Shooting Stars

It is over. The curtain falls.
I have come to settle―
my account with the waning moon.

Will call you later,
when the dawn breaks
and sun spells out the light.

The water has receded―
on the beach, leaving some
empty shells, hollowed fish

and upturned paper boats.
I move around the small pool,
left by the angry sea.

You will start commenting
on my poems. I wanted to read
your handwritten notes to know―

how your mind works.
I will not meet you again.


Satish Verma

In Mist

There was a scream,
a howl. Something, somebody
had scuttled the platter.
You stop and frisk yourself,
and as if the red ants had
started coming out from your
eyes.

It wets the script. An apparition.
A dove flutters in the chest. A
fantasy, like you leave your body.
A window opens, shuts. Opens, shuts.
One vestigial flicker of the miasma
unsettles, the tree culture,
The undersides of the tongue becomes blue.

Do you know, you read
from the back side of the brain?
Have you heard the hindsight?
Yes, sometimes, means no.

Satish Verma

Off The Tangent

To foil the pride of
initiating the blasts;
there was a terror watch―
to share a common link
of violence.

And speak I will, for the
grains, for the grass,
in the endless search
for the peace.

The obsessed autism
illustrates the bipolar.
Light and darkness―
alternating.

A thought poetry, in
quantum physics, makes
a sacrifice. It will
not look back.

Satish Verma

A Nondescript Night

The quality drops. You
look at the sky.
A juvenile moon was
following us.

The intention was not very
clear. To shake off the tail,
we went behind the bushes―
to understand ourselves.

The ennui was taking a
big toll. The roots were becoming
robotic. Cannot negotiate an issue.

Seedless, you cannot
impregnate. No thoughts―
no poems.

But then the life has so
many giggles.

You can start reading a murder.

Satish Verma

Appropriatly Speaking

No use, running after the scent
of the hounded animal.

The cat was dead.

You cannot travel beyond the sound.
Your presence was noted―
in a particle only.

In the blurred image of a paper
you may exist, may not.

But I am alone. What was life?
An unheard script handed down
by unseen hand?

Sugar curtains and salt-water:
you cannot stand the acrimony
of the pair standing nonchalanty.

Satish Verma

Forces Unseen

He was slated to become
godless, without engaging―
the nature.

The violence continues
in every joint, after an ego clash
in fractured body.

A blood carnival, between
divine and the beast, paying
the debt of earth.

The decadence. Let it be.
Becoming beautiful
in great decline.

The dice has been thrown.
A chance to meet―
the death after the duel.

Satish Verma

Flawless

Like walking on coal dump
coming of age.

Magnifying the blackness
of a miner's hands.

Excavating a long burrow
to feed the pain.

A muffled cry and you
locate a bound sea.

A clear moon was rising
as a witness to this atrocity.

A classic dance of an
angry god to show the presence.


Satish Verma

Cross Beams

A quest for negativity
after becoming apolitical.

The moon was marginalized,
when you lighted your―
earthen lamp under the
holy basil.

At night the demons
begin the assaults to
make the milk dirty.

The bluebird descends
in the dream to pick up
the elders for a wreath.

I am not going to cross
the river in flames.

Satish Verma

Did Not We Cry?

Ash and smoke.
I am fever, not becoming
any sound.

Like a lichen, a mycorrhiza
on damp soil,
unfound by light.

Thriving in airless
dark. Will not see the cool―
moon of summer night.

There was no key
to find the invisible.
A random poem will see.

Your painted body
in blue scars, still
remembers the fallen roof.


Satish Verma

Bloodless Eyes

The fresco had started
peeling off. I was―
searching for my ancestors.

The walls had the secrets
buried deep in the bricks―
when they were baked.

Few abandoned poems,
some fakes and counterfeits
and many masks.

A dynasty speaks of
the grieving world without any―
remorse. I do not arrive.

A birthday present for the new
generation, a bronzed
face with glazed eyes looking beyond gravity.


Satish Verma

Renunciation

The bifurcation―
was complete.
A fire baby―
and a weird ritual.

Criticality was redundant,
once I knew your gender.

Reeking of timelessness
in zero hour.
You fly the balloons―
from the ruins.

I scraifice a tree
for you, with
a shrill cry―
falling mid-flight.

White moon had
become very harsh.
I will bring honey
for night.

Satish Verma

The Seeker

Skin bleached in moon,
you prepare yourself tonight to hit the mystry,

of a recipient. The days are
tattooed on your body. The hands become claws.

A terrorist, becomes a canine,
biting blood-hot.

