We’re all just waiting to be found but before anyone gets the chance, we’ve gone and hid in another layer of ourselves.

I stopped looking for comfort in people when I realized I'd still have homes to come back inside of me, and I feel safe in my chaos.

These breaths
are but thorns
in my neck.

Your eyes hold
stormy seas of longing, sorrow
and I have the taste for drowning

I wonder what a smile of yours would taste like, if I could eat it.

ribbons of sunrise
I watch the sky
unwrap herself.

drive your heart
to command fire,for rides.
water will robe you
as Winter comes
so cast yourself an offering
that the wind can catch and burn.

Send me  your thoughts,
enveloped in a sigh.

The path behind is twisted, the path ahead unknown.

glancing beyond bare branches
to landscapes previously unseen.

Take this life instead Large enough for All those bullets.

This lamp that burns within letting me burn the grief, agony, confusion & bitterness before returning to the steady light that illumines.

The earth,
More barren
Without little footsteps.

Black can be defined as the exhaustive combination of multiple colors. In our darkness lies the spectrum of hope.

why do I listen
to the constant quietness 
of unearthliness ?

footsteps erased by tides
never forgotten
their memory held
in the grains of sand, eternally.

Drape me in your words
then proceed
to read me.

Your words
are woven silk
clothing my naked soul.

The lover disappears in loving. Then there's only love, not the lover or loved.

Map out my contours,
can you define me?
I'm crimson, starlight,
tears and dusty skies.
Clad in clay maybe,
perhaps, uncertainly.

Every time he cried,
the heart of night splintered
into starlight,
kissing his tear stained face.

It's the dreamers who will save the world, but the dreamers are dying.

Even then you had worn
the mask of night and danced,
high up on that precipice,
and the declining sun would set
beautifully, just for you.

പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കാതെ പെയ്ത ഹേമന്തത്തിൽ പ്രണയത്തിന്റെ അവസാനത്തെ കണവും ഉറഞ്ഞു പോയി

with fire in your eyes
and a carve of wind in your words,
you hear spirits call back and forth
between falling leaves
and all that they burn.

in the afterburn of free will
my broken faces
melt their wings
staring at gold
one feather at a time..

time,you are a wicked mistress.

behind a shade drawn down,
the moon guides my soul into every journey
I am masked with surviving
I am what love used to do when mirrors cried.

I've fallen in love with my 'self' that loves you aesthetically and unconditionally.

my solace is rebellion
crawling faster than light,
pulling back my stain,
skinning night,
lingering somewhere
near the dark edge of never found..

knowing you were here
was enough
for me, for us
then
you took the shears
and cut me out
smeared my poems
across the finish line.

mining the pain to write
writing the memory to forget
as the river of words flow
with the tears that wrote them.

lend me your blue,
so I may hold up half your sky; twilight

a little piece of you
in every word i write.

There is no dancing
even to the music of the seasons,
with a paralyzed Spirit.

You put your hand on the answer
and the question dissolves.

Memories of you cling
like leaves to the wet pavement. Beautiful, persistent..
Until the tears dry
and they are surrendered
to the wind.

Memories of you cling
like leaves to the wet pavement. Beautiful, persistent..
Until the tears dry
and they are surrendered
to the wind.

I made a prism out of smiles and called it poise.

Autumn stands still in the morning trees
in its mind the warning:
all things die.
in its heart the reassurance:
all things are born again.

you walk
into my cage
as if
I just imagined
these bars.

counting time
in breaths
for that touch
scrawled across my mind
leaving me, unwritten.

another wooden bench, where I leave the world behind. Tibetan monks stroll languidly through this walkway.
McLeod Ganj.

Look at my blood flowers

because I write
with a serene sharp blade
that soothes
as much as cuts into the deepest parts of my soul.

with fire in your eyes
and a carve of wind in your words
you hear
spirits call back and forth
between falling leaves
and all
that they burn.

an angel day
spoken spray rakes
what cancers cause a soul's inward turn,
even the longest of
nights cannot consume the
entirety of my shadows.

You're the smell of ink on the pages of an old book.

Mainlining you
eye dropping
every word.

Two big beautiful poems,
your eyes.

