तुम्हारे आँखों की दरमियाँ

इतनी सी है ख्वाइश बस,
जा सकूँ मैं वापीस फिर जहाँ,
तुम ही थे -- साँस और सुकून
तुम ही थे ज़हां

तुम्हारे आँखों की दरमियाँ

Confessions

At the end,
the realization dawns;
everything is but imaginary.

It doesn't matter,
that, your love was in vain;
it doesn't, that

You didn't learn,
to hate. That, to strain
your ears to hear

What is never there
is your own lifelong dirge.
The only real thing,

A defeat you live.

Inflammable

Then, as is the wont,
of dismembered wood, voicing their lament
of embers, to sightless skies
the limbs of trees die;

Again, sparks rise
in a Braille curse
and staying mute, the skies
stoic as the Gods, say nothing.

I could have put a hand
in there, with my palms shoveled
the live coals;
we have done

Labour of a kind,
before, writing


P.S. -- This is not incomplete.

New Year, 2015

I am still throwing up sputum,
as the hours add up to the days
and nights of cough-counting s h e e p

It has been almost a week now.
Or, is it more?
There is nothing new

About this sickly sweet taste
we are old friends.
Maybe it came when it did,

(Sometime around when,
the world switched off;
for its annual binge of gifting and partying,)

To tell me,
there is nothing new
for 2015 to throw up for me.