BURNT TASTE

A cyan globe
rolling in the black sky.
I was visualizing
an earthset
on the horizon.

Lianas
threw a noose
around my neck.
Did I
start the fires?

My dissent
was of any relevance?
Who was standing
on the moon?

Self-centered was your vision
I was trying
to turn the tide.

So much bragging
could not go well with me.
The tongue had the burnt taste.

Satish Verma

IT IS TOO DARK

Forgetting the ultimate name
of clean truth
the essence of time latched on to the dangerous arguments.
Something went wrong.
I watched the foot crumbling,
everything was moving towards dark.

I wiped the magnifying glass
to witness the hunger
of everyday life,
blue veins of the shriveled legs.
Sinking deep in smeared eyes,
a panic leaps.
Nothingness to nothingness,
I could not use any syntax.

Repeating same sentences,
you are lost in labyrinth stabbing the walls.
Sunset will send
the blurred sparrows to home.
Antiquity will become a burden.
I am restless, a candle must be lighted,
It is too dark.

Satish Verma

ON BURNING COALS

Loneliness of non-being and,
reality, fill up the vessel.
I search for the eloquence while,
emptiness will be my forte.
Countless words are crossing
like a promise in milk-white days
I gather sunlight through grass leaves.

Life had been full of shadows,
lengthening, penetrating
the tapestry of love.
The descent was steep.
Coming home I found
no humming words.
Sitting in dark
I wait for shooting stars.

Measuring the blood, drawn from our hurts
was a royal reward
for your fingers.
You are allowed to compare blood
with brown coffee.
Sand in our eyes,
we walked bare-foot
on burning coals.

Satish Verma

ERECTED IN MY PAIN

Life gives you a sudden shock,
with ugly scars of mutilated truth.
Arriving becomes a failure,
a tilted faith.
Your eyes were blank but
you were seeing through
your hundred wounds,
spinning in the import.

Continuity of lies starts again.
From post to post
a sting was preoccupied,
fed on odium.
I had an indestructible desire
to set the throat free
from the obtrusive rust.
Love was not enough
a little bit burning on tongue was needed.

Polity has ruined
the green valleys
quietness cries in vain.
Fear in the mirror strikes.
I begin to run towards the sun
erected in my pain.
Times alter the image.
The cosmic bend is trapped.

Satish Verma

RETURN TO MYSELF

Dumbly you come
to the brink of a precipice,
at the point of no return.
Moving, pivoting with
a huge perception.
Knowing that life was exacting,
you are alive,
alone with a conflict.
Your choosing was a miracle.

Seeking was not ending.
Death was an inadvertent mistake.
You lie down in terror.
Deep in the bones you know, you have to move.
There was no cloud above the eyes,
history was an aberration-
rags to riches.

You become yourself
when death defines a name
and I remember a sunset.
My shaking fingers
weave a drape of sorrow.
There was no patch of green
I return to myself.

Satish Verma

GIFT OF LOVE

Between the blue eyes,
wind smeared a hot kiss
on forehead of moon.
There were no half-brothers to watch.

Swarms of thoughts descended
in zero hour of night.
Sadness was beyond threshold
a crucial insult to the arrival of time.

Now I was not going anywhere
I was afraid of myself.
The centre was disappearing,
in the statements of truth.

Pleas are falling apart in
global freezing, of collective brain.
I start sifting through the leaves
a gift of love, my fruit.

Satish Verma

GOLDEN SUNSET

Gently the invisible
strength overrides
penetrating every bone.
The desire was not seeking,
it was emitting a gloss.
Fierce truth was reverberating.
Only the mind was alert,
flesh was hissing.

An intense light
knived my sadness, death wish
it was a legend, I went into a process.
A quietness catching
all the voices of disharmony.
Word by word vocabulary
filtered in my heart.
Priests were prophesying doom.

Instant attention gave a passage,
uncontaminated, closer to the truth.
Gloom was glorified.
Scissors had done their job, few will remember the designs.
I should now think
of a golden sunset.

Satish Verma