yellow moon.

The smoke spoils the shore.
River engulfs the boat
and a definition drowns.

Satish Verma

WAR AND FEATHERS

Between eyes and tears
you swim back to me on flames.
The little candles are going to take revenge.

Do not mean any insult to moon.
My stars were trembling
to reach the vanishing whole.

The cabbage blooms with
violets. Do you mind if I pick
up the pomegranates?

There was a curse against
the temple. The god was thrown
in the lake when tornado came.

Take out the thorn from
your foot. You have reached
the graveyard of unknowns.

Satish Verma

LAST WORDS

Like an asterisk
I adjure you to fly like an
eagle, on the wings of light.
The poems are ready to become
jealous;

an attempted murder
went awry, subscribing to water.
I swallow the hemlock without
any effort. Intoxicated, I move in a jungle
of knives -

where the tenderness is at stake.
You tremble with closed eyes. The
mutation had failed. Among the
shoulders the night sits and calls
it a day.

Satish Verma

When The Flesh Ripens

Mission aborted.
Imprisoned,
I do not touch anything
I do not mention your name.
The chance was to quit the microcosm
of your powered bones.
Wanting the street to run
to end the standing against screams.

It jumps like a toad,
the truth. I catch it.
Wets my hand. The failure of the gossip
to turn me on.I was not willing
to become a scapegoat. In dialogues
must we play the words
without sleep? The moon stalks,
me on my way to nowhere.

Satish Verma

THE TARGET

In a love triangle,
I move out of the center
to find a boat.

Locked in a sperm
a messanger becomes a brute.
Who will draw the circle

on the mercy petition?
This was a curse on the bed
which will not go to sleep for a whore.

The stings. Everytime you
open the mouth, you spurt
out the barbs, I walk into fire.

The kill. It was a perfect
landing. Wounds will never
heal. The beach remains dry.

Satish Verma

Sinking

Your becoming, cuts the moon
in half. I come
blind to hold the
knife.

The aroma of the bush
prepares the golden cups
for drinking milk from the
rage.

His wings were glued, the bird
will not be able to fly
in the night of despair and
song.

Immerse yourself in the assault
and the kiss of blizzard. The
snow is strong, wind is very
low.

Satish Verma

Leapfrog

A frog leaps between your eyes.
The fear was intense-
and pain was possessive.

In besieged apples, there
was no forensic probe. Carnality
takes the back seat.

One dropp of honeydew destroys
the contours of hills. Moon
will wear the unseen costume.

The purple sand now sends
the topless marines to fight
with tender stings.

I am here, with an azure sky
to unfold the secret of dark flames.
O rose, send the bouquet.

Satish Verma

Wounded Path

I wanted you as a grain
not as a straw lover.
The effect of a lone moon:
when I decided
to abandon the land of questions
and word by word
erode you magic.

A genital journey lands you
back in explosive fire of being
or becoming not a secret sin.

We bare our wealth, drop
the silence and pursue a path
of destructive carnations.

Satish Verma

WINTER STORY

When clouds were
drawing graffiti on sky,
where were you?

Untamed manners
in a profound grief
brings back the black buck.

The buck stops here,
fallen on the golden ax.
Get me the lantern.

Satish Verma

Otherness

A silent presence
huddled in the dark corner
starts a notional dialogue
with a trust default.

I intend to proceed to-
explore the dementia,
accepting the uncertinity
of human symbol.

Snatched by ascending
tomorrow, you are not yourself
today, I am not myself,
clinging to sleeveless death.

Fear hauls you up on the
brazen rocks, you stand
alone in sun to find your toes
breaking the sound waves.

Satish Verma

VISUALIZATION

Looking back at self-portrait
was bewitching.
Self-abuse? Do you think
we should start preparing for a
holy murder?

Like bad sex, you hold
a blue thought and pick
up a fight with a radical dialogue.
If birds start leaving, what
you plan to do with contemporary
poetry.

In a locked room you left
your bloody footprints, sometime back.
Now you are caught with a
broken pen. Time was up. Hand
over your lips and become mute.

Satish Verma

LOGISTICS

Midnight encounter.
In moon, on sand.
Why you were igniting a sheltered home
of wounded pride?

The blood spills
over the sea, in boat.
You were unrelenting, against traction
violence of unhappenings.

The blackness blooms.
A man will cross midstream,
writing on water the name of a lamb
who refuses to surrender.

I sit between the
kisses of dragonflies.
An empty paper nest waits for the wandering
wasps to come back with stings.

Satish Verma

On The Brink

I was trying to communicate
the poverty of words.
We were moving in circles.
Dark figures-
afraid of each other.

What was a shame -
in restraints
of narcissism? You are
not going to take a dip
in opaque waters.

A conceptual withdrawl
from the acrimony of hills.
Night was very cool but
moon will not come down
and grass will not go up.

I will never be generous
in jokes of a monstrous
nose. The stink was awful
but roses were white and
the meaning had no confines.

Satish Verma

NAMELESS

Flame and smoke.
What else your skies have to offer?
Was it not a crime against
poetry articulate?