Thoughts that drowned in a cup of chilled coffee

It's been quite a while since I wrote a piece of essay as the words of my ilk no longer fit in but into poems.
Although a terrible headache has been trying to freeze those moments on my every attempt to articulate it, I'm panting and struggling to relive the mesmeric time I had over a cup of chilled coffee today. I wish I could rewind and re-write the full story, giving it a try anyway.

Against my hopeless hope and faded dream, she walked in breaking my random musings.
I was shaken a bit but held on to the weirdest philosophy of life: " I pretend. I pretend that I've moved on. I pretend that I'm happy, I'm strong. I put a smile on my face, a drink in my hand, and move along."

Along with the twilight-like unreal rays that slid across the glass door, she came in, with those oceanic eyes wide open.
My first instinct was to say hello to her eyes psychoanalytically but gave up the idea after realizing their charisma that I can't even gaze in more than few microseconds.
Without listening to the metal music that my heart has started playing louder, I began to act reality, because Sometimes the heart needs to rest before its ready to love again. For her it was just me, but to me, it was her and my endless thoughts.

Words can be twisted, not the feelings put into those words. Let me be confident and certain about my scribbling. Taking in a long, deep breath... Yes this is it.
Why are Shakespearean couplets and Arabic poems making unusual appearance in my head ?
Ah let me forget everything and write without any flaw.

Is this getting lengthy and more casually? Who cares.

She was sitting there, right across the table. But the secluded me was still in the island parted by strange waves of seven seas.
Why am I returning to poetry when I'm supposed to be writing prose here?

I was brought up to not speak unless spoken to, that's probably why I just talk to myself a lot. But I must write, too.

Ah let me gather more of memories and continue writing about my chilled love in the coffee, or whatever it has to be. Is this becoming funny in the word sequence? Apparently this isn't meant to be a humorous post.

Okay heart, enough of your overflowing emotions and stupid thoughts. Let me write something rational. By the way what's the point of rationalising things here??

Hello headache, I told you, you can come and have sex with my head as long as you want, but allow me to write now, this note has to have an uneasy end. So see you later.

Uff, what was Ezra Pound's words about irreparable love?? Thanks to the memorising mechanism, I've got my poetry bowl in my head empty as well.

Irreparable love this is. Brutally ripped off by myself.
Who can fix it?
Why fix ??
I won't trust my instincts anymore.

And it's raining here, for the record. Rain has to be parallel to romance, is it?? No. I've cried in rain, like they say in songs and love quotes. I literally did.

What was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw her? Yeah, just to steal her away the world and make her still & look deeper into the stars in her eyes. But what if she would stop me ??

The icecubes have started melting. So are the chocolate crisps in the wrapper.  My heart now beats to her blinking eyes. She destroys my each thought with each blink. Her beautiful fingers carelessly wrapped around the glass. Cold, beautiful fingers!
Is my heart becoming jaded? Shut up brain! Too much stupid questions huh ?!

Why ranting at brain? I had all the answers until I met her. Now what, just questions and absolute nothingness.

She often asked me if I was scared of those eyes. I'm not. But yes I am scared of the way they make me feel.

Some thoughts can make anyone a connoisseur of love. Everybody has their version of thoughts; secret, lame, outspoken, overrated,  utopian or suppressed thoughts yet energetic enough to make the soul live upto what it desired for. Everybody can have a panoramic view of such thoughts in a mind that's attained peace. But peace always comes in a possibly little shade of happiness.

Hello brain, are you pretending to be a Romeo here? Like, what's the problem?? Let's call it a day. Let me write up what's left in you. This is growing up to be a boring article.

It's almost 2am. Am I in the other timezone ? She must be deep asleep, diving into the wonderful ocean of dreams. Of course, she has beautiful inner eyes too.
Why am I perpetually yearning for her thoughts ? Why do I even exist ??
I think emotionally handicapped should be a recognized disability.

Her untamed velvety hand is still around the glass. She's sipping in, I can see through her, her transparent throat. Her engulfing eyes are moving like fishes in the bowl. 

What am I here, right in front of her ? The soul that unstoppably loving her or her casual mate ? I'll pretend to be normal. But every time I pretend to be someone I'm not, I die a little.
Shut up basit, let the soul speak to hers.

