Changing Landscape

Living on shifting sands,
do not go for the rains.
One day you will become
a robber crab.

A cross-dresser you were.
My candle burns to see
your face in dim light. Moon
said, it was not yet dark.

Playing with rustling leaves
of autumn. I went on collecting
the gifts of winter like my
variant moods, yellow, brown and red!

Go and meet my deadpan
silver. It would never be my
sizzling poem. I will pour the
green river in your blue eyes.

Satish Verma

Plasmolyzed

This was a troubling concept─
to start a dress rehearsal,
of ethnic cleansing.

Something pokes out─
on the tail end of the story.
There was no heart in the game.

You are driven like a─
flock of sheep. The shepherd
lives in the fortress of slogans.

A placebo effect was quite-
evident. Everybody was
drunk on sugar pills.

Unadulterated, the swearing─
had become genetic. You start
walking on the burning coals.

Satish Verma

For Nothing

You broaden your desire
base, by legitimacy,
ignoring the will of
storm-ravaged sea.

As the sun meets the
falcon, I will give you─
a call, that demons were
entering into the dreams.

The time stoops to pick-
up the wounded peacocks.
The red hibiscus will write
your name on the wall of bricks.

This was a swan song
before our parting. The
darkness will find the stars
hiding behind the strewn─

feathers of blind moon.

Satish Verma

Returning Home

After dispossession,
collecting the dolls─
dusting them off.

Who was watching
you, dousing yourself
to give a political statement?

Cutting the leaves
of grass, I open
the book of Walt Whitman.

This was a targeted
killing. I will not join
the funeral procession.

A mistaken lull.
One day I will─
shoot endlessly.

Satish Verma

Disaster

The cult, the─
rape were also in play,
when Icarus flew out of Crete.

Carrying the sky
on your shoulders when
you were burning.

After visitation
I will write a poem
on the triumph of failure.

The dialect of body
will tear down the bed
unlearning the love.

Whom would─
you believe in distress
unforgiving the sword.

Satish Verma

The Art

The embedded curse
of a roving planet, brings
out a story of otherness
versus loneliness.

Adultery was on cards.
An issue was rising
between the string
and the bullet.

Let us pretend. There was
a serial killer in every─
home, who will come out
at night to send the message.

The curved dots will join
to give an explicit image.
Do you like it? Can
you put it on mantelpiece?

Satish Verma

PREPARING FOR NOTHINGNESS

Like the thinker,
why did you not-
become thoughtless?

You do not display
what have you not.
you come out in bazaar.

Surviving in darkness
in the depth of the─
inverted sea.

The rise and fall of
the chest gleaming with
water and flame.

The want, the
desire, the thirst, kissing
the inappropriate.

Satish Verma