PANORAMA

The rain washed,
moon. I am going to talk,
to clouds,
for a pause.

*

A serene
quietness.
Rain comes down in rhythmic dance.
No bird will sing now.

*

I will watch,
the bougainvilleas.
Shedding the coloured bracts
on velvety grass.

Satish Verma

NUMBNESS

The sound of animosity
wakes you up.
There was a shadow war.

The ethnic otherness,
when you were ditching
the sermons, the adjectives.

Will you accept the
atrocity of nouns who keep
on inviting the fat spiders?

The vision has failed.
I don’t find any cue
to the nests of sparrows.

Ah, the booming guns.
But I was talking
to Sisyphus.

Satish Verma

NEW ENIGMA

To confront his terror
he changed the game
plan for a mystery dive.

The custodian of a flame
will show serendipity.
Sun was enveloped in a dark matter.

The Teflon has disappeared.
You will remember the things-
you did not understand.

Someone nips at your heels.
You run faster. The evil
was flying home.

The house was in disarray.
Give me a comb to keep
the dark figures out.

Satish Verma

IMPLOSION

Untimely.
Illegitimate.
I will not ask
for an apology.

The hymn
started too early.
The dust had
settled on the lens.

Imitation.
Not real pearls.
Your words do not
convey the thought.

There was a
long distance –
between your lips
and my self-immolation.

Satish Verma

In Praise

Wisdom
picks on the dementia.
I lash out in drunken rage.

The water world,
I stand on an island
in incremental rain-

of denials. Time was
floating on the shells.
Sea was in sullen mood.

Sunless sky wants
to start a ceremony of
clouds and tears.

How far you will
walk with a gypsy?
I have started the journey for invisible.

Satish Verma

Neonate

Becoming polar.
The climax comes
without end.

The physical
intimacy of headliners?
You were not reaching anywhere.

Pretty large
was the near-view.
Eons ago there was a neoclassicism.

The core intensity
was golden.
But circumference was ambulatory.

Planets will watch
the rover
for the final descent of god!

Satish Verma

ODYSSEY

I will accept
the curse
of acquisition.


You wear an epic
on the fingers.
I read a virgin.

My shadow joins
the moon at night.
How tall were you?

Hold my arm
once. In terror
I had kisses an old flame.

Death will be
my only landmark.
My journey ends in your arms.

Satish Verma

ROPES

You done me
mosaic.
The rover has landed
on Mars.
Will you come
tonight?

Circa.
I was searching
the white ants
on the blackboard.
They had drawn
a map
of the moon.

I would not
cry,
for the fallen tree.
It had left
the legacy
of ropes.

Satish Verma

Destination What?

How timeless
You were,
O, violence;
After summary executions.

A climactric battle
Rages on, with self.
Inside you, seeking devastatingly-
The brown earth.

After the black night,
I will wait for a bright
Sun. it is there, feel
Of sharp landing, through the eye of a needle.

Freedom from the legacy
Of legends. Where you were,
There was no traffic
Of crawling truths.

Satish Verma

OSCILLATION

Seven minutes of terror,
and fourth generation of missiles.
Can they go together?
And road stops here?

An honour killing will
ensue? Do you think so?
Ethnic hate runs deep in
seeking revenge by remote sensing.

I miss my ego. The poet’s
pride; oscillating between
water and beach. There was no
boat in sight.

Sitting on a rock. I visualize
the firebrand west. Moon was rising.
There was no rhyming in verse or
cascading fall. Any one can climb-

the tree and start throwing down
the ripe mangoes. Was it a harvesting
time of severing the cords.

Satish Verma

Curıosity

The invisible
throws a visible image
without a tether.
Do you see the god?

Was a matter of faith?
You tie a thread on the wall. Longing
finally reaches climax. Gravity
defies a flying dream.

You had erred, yet
failed to accept the guilt.
A scariest moment was,
when you entered the morph.

It was a U-turn. Robots
will dictate the polity. You
alight on a rostrum; like
a lovely pink swallow.

Satish Verma

PAYLOAD

Drought had entered
into grass roots.
It was a perfect landing.

Sequential. You are
chopped into pieces. A shoal
of fish will make you disappear.

The vacancy will call
a choreographed entry. The
descent will find a goldenrod.

Snow-capped peaks. It
is difficult to stay for a long time.
You climb down. River remains dry.

Satish Verma

A CHILD ONCE THOUGHT

A new
adage. Who was
infallible?
Because there was no space.

*

The final
journey, begins
for beyond
the infinite.

*

Where the gods
live, there was-
a small particle, waiting
to expand.

Satish Verma

The Trıade

In war of attrition
with moon,
you need a black eye.

The stars blinked.
A milkyway changed its stance
and went on fast track.

The sense of sky
was changing. Earth
decided to take off the veil.

I was not engaging
any contradictions. Let the turmoil
throw up an alternative.

It was seen coming.
The blind snakes
starting an intrepid attack.

Satish Verma

CONTENTIOUSLY

The desire,
rises like a spire-
from cloud forest.
You are a flesh eater.

*

You go into a foray
for the food.
A shrine trembles. A blood
stained body leaves the room.

*

A prayer
screens the faces of all
gods. Who was going to undertake
fast unto death?

Satish Verma

POETRY BOOM POETRY BOOM

Absurdity had a presence.
I was trying
to find the meaning of a laughter.

The living stone-
had a personality,
in the battle of a cosmic dance.

It was crippling.
A wide swath of landscape
was inundated by fluid darkness.