Her eyes again!
The only difference now is that her eyes glitter lot more than what I could describe. It make a musical sequence in me, like hundred gazals have been sung together  deep within.
This is, as I was afraid, going to be an incomplete note. Everything has been incomplete, then why this is not?!
Incompleteness, I don't know if there is such a word, but hardly matters here, Incompleteness is a soothing experience. Without being able to meet the other and living in virtual fantasies. But, it's surreal too. One must learn to see it's charm, from pain, from incurable wounds of love and from reading the beloved's eyes.

Obviously, There is no escape from the silent screams of our own mind.

Coincidentally, Mehdi Hassan singing in his soulful silky voice :
"ab ke
bichde to shayad
kabhi khwabon mein milain
jis tarah sookhay huey phool
kitaabon mein milain"
Now that we get seperated this time,
then maybe we will meet in the dreams someday,
Just like we find the dried flowers
between pages inside books.

When gazing into your big moon-like eyes, what can I do but succumb ?

I am stealing the two of cups from your soul.
please, don't mind me
I won't hurt long
just surrender
please,complete a form
before time is up.

who needs umbrella,
when mouthing the rain ?

a drop splatter majesty, rain again.
October says;
on your knees, you can dry yourself
with the memory of Summers past, though please pay tribute.

if only,
that long,short-worded sentence,
pausing a held breath,
could be left on a window sill
for the rain and the stars,
climbing past clouds.

Am I twisted, past a point of going back inside my locked cage ?
do I rage, sometimes ?
but now,I just churn time
to find your smile already there.

yesterday,
has already been laid to rest.
today is nearly gone to the fires,
the ash maidens that sing Ghazals,
wade tomorrow too.

pushing gray skies,
a cold light of October
knows to eat memories
of Summer left over in the bled leaves.
I sit,warming my hands in this tide.

little yellow leaf,
caught in the winds on a string.
how you look like a butterfly,
ghost-dancing
all that Spring and Summer.

chime echo poem
rifling pockets home.
my bones feel for magic,
before I can fake a smile
or sell you paper luxury
and sewn on crawls for faces.

I stay inside to write poems in silence.
occasionally,I open windows,
for stoned immaculate apathies,
to rhinestone-steal moonlight in the rain.

perceptual artistry lacking,
I bleed out.

Shala!

In the quiet still
of a soulful moment
the soft flutter of grace
see yourself
in the white flowers
that surround the moon.
Your big eyes, like sarod
Conjuring up heavenly ragas.
Your big eyes, like a lake
reflecting autumn and tulips.
Your laughter,
stretched across the sky
Bringing down hails and drizzles.

You pull the dark clouds down
And make bubbles of joy.

You know the algorithm
that can retrieve butterflies.

This october midnight
the wooing sky, drumming head
the wind and sleepy stars
My caressed dreams
but the scented you
Among eighteen stars 
raining along oceans.
and you came down.
I am peering into the
shadowed depths of you
and seeing
the colorfully drenched soul
and those sparkling big eyes.

Don't forget the rural self in you. it may metamorphose you to an ifrahuman.

beyond sky and colors

eyebrow speaks,
from the museum of memories.
for I had placed it there
the very moment it fell off
your burning eyes.
you don’t rhyme in any end
You escape from poems.
but let me scribble a note for you
on this sepia stone,
beneath vintage rain 
With a phoenix's feather.

And when I write, my love
Ink may wrinkle but never fade.
simultaneous stillness and motion
you don’t know how this is.
eerie night or twilight,
thoughts of you find their way to me
plague me digest me.
unpronounced echoes of
love's sigh revolve around.

every time you took eyes
off the book
I thought of irreconcilable distances.
when you smiled, I wondered
how to recreate it out of memory
in meditated eves.
I put your smile
in museum, wrapped in crystals.

Amidst these downpours
grows my love for you.
rain translates everything.
but I'm afraid if forget you
before another rain walks in
don’t you please fade away
like an half formed word
in the forgotten language,
like a stammered thought
or like an incomplete ghazal.

what is the name of those
stars in your eyes?
What season brings that
smile onto your lips?
Which anthropology knows
your speaking malayalam?

Was it just another rain?
Or you ??
aloft your colors and laughter.
If not, then why these wet mango leaves,
fresh paddy, ripples and pebbles
remind me of your presence?
I have never seen such colorful rain
plants dancing so poetic
and every droplet kissing flowers 
as passionately as Orpheus.
Is that rain or my love ?
as I've never yearned for a season like this
after her departure.