Like the opal, in a slow stream
of light, displaying the pisces around your―

eyes, swimming. There is no
money left to bring the milk of blue pain.

A physical contact via moon,
would you talk to me after the glorious sunset?

O, multiheaded cobra,
which of your hood is going to strike me

Satish Verma

Sunbath

The tibial spiking
now hurts.
The floaters on the dried bed―

of bones, speak volumes
of sand in eyes.
Pawns have disappeared.

The earth is wounded.
A snake climbs onto the pink lips
to know its crime.

The matter interacts wrongly
with radiation. Spectroscopy
fails up to the hilt.

On the spur of the moment
I ignite the shadow
of the space between us.

The miser starts counting the coins.

Satish Verma

Musing On

There was an urgency―
to finish the job,
beheading the tulips.

Wolves were coming.

The surveillance had failed.
Nothing but clouds between
the titles.

Writing was illegible.
It was the last offensive
of blankness.

Before the dawn.
You have to draw a crescent
moon on my forehead.

I am going to scream.


Satish Verma

Concealed Fever

It is raining.
The water colors.
I miss the ache.

When, to wear a crimson
dot on forehead, the sky
had become a bride.

Destiny fractured.
Why did't I tell the lies

to achieve the greatness?
Not my effects. I stare
blankly at your portrait.

Blaming the conceptual
crisis, you cannot speak the truth.

Weaving a web of unseen
threads, you hold a poem
ready to take a flight.

Satish Verma

A Hanging Tale

Your hands tremble,
when you accept―
the cup of hemlock.

Not like Socrates,
who described the ascending bane
paralyzingly.

Art of letting it go―
was inherent. Exogamy.
The root population grows.

I have come to take
your hand, O death,
out of caste.

You tell me,
it was out of turn,
to stitch the black wound.

The howling was persistent―
Moon was not yet sighted.

Satish Verma

Being Alone

Writing your own elegy in a
blocked artery―

for a syntactic analysis.
How do I know

that dolphin will remember
my name,
my address?

It swims silently.
No ranting.

Eating nothing― anorexia.
Standing under a tree,
tying the thread round the trunk,
you want to move against
the time.

Only a question
remains unanswered.
From where the journey begins?

Satish Verma

Not A Dream

Imperfect mating.
I am lurching forward―
in a chaotic
non-existence.

There was no divinity
in your sinless sprinkling.
A timeless death was
the only riposte to ephemeral queries.

A lif-size God stands
sentinel outside the museum.
Only the mortal were
etched on the walls.

A pygmy cycas has bloomed
after a decade. I have come back
home to collect―
my belongings of last life.

Satish Verma

When Technology Fails

Your comatose
countenance:
punctuates a coronal spurt.

Life will never
forget this insult and return
your freak awards.

The moon cancels
a lake meeting. You cannot
celebrate the arrival of night.

Helplessly, I scrap
the terror threat, though
your memory was severed in an ambush.

At ground zero,
a young couple starts a sit-in
against the raining sermons.

Satish Verma

Testimony

A wax house you were
gifted to live in sun.
No comments. As if the chess
game now starts. You do not know
how to move a checkmate

Always a looser. You do not
want to win this game― of
betting the cemetery― where your
ancestors were buried. No―
body has come to claim the remains.

Unkissed, the seeds will wait
to become antiqued, till a
historian finds a shovel. A
state of mind, you were very poor.
I will not cry for the fall's colors.

Satish Verma

Moon Burning

I become again a fakir,
but not on alms.

A giver wants nothing
after a knife thrust.

Take away as many as
you can, my thoughts, my limbs.

There is no language
of charity, in the black hole.

You are the one, who
does not need any ladder.

Sitting on the beach, watching
the waves collapsing.

One day you will move
away from the walkway.

Satish Verma

Proclaming

After land slips it was
most surreal scene. Cadaveric
donations had started.

The author of death would
ask for a showdown. Blood
for blood and bone for bone.

The loneliness erupts again
like a volcano. The new moon
will weep for outdoors.

A mermaid breaks the
rules. Starts wearing the
makeup and becomes robed.

Fishing in aquarium was
prohibited. An absurd
proposition of the glass.

Satish Verma

A Patty Thing

The primal urge to undo―
your hair. I am going
crazy.

It ends at beginning.
A rite of passage to nakedness
of soul, when you have
nothing to hide.

The master cell, has flipped
over, after you squeezed
its belly. The tasteless sphagnum
was out.

The hunger stands at your door.
Wants the bread of pride.
Will you stop the clock
and go for timeless?

I had lighted the incense
sticks. One for you and
one for God.

Satish Verma