Untitled

Seated on a bough of a willowy dream,
I pluck languid blossoms
and press them between the
pages of a book.
There they fade
into broken poems,
the withered, unfulfilled promises
of a spring gone by.

We meet as friends

We meet as friends
across a table
full of freshly-emptied glasses.
We meet as friends
across a distance
of five years.

We have both journeyed down
the road
to our divergent destinies,
yet we sit around the table
and share the same stale tales
that brought us to laughter
and tears
so many years ago.

We meet as friends
and try to rekindle the moment
when we didn't need to remind ourselves
that we were friends.

Nirbhaya's night

The night is dark,
and I have nothing but my
pride and shame to burn
to dispel the
darkness
of my own making.

Hope

The withering leaf
struggles against the raging gale by clutching at
the brittle twig
of an old branch
which belongs to the tree
with decaying roots
sunk in
viscous mud.

Leaf twig branch and tree
fight
with undying hope in their hearts

Untitled

I lie shattered on the floor
like a mirror,
reflecting the
kaleidoscopic
fragments of my thoughts and emotions.
The light glints off
the edges of my broken soul,
sharp pieces of a blunt past
that will never come together
to make a recognizable whole
ever again.

You loved me.
You trusted me.
So here I lie
in shatters,
among the debris
of your trust
and my infidelity.

My Shame

You step into the light
and our lustful eyes
crawl over your body like vermin.
You seek refuge in the shadows
and our leprous hands
pull you into
narrow blind alleys
lined with deaf walls.

Woman,
you were meant to be the
sunlight
that lit up our dark lives;
and the shadow that
shielded us from the harsh sun.

Yet you're safe from us
in neither light
nor shadow.

Untitled

Somewhere in the attic
of my mind,
hidden beneath layers of time,
is a jumble of yellowing
love letters
written, but never sent,
to the women I loved.

Today
I shall open that attic
once again
and brush away the cobwebs
that hang there like
curtains of indifference.
Then I shall add
the letter I wrote
last night
to that ragged pile of clumsy love.

Today
I will enter that attic
once again
to amalgamate old pain
with new.

A common yellow round button

It's just a common yellow round button
with two holes for eyes
and a small, curved
upturned mouth.

Yet, when I see it
in the messages you send,
I feel the glow of your
dazzling smile
on my skin.
And sense the darkness
evaporate
from my soul.

It's just a common yellow round button.

A Doomed Love

The sun hides behind
a cloud
and sheds its tears,
which fall over the powdery ash
like a shower of golden kisses.

Restored to life,
the ashes leap into the air
in a colourful symmetry of feathers.
Defying death and reason,
the phoenix soars skyward
to meet the sun
in another destructive embrace.

Then, as the cinders of its lover's
burnt wings
fall back to earth,
the sun again draws a cloud over its face
and sheds a shower of golden kisses.

Someday...

Someday
I wish you would lie on my pillow
and listen to it repeat everything that I have wanted to say to you,
but never did.