You, yes you jaan-e-man,
are flower and I, sand where you live upon.
let me multiply
to contain your wholesome.
I am that neglected stone
Etch your beautiful self over me.

don't love me
for that makes us together.
I want this distance, not-belonging.
had you loved me, angel,
I would've stopped singing
I would've waken up from endless dreams
I would not look at flowers,
see colors, grow with autumn
Sweat in summer afternoons.
had you loved me, hamna,
Meghamalhar raaga would not
intoxicate me.
Had you loved me,
ethreal poets, like Kabir
would write about Us,
not me, about You.

Do not love me
for my love to you be ceaseless.
you leap across time and spaces
to tell me stories of
my other self I left with you.

You send me to a world where
even gender can't divide us.
a world of poems beyond rhythms and syllables.
a world of arabian afternoons,
of dreamless nights,
of full of you, your laughter.  timeless unconditional love, this is.

You, a stirred dream on butterfly wings
and Me, a droplet on dead leaf. 

An empty rattle: too many access[ories]
not enough content[ment]
for every bauble a vacuous bubble

Some days I dress in vowels.
Other days, in expletives.
Today I dressed in both.

Feeding her blanched face
spoonfuls of sky
skin swallowing the glow.

And the moon bleeds in smoky grey light
a concert for the senses
pushing it out into the audience of night
as lighters flicker as stars.

If you do unto me
what I want to do unto you,
we may never leave
this corner of dreams,
but no worry,
I will leave the window open
to smell words I remember.

this LED lantern,silver candle-ly
with a handle to grab what you see,pitter-patter- rain-splatter,
rubber-tire-wet-roar
in whir- symphony-noise.

not sure of anything,
except when I close my eyes,
it is you I see.
sharp time finds what
lights up the dark edge
of the universe's fabric.

A  diamond-sharp-subtle-touch
of soul in here,
say it out loud,
let it linger,
make a wish!

Naira

This eerie night
I can pen any poem
that I wanted you to sing for me.
I can paint your
black duppatta
and the magics you had beyond it.
I hear your chuckles,
your sigh and breath. ample, sumptuous,
decadent lean,these
words have me
between
wanting to
say more
and just
crawling ashore.
each wave,curls your mapped
algorithm.

You had entered me
and inhabited comfortably,
When I yearned for
my lost beats.
your voice burnt
beneath each layer
of my memories skin.
You disappeared,
and I stood between
tulip flowers and dream sequences.

I wander for you
on the Dal lake side,
in icy nights,
through Zafron strands,
inside the echoes of Parimahal.
I look for you,
in my incomplete dreams
and unfolded within.

mad poetry,willful gravity
and animal magnetism,
bone-caging desire.
I seek every why,
while open mouthing the rain
and the dead light of stars.

pressing into a warm wade of clay,
my soul is that hand held lantern in the dark,
every breeze lifts a song,
knows not to pay to carve a memory.

just keep writing,
as if holes are dug
to be planted with what you can offer
without knowing if it will grow outside of chanced rain and Sun.

Note for Desdemona

This is a routine lament. Colors are dear, these days.
Yellow flowers wilt
into brown silence;
voices fade,
there is nothing more
to be said.
Someday, all of this might make sense-
these faded days will bear witness, maybe.
But not now.
Where is the place where all silences end?
Maybe, there are ways to be objective about very long ago-
there are no answers in long walks, that one turned out to be a lie.
Last night,
I burnt your last photograph,
and my failures.
This morning they were back in the mirror.
Maybe, then, it is just you and not Me-
listening to the distance, routine tidings coming from a dirty grey ocean,
I can still lay everything on your door.
You are my straw-woman,
my imaginary Desdemona.

when we enter
our chamber of sorrows,
marrow tightens
in our bones cages,
we receive the marsh fogs,
like hush curtains
of second chances spent.

Call the rain,
gently whisper each poem,
each word that crawls
to where I want you
a slow tasted savoring,
mouth your tides,
tongue the undertow.

Ju

Perhaps, the red magic rays
that you hid behind your mehendi flowers
Or the crimson cascading
from your romantic alchemy,
Would tell me how
you entered my lost Rome.
I'd then tell you stories,
Story of Anarkali,
story of blue ribbons
that float for the setting sun,
Untold story of Laila
and an ancient story
of faded roses.

