ROSE UPON ROSE

Let me put back
the rhythm to the song
of broken limbs.
To arrest the speed of sun-set,
for a meaningful dialogue
with the verse of moon.
The poison of floodlit city
grazes my house.
The innocence of the dark suffers.

The white stillness
of empty hands lifts a failure
my heart lives with a death
Intimately. Where the birds have gone?
I chase the wings.
The otherness of love,
the vulnerability of darkness
stays with me.
The thirst of ocean is very large.

Mechanical imitation
of aloneness for a ripe death
it is nostalgia of past history.
Deep in thoughts I run
for my green childhood.
A strange metastasis
from remote guilts. A rose
upon rose piled up
to form a signature mode.

Satish Verma

SMILE BECOMING LARGER

Being was my forte,
where the words speak no more
a lifetime of black stillness,
the sunflowers sleeping.
The controller and the enquiry
freeze the ozone.
I repent again for all the sins of eloquence,
the rustling of leaves.

Take care of mood,
hoarseness and slippery speech
there is no room for pain.
A whole tribe of thoughts
scatters the lines to avoid
becoming, featureless and nameless.
Boulders are falling on feathers.
I am leaning towards eerie winds.

The other side of the door
was misty. The kiss of fire.
Mind wanders aimlessly.
The destiny breaks the steps
of sleepwalkers. They are falling in dark,
towards dark. A moon rides the clouds,
its smile becoming larger & larger.

Satish Verma

LIVING LEGEND

The flame will not die.
I pursue the path of smoke
the virtue of suffering
gives the pure light.
The book knows my inside truth
and tells no one. I weep for the swallows,
I could not feed.
I lay one white
stone for each death.

You will scatter my ashes,
in the abandoned land
where silence walks
and words lie like microcosm
of contemporary hunger.
Life was a cupful of tears.
The voices always spilled challenging
the fidelity of flowing water.

The living legend turns in grave,
I pray for peace
I promised myself to stand erect
when the quake comes.
I will save the flora
and the grass of dying earth.
I ask for one more life
to clear the debt & bleach my guilt.

Satish Verma

FAITHLESS AUTUMN

Bleak landscape
transcends its shoulders,
writhes in pain.
I praise the light for green haloes
and tall figures, which cast
long shadows on parched lips,
my world. The hot sand fills the eyes.
A palpalable seizure shakes the horizon.

I drift like a dry leaf
on the winds of time
the perplexities of sand dunes
and dancing smoke.
What I was striving for all life?
A metaphorical silence
spends the energy of unspoken waking.
The rich decadence of things unhappned.

The occult rules the flesh
and the music of life dies.
The names start trading the tree,
full of flowers, inarticulately
to faithless autumn.
The twigs long for mother shape
the icons will swallow
the melting grief in vain.

Satish Verma

FULL STOP

I allowed you to tread on me unflinchingly.
My mind on pause,
ungrieved you turn back the clock.
Enough to stun the century,
I take cognisance of divine’s club foot.

I did not believe in self-pity
but I was racing against time
to avoid a jealous path running with me.
Yet I was sleeping on bushes of estranged thorns
without locking my golden age.

Tulips are no more my favourites.
You have to dig deep to plant the bulbs
and wait. When death opens the door for me,
I wanted to be free from any commitment
and ready to walk in, like a foot soldier.

This cosmos is mine, body is for you.
It no more obeys my command.
No more commas are needed,
a final full stop will do.
I am returning back to my home.

Satish Verma

COMMUNION

This shapeless fear
gives birth to cosmic vibrations
a prelude to porous thoughts.
Foreign in pain, a face burns
in deep meditation.
Nothing consolates. Hurting
the contents of judgement,
a reflexive existence exonerates
itself from a spiral fall.

Indecisions of sun
to penetrate the fissures of dawn
failed the valley of flowers.
Aloneness was speechless.
The shoots plucked
the sky in flakes. The wind
played at the mercy of trees.
The royal departure
of night sprang a surprise.

The dying seed had
a pride to offer. The sprout.
Nothing is upsetting the garden.
no one is certain of crazy fate.
The sap has a sense of liberation
coming out of conflicts
and chaos. A communion
with space takes place.

Satish Verma

WAKING IS PAINFUL

Reading the innocence of leaves,
a tree, yellow stars,
I was always glad of new birth
and another death. Ceasation
did not repeat itself.
I hold the nightmare, hypnotized.
Pride without flame, ending in smoke,
until you come at dawn
like an echo in silence.

At process of transmutation
old memories are indelible
stains the solitude,
when I am in retreat, to awake the silence.
The wilderness haunts
the morning glory of creation.
Hope imitates the wings
for a brief time. Waking is painful.

In attachment to walls,
labyrinth of miseries
we wanted our language
to show non-conflicting assumptions.
Love generates the search
for cloudless humility.
Seeing through was not
the romance. Denying
was the essence of purity.

Satish Verma