MOOD SWINGS

Must I give you 
the chilled truth of dry winds 
till the fire 
reaches the backyard? 

The half-thumb 
was held by the wheels. 
Why you were pushing 
the hearse 
of a dead lie? 

Anonymus 
was the letter written by moon 
to the damp cloud. 
The rain drops will never 
agree for the trysts.

Satish Verma

I KNOW ME

It was a freak accident of epithelium 
under anaesthesia. 
You place a window 
on to a hollow brain. 

The money makes the monkey out of you. 
A green light 
blocks the fish, your memory, 
to swim in black thoughts. 

The yellow rose burns 
in your hand. It was beginning of 
a domestic race. The nightmares will 
take care of the sleep.

Satish Verma

VANITIES

Was that a robot 
claiming friendship 
with the relics of past? 

Or a quirk of a raw nerve 
conversing with history: 
and we will wait for centuries 

to build a new scream 
under the pale moon 
in wingless night. 

Whispering sex to flowers, 
bees scrambled on the skin 
of wooly leaves.

Satish Verma

CURVATURE

The visible was most 
invisible. 

Watching the moon 
through veil. 

A bomb explodes 
in your hands. 
The poem wavers- 

and then falls on dew. 

This was not bone-green; 
original, 
not a fake cloud – 

to kiss the feet 
of a burning god. 

It was natural conjugation 
between enemies.

Satish Verma

DRIFT ICE

Absurdity was waylaid 
like a black swan on the 
grass shaking a leg. 

A child walks through me 
antithetical to scorched life 
of parallel egos. 

Austerity was neither present 
nor absent.Volcanic ash 
was spewing on recti. 

It was drifting, the snow bound 
killer, spilling the blood in sea. 
Home was still for away.

Satish Verma

RESPONSE

The myopic tongues 
of tall trees, going downhill 
to find the roots of four-letter words of dead, 
unspoken, but sung in dark. 

They had come out of the skin. 
River was flowing on emotional track, 
with heavy eyelids. Father said, 
he would never die. 

Your unborn children were tasting 
the salt of the road still untaken. The pain 
in the neck was grizzlier, 
when the sun was retreating in virgin hole. 

Moreover, the wrinkles will tell the tale 
of truant hands who would not 
play with the silken adolescence 
of a delirious moon.

Satish Verma

SHARED HEAVEN

For the dream slaves 
the incense has become a moon 
for the alchemic effect of tear’s stain 
in erotic war. 

Ask a mooner, 
will he bring her to bed 
for a song to measure the cantus 
between flight of strings in midnight? 

The small bruises of stars 
were playing under the lemon tree 
in sinking clouds. You must know 
the richness of poverty at night. 

This was the theme to play, 
it was enough to have walked on golden 
leaves of November, while I was collecting 
the false truths of life.

Satish Verma