Autumn passed by
and then you happened.
why did you wait for seasons ?
or do you believe in reasons ?

Ah my deja vu !
is that you or your smile
that strangling my words ?

Your words Ju,
carry me persian statues
I always dreamt of.
Your sigh walks me to
Unknown riversides.
Your absence surrounds me,
like song surrounds loneliness.

I cant now ask this midnight,
for it is all set to go off
I cant ask rain
for it can no more drench me to fever.
I cant ask seasons to return.
I cant ask birds to sing
for I've already had them caged
and they've forgotten the songs.
I cant even ask you,
for you've happened
in an invisible corner
of my soul.

There's no sanctuary
for the shadows,
when you give me a reason
to Love you.
as you do without a word,
with just your thoughts
kissing the wind.

I wish I could whistle
that magic tune
If you and those
Seasons would come to me.

burden of silence
on eyelashes.

If only these words were wings
they would reach her
but I am only ten thousand ribbons
prattling in air
weaving gold frondescence.

Your questions

You always asked me:
why are your poems short ?
sometimes fractured and incomplete ?
trying to hide improper metaphors ?
concluded on unexpected assertions and sighs ?
trapped in mercurial
changes of emotions ?

You asked me :
why do you paint
flowers of Paris
in your poem, you had distances.
and the forgotten seasons
of Kashmir and Sea ?

I say, my love :
every fractions of you,
can repair me.
I will absorb from you,
the lost words and colors.
And you will see
My verses breath and
draw a rainbow for you ;
a rainbow with no colors
that your eyes know
and a song that you
never heard.
You, can do with me
What my poems could'nt.
and you will not ask again
anything.

feed me
a smiled thought of you
and I'll dance with words
on nights like this,
where bliss is walking
in the warm rain,clothes,
a memory again.

as if they weathered each other
windblown yet steadied
hand in hand.

enrapt in dense mass of us
where grass keeps growing
sans weed
singing all the time.

Trees and flowers
Never argue
With their seasons.

Triplet weave,
sleeve pages
turning wheels,
I deal with emotions.
expression
somehow finds
words,paint or clay
to cup my bleeding heart
all day.

Read to me
from your favorite book.
Lean in close;
so I can feel
the parts that
leave you breathless,
And I could become that.

Write a poem a day,
then more.
Turn my guts inside out
and read the tea leaf patterns
Bottom swirl the wretched spills
on love's road bleeding.

why do I abide
in the throes of love,
whether weather fine or storms for all my eyes to see,
this is what I want to be,
rain,rain and more rain.

Fingernail drawing a slit
through an overripe moon
the juice of its light
dripping celestial body
across the little-
black dress of night.

The weeping in the hollows
Struck a tune.
Fit for a clown,
Fit for a loon.

some flowers
never tell you
their names.
(you just remember
what she smelled like).

The soul
always remembers
what the mind tries to forget.

Parallel trains of conversation,
parallel trains of thought,
a veil of words unspoken.

Flares of Love emanate
from a loving Heart.
rendering inactive
machinations of fear.

When Who spoke to What,
When became active
and engaged Where to look,
for a How.

Her book of empy pages
wrote itself
on the altar of Desire.
but! then she ran out of ink
in the middle of confession.

The folds in his eyelids
of memories restrained
each lash keeping a secret
of what couldn't be undone.

communion of thought,
our sacrament.

Once souls have mated
the Words hardly matter
Even Worlds can't shatter
Bonds developed across
the way Souls cross.

wrapping my whispers
around your silence.

Listening to the perfect harmony : of night's calm rain.

I dig into my soul
to find a rare path
the deeper I go
more treasures I discover.

Soul stirring muse,
The scent of fading jasmine
blossoms as moon beams dance through animated branche.

In the silence
words become runes
beveled into impatient stone
to be carried through time.

demise not by my pen
paint you righteous,
the writer that writhes ink to fire
setting fevers to skin and soul.

Let me paint
the sacredness
of your naked Soul.
I promise
each brushstroke will contain
your Beautiful Truth.

Bodies are like poems, only a fraction of their power resides in the skin of things. Remainder belongs to the spirit that swims through them.

I wake
to an inky night
paper beckoning with
white angel wings
waiting windsail words
I fly to meet my thoughts.