You will not find
your home. Unconscious mind
was busy in knitting –

a yellow moon. Do you
hear the sound of loneliness
in the black sky?

Satish Verma

SCARY?

Your slanting smile
like a pendant-moon
ready to collapse
on pomegranates.

*

Monstrous, bug-eyed,
my pug will jump;
whenever, I touch
his snub-nose.

+

Death was sparring
after a brief encounter.
What was the need
for living more?

Satish Verma

SCARY? SCARY?

Your slanting smile
like a pendant-moon
ready to collapse
on pomegranates.

*

Monstrous, bug-eyed,
my pug will jump;
whenever, I touch
his snub-nose.

+

Death was sparring
after a brief encounter.
What was the need
for living more?

Satish Verma

THE RESONANCE

In blue,
starry night.
Who was ephemeral?
The shifting sand?

*

The evil,
in turbulent waters,
outlives-
the flames.

*

Charred,
earthscape.
It was becoming an art.
You have countless abstracts.

Satish Verma

SOMETHING TO GRIEVE

Facing an imminent
onslaught of apparitions, I
wanted an excuse,
to write a poem.

Staying raw,
in this dark, can I see your particle
face? Drop by drop you
moved away. Between –

you and me was a blue
lake. Shall I undo your
percussive existence, brutalizing
the wings, the peaks?

An Aryan pride? Why
not we walk back home
hand in hand, under the black
sky and a summer moon.

Satish Verma

STEP BY STEP

Are you questioning yourself
between right and wrong?
Moon was watching
solemnly.

*

A cuckoo sings
somberly. In a rainy morn.
Why were you not coming
for undoing a sin?

*

The evenings are
listless. Nothing to do,
nothing to brood.
Immaculate dying.

Satish Verma

THE MASSACRE

Arrange the foot-candles
for candela. I am not
going on back foot.
Moon was not burning tonight.

The real darkness descends.
You brace yourself
for a crude assault.
Clouds are thinning out.

You wanted to remove
yourself from the Eros.
Was it not egregious when,
someone is shot when he was sitting quietly?

An amorous saint? Will
you be able to separate-
sex from the violence? He was-
a jester, just acting in a movie.

Satish Verma

THE WITHERING BLOSSOMS

The guile demands
some apology,
from raw stings.

Flirting with illegibility:
Mercurially hot,
there was a preempt strike.

The monsoon comes late.
You would wait for the
wet encounter.

Not seedy one;
dragging a green wound.
Ending sine die.

The white salt
on the lips will speak-
the telltale marks, of crude assault.

Who will surrender
in the end, I will
find out, covering my eyes.

Satish Verma

Dragonflies

A shirtless detachment,
will speak
for the dead,
attaining peace!

*

Knowing oneself,
I was told,
was a very ardent
effort. I don’t know.

*

Disconcerted,
I float the words, on
lake. One day they
will reach you without rhyme.

Satish Verma

SCOURGING

A relative lie,
becomes the truth.
Will you meet me, on the
cobbled street, where the gospels
are cowering in terror;
to find the style.

Becoming; to be a void. As if
I was not there. Unpetaled,
the ovary will ask
the bees to land immediately
on open mouths.

From the veiled moon,
comes a stifled cry.
Do not collect the peaches.

Satish Verma

Composing

Beyond dreams,
a wise lake, watching my absurdity,
of playing with the tyranny
of absolute. And I am trying
to remember, who had said,
that the core victim was me;
in simile,
to a drowning boat.

I remained,
a small seed, still
waiting till eternity to find a
thread of light, which should reach
the depth of the dust, the stone
the water, awakening me to
send my radical, going down,
down into the evasive words.

Satish Verma

Sleepwalking

A haunted moon,
sauntered into the woods,
slogging again and again
to pass the gender test.

There was a fear of
abduction. Orange
and blue, where it ought to have
been absolutely white.

I don’t think She can
become a He, shedding
the robes, crossing the time
zones, in hurry.

A moon should
behave in a celestial manner
becoming a fluid lover
to kiss in dark.

Satish Verma

In deep conversation

Again,
a hunt will start,
incognito.

Uncorfirming
a freak. A zipless encounter
without a knife.

I am not going
to lose a blue peacock.
Light will not come.

Into the dark recess
I had planted
a time bomb

in the womb.
Give me a blight,
if you want.

Yet I am going
to sail, combing
the moon.

Satish Verma

Latest Woes

Like a jellyfish,
In raw pain
You descend abruptly,
In abyss of peace.

There was a streak
Of animal in silicone.
The matchmakers will
Rub the sparks.

The cauldron was
Simmering with tension.
Was ready to engage
A chemical warfare.

You are sitting on
A medusoid robot.
A replica of non-god’s
Creation.

Now synchronized contractions
Will start to deliver a new baby.

Satish Verma

The Threshold

During the litany of questions,
I will talk to you,
about the innocence
of flowing river.

Here was your faultline.
You had washed your words in
the dirty stream.
Now, you were complaining about the winds.

I will not ask you
to kill the thrill of hurting
the defence. But
were you ready for a recount?

Black, as a burnt-out bread,
the time; will leave the wounds open.
I will write a poem
you will start screaming.

Satish Verma

Etching Your Profile

I will take you:
In claustrophobia,
head-to-toe,
fully immersed in death.
*
Where the horizon
meets the asteroid.
I will call, the near
earth, my prayer.
*
A distant touch
of your encounter, takes
a big toll. I have started
talking to moon.

Satish Verma