Come near me.
I want to amble with tears -
of humanity before the fragility
takes a big toll.

Who says it was time
to turn over a new leaf?
The blistering gale had taken
away all the boughs and blossom.

Are you pregnant with some
idea of a candle? When it burns
through night, it has an otherness:
nameless melting.

Satish Verma

Quenching

Go forth alone, as a beast,
as a bird, as a fish.
There were knots in the breast
to be dissolved.

Unfrequented, lust brings
a folded rose. A foeless
territory to explore the -
heaven of fingers.

Beautiful. I like you
Your smile enters the knife.
The knife goes into the heart.
The heart finds an angel.

Pomegranates. Dark red.
Oozing on the edges for
accepting the brunt of
a corrosive reversal.

Satish Verma

Breaking Dawn

A squirrel on a stone bull
revives a genre,
after a black rose
fell on the lips of tremor.

One amphibian was always there
part in water and part on land.
Climbing on words,
to become an avis -

the avatar of a flying god.
There was no song -
on the bridge of tears. Let us
share a lost dream.

Do you find seashell in the
desert of diction? Here once a
river flowed under the rocks.

Friends don't squeeze the moon.
It was honey in a blue urn,
collecting the morning rays.

Satish Verma

An Anticlimax

Do you share the bed
with a perceived lover in illicit
borders?

A pink gestation
of a thought? Hands
holding a naked truth?

The winds were harsh, cold
and persuasive. And lake was
sending an obscene invitation.

You were ready to make
a jump, ending the speculation.
I speak alone -

in the arguments with
sooty bust of the sky.
Moon has no other name.

Satish Verma

Flickering

A chalky midnight
I wait for the sound of
flapping winds.

A celestial embrace
with your duality.
Are you wearing my shoes?

The blood wears a coat
of dreadlocks. I
want to return to my soul.

Will not touch you
but always think about
the dialect of contours.

A death wish of a mountain
flower was to shed the seeds
in the lap of a dandelion.

Satish Verma

Steaming

Surrender your shadow
to light.
Come my trenched thoughts.

An upside down
episode speaks of a missed
path, and of a blue smoke.

Have you entered
the lake to search for a
sunset is rising moon?


The house-trap again
catches you in midstream.
No peace. Eyes refuse to shut.

Bind the stars with a moon.
Let the night be blue-black.
A goddess of arson was coming.


Satish Verma

Flowering

To find the
essence of nothingness
you need to play a bluff.
The birthmark will come
without motherhood.

It lacks a commitment of
fatherless progeny. The stigma
arrives later when you meet
the moon at night.
I don't defend the puritan's version.

It was natural. Are we returning
to a thinking tree where parakeets
are nesting? The illegitimacy
of bold argument needs the
blessings of the birch.

Satish Verma

Suicidal

Your underpants?
Can you put them behind
beneath the weight of memories?

Flamingos.
They are in flight
after the birth pangs.

Trapped-
the light flutters
at watermark for a name.

Yet to be born,
a stone-blind moon
wants the partisan blue.

One will not forget a headless
body of an ariel.
The tempest was at the door.

Satish Verma

Paper Nest

Dementia begins. The ending starts.
Death had many names;
The mountain owls. They fly in flocks
and take prey diving on rabbits or great
bustards. Have you seen the courtship
display of bustards? They are heavy birds. Fly,
but also run very fast.

Soaring flight of eagle. Keen sight and a massive
hooked bill. Hawk takes prey by surprise.
Falcon catches prey from above.

I think water. Don't cry. Your son was
drowned in a tank when he was three. Head
down. We pulled him out after half-an-hour.
Brain damaged. He babbles now, lives a vegetable.

Neat. Death had many faces. You want her.
It will not come on asking. I think flames. We
must lock the house, and come out on skywalk.

Satish Verma

New Dictionary

An offence committed by you
asks for the absolutes.
I am paying the price.

Are you going to drink the white-
potion from the black cup? The tiger
had taken away the child. Now we will-

kill our god between the planets. The
goddess reveals herself as a nude.
The chemistry stalks. It leaves

behind the surprise and wet eyes.
You enter the blue city of kissing
names. There are no square spaces -

across the legs. Taps are dry and
ash collectors are moving around
to find the murderous sky.

Satish Verma

Under The Mist

Aggressive posture of silence
sweeps the mind.
I preempt the drowning of septum
in calving ice.
The ostium ultimately opens
to spill over the therapy.

You go into the cave-
to pull out the new born thought.
The day runs again for bread-
and butter. There are
no holds barred. It
was an intact valve.

But the heart blew away
the soft feathers.
I cannot fly now.

Satish Verma

I Think

Eyes will not flirt again.
There were bleeding stones -
to speak of black magic.
We meet like strangers in tides
and part like sun and moon.
Do not go into the night.

It was scary to dare the barter
game of death. Gravel had no
complaints. The body was not found.
Nobody had killed the stars. Let
her go, I say, in the explosive light.
Do not go into the night.

I think I will move again in a
gift trap, accept the moon's treachery,
but I will not go into the night.

Satish Verma