Turn Off The Lights

What you give becomes
silver to come around. The gold nuggets stick
to me. Why you were crazy about the whole moon?

The critique says why
the hunger opens the mouth. The mask
will protect all the unused words.

The sacred pain was mine.
I am indebted to you that before I bled,
you came running to make me rich.

Satish Verma

To End The Poem

When you walk
on moon in February, I take-down
the clouds to become wet.

Your memory lingers.
I gather the monarchs to
play with my past.

I am not sure, when
the dark moves on to give space
to imprisoned pain.

Satish Verma

Suaveness

Spider weaves the
net. You walk in the named―
trap of honesty.

I have stopped
looking at stars, after the
moon bit me in dark.

Who was dying for a
sip of hawthorn today
in the bright sunlight?

Satish Verma

Mutiny By Words

You come to me
when transparency enables
you to paint your
knuckles blue.

War was on!

Peeling the tangerines
with delicate fingers, in
winter sun to recite
the poems together.

Why you will not sleep
till the snake bites?

Thinking of this brute life.
Nipping in the sharp nails,
wolverine sitting beside
the bonfire.

Calling, a lie a lie,
I am going to punish myself.

No ruinous effect
of soft kisses
without lips.

Satish Verma

With No Mistake

There was some pain
in your thick voice.
You had gone too far.

Hunted like
a deer, for an ecstatic vision
I was very angry with me.

Learning deep, back
to back, you were aware of
the dogma. It was a witch.

Chasing you on reverse
feet. One kiss less―
you become a beast.

An asp in the sleeve.
My bullet-riddled body
will wait for your stone.

No more I will write your
arrival. The twinkle reflection
of your eyes― uncrying.

Satish Verma

Alone In Myself

The scaffolding falls.
The end and means
become one. There was―
no other second moon.

The prosthetic hand
feels your face. Blind eyes
hear your lips and a severed
leg walks me near you.

Under the tongue you
hide a word. I will never know
what. The armless sun
steals away my golden key.

Will never find you again
in my poems. My book torn,
my pen broken. I am picking
up the old lost coins.

Satish Verma

SANE DEPARTURE

How age slips away
from your hands?
How deep you will
go in the cavernous
mind of time?

Why brother,
why, the healing started
to hurt you and you
did not want to
stitch the name?

No tattoo will tell your
address. You want to
go anonymously, leaving
the moon behind
the brown hills.

The shadows are─
lengthening. Time was up.
Lay down your arms
and walk away with
empty hands.

Satish Verma

PARADOX

Time. Marches on;
tasting the blood of hikers,
who would not─
reach the summit.

*

Red clover.
I walk under the black
moon to light─
the fire.

*

Meet me
sometime, in the half way
house, I have forgotten
my name.

Satish Verma

Superstitions

An empty chair in a
muffled day, starts
a self-import and
falters on steps.

You need the fear, to
strike back, when the
tracer distribution
returns with a ghost.

The discount will substract
from the truth. I will
find the zero at the
end of lies.

Will I concede to the
barter? Let me first taste
the bitterness of victory,
become drunk on your hate.

Satish Verma

Ritualism

A rose.
Atonement for-
all the thorns.

*

I will gather─
all the poems. For anointing
your memory.

*

Where the sun
hides, I will paint a
field of marigolds.

Satish Verma

Rivalry

Unable to conceive.
The theme had not arrived─
near the mouth.
It was agonizingly close,
Before and after the storm.
A dharma had failed.

Law of the land:
first a sprint,
then a strained voice.
You lend your voice to
a surrogate throat.
The audience roared.

Star by star, you walk
in dust. The search goes to
find the unknown, who takes
a big stride and leaves
gaint foot-prints
in dark.

Satish Verma

A nightmare

The system aborts.
(Multiple organs failure)
A deviant art
of dying pompously.

I wish, I was on a ─
moving floor, sailing
without a walk, looking at
the camouflaged ceiling.

The shrill voice of a whistle─
blower, mimics an opera.
I will snatch the words,
raw, from your lips.

It was here, in absence.
Your poesy, matter-of-factly.
Can you raise your voice
against the fall of the thing.

Satish Verma

MALIGNANCY

A cameo─
after the chemo.
Are you sure, it was a tumor.

*

A black hole
in my bones, gulping
all the pain.

*

You were buried
alive in the wall of patches.
Stitch by stich.

Satish Verma

AT THE END

The ultimate, unsung─
spreads out
and sails to oblivion.

I wanted to become
you, in desperation,
clinging to a swan song.

The great wall─
of silence, built on sand
still stands in hurricane.

Questions mate─
behind the curtain.
The truth, stands naked on stage.

Nothing to declare
now, I collect the pebbles
of childhood, hidden

from your eyes.
Locking the door behind,
I walk out to liberation.

Satish Verma

SECRET DEALS

It insults the─
primitivism. Hypothermia, you
become cold-blooded.

*

Fractured limbs.
How will you climb the
mound of questions?

*

Gray night.
Between black and white
the ashen moon.

Satish Verma

Power Lines

The numbers were going up
and hallowed men were no─
more saints.

You find that your shirt
was stained. Now
you talk
to strangers. fear creeps─
under the skin.

You come near each other in─
dark. Reverting yourself

Against the wall of water as
high as your ego. Epidural abscess─
a silence of unknown.

Now, every hour you die. Light
abducts the dreams. Nothing to-
talk about the blitzkrieg.

Satish Verma

Moonless Night

Hauling up
the debris of your life
in failing light.

*

Bending like grass.
Standing like a solid rock─
where did you reach?

*

The fatal night─
to remove the downy velvet
from your sharp antlers.

Satish Verma

Spotlessly

It was the day of
dead patriarch.
I was fondling an echidna.

The home was
carried away in the─
storm. Must find a broom.

On the remains─
of a burned-out soul.
A hope sits on the altar.

A piano drenched in rain─
will not sing in the gale.
The sky will collapse─

one day, I will bring
back the bluebird,
for a revenge.

Satish Verma

UNFORGIVING

Festival of─
earthen lamps.
Separating the grain from chaff.

*

Pigeons will─
not be let out to fly.
It is going to be a moonless night.

*

The skin has peeled off.
Time to move on.
The bared trees.

Satish Verma

CAPSIZED BOAT

A dynast in the storm-razed
polity will ask─
for a pardon.

By choice there was
no suicide. You will
eat the clouds one day.

Taking the brunt, ─
living near the sea of
people, a window goes shut.

Curtly, with
levitation, the wind
twists, one and everybody.

An owl tattoo, will
tell it all. The hurricane
has reached your door.

Aftermath was a
conspiracy of silence.
Every one was speaking of landfall.

Satish Verma