अंकुश

उठते कुछ सवालों के साथ

बीते कुछ इरादों के सहारे

पानी में बहते कुछ तूफानों के बीच

हमने भी अपने इरादे उतारे

ज़मीन से फलक तक

खाव्हिशों की झलक तक

बिखरे कुछ पल, जो कल थे हमारे

कही अनकही और सुनी अनसुनी

और जो कह के भी न

समझ पाये, कुछ ऐसे थे इशारे

जाने पहचाने, अपने बेगाने

ज़िन्दगी के नजराने

और कुछ बेखुदी के पैमाने

खो कर मिल जाने

और कुछ महफूज़ ख़ज़ाने

आज ज़िन्दगी की कशमकश में कितने

अनदेखे थे और अब हैं कितने अनजाने

चुप रहकर सोचें तो कितने गम हैं

बाहें फैलाये इस अँधेरे में आखिर कितने रंग हैं?

और कह कर अगर जग जायें रातें

तो सूरज बन क्या कल जग जायेंगे...

इस अंकुश से हर सवाल तक बढ़ते सब कदम हैं

न आये आंधियां तो भी ज़िन्दगी क्या पूरी है?

दूरियां और फासले खुद से भी क्या उतने ही ज़रूरी हैं?

Love me two times

Bring out the wine tonight, let's not dine
romance is out of the window,
lets take out time to whine

Get off the shelter
and ring out the chimes,
holy mother of matrimony
chastise me of being divine

mundane prudence is my ardent ask
and being loved
for the way I'm tarnished
even on days I can shine

Love me two times...

Hope and behold,
after knowing what was never told
and between compromise and sacrifice
that takes all the time

Bring to dance your tears
tonight, the fear of loss, the dreary sight,
the might, that thrust, the vision at night
and then woke you through
till it struck twilight

Vision, daydreams and all that plight
Sing me the lullaby that blesses you good night

Love me two times...

Dress up for the times, good or bad
our moves will rhyme
from sauteed hopes to binging on time
till our hopes dash and fears collide

Let's ask for strength to move on in time
Love me two times...
Love me two times...

Waking up the dead

Dead in someone's wake
there you go,
you're not living strong

Keeping all there is at stake
trying hard to croon someone else's song

Holding onto worse to make legions of reasons
appear from depths of the apparent abject glee

Stories that you hold within
and the caricatures that only breed captivity

Discern the foretaste that it's out to control
translated into madness
even reasons take their toll

Nothing is fair, nor innocent,
I keep wondering
if it'd be
how, what, when it'd accrue

My sadness in these meaningless words
and the dead first passion
that was buried in this curse

waking and wailing, the bitter demise
of all that was there to hold

Hung from the sky a hangman's noose
swinging wildly to blow the gazer's fuse
out and out the will to die
slowly make the living senile

Glowing amidst a recluse adobe
withering the winter of despair
fighting the demons in the land
and the spirits in the inner lair

Holding onto hope and just that
till the breath is full of air...

Paint me a Busy Bee

My solitude did beckon me
My emptiness, fancy-free
No hustle or bustle I would heed
I'd rise each morning
and not think till wee
and there I'd be,
kicked back into writing prolifically

I never thought of days, really
How they'd end and where I'd be
So far estranged from meaning,
such obscene privacy

Sitting on my computer busily,
work to do, mails to see
And IM friends to chat hastily

Sitting back with my coffee sometimes,
a sip before it tastes like tea
Then the phone would ring
and keep ringing busily

The first to call, dearest of all
My mom...
"Did you make it to the office at all?"
My manager then would have a second go,
"What time did you come in?
How's the workflow?"
 
And slowly the day,
from here begins to take shape
They all want to know
what, when, where I will be

Available for what they need
I need to schedule that call immediately

Off then to the nearest hold
A quick bite, a grub, hot or cold
A quick text and a glance at the TV
What's happening there?
Another celebrity stamping his hold,
and the lot of us fixated ever more
 
Some more caffeine can't top that
Another cup and the day begins again

A meeting and a plan of action
Effecting schedules and curbing interaction
mechanical, mechanical...

"Another meeting, tomorrow then, will you please?"
"Sure, of course!" The need of the hour, you see!

A deviation then can seem like a curse,
like an emergency ward with a missing nurse
and can things really go more astray
living in a dream that doesn't begin any day
 
While in school, my teacher would often tell me
"If you observe carefully life will teach you poetry"

But, oh, this monotony rhymes with distaste
what was I thinking and
how is this professional if
deep within it doesn't seem chaste

Ah, daydreams! I just overshot my break
Get back to you again later

I've to go chase someone's dreams

While making a report a message beeps,
from a friend it reads
"Are you on for the movie tonight?"

Reacting with a "Sorry"
I feel almost wishfully apologetic,
could I have taken this flight?

The might of fancy
and this materialistic hold,
how have fortunes faded and
and at what rate am I growing old?

Suddenly, it all becomes amusing again,
when the ticking clock suddenly
seems visible to me

In a few hours I'll be free...
How can I shape the end?
Before I know another day would be spend
without me having been 'me'

Will I look back
and would it all still come to me?

When will these words melt to glee?
Inversed logics and reverse polarity...
So much for insularity.

If ever it is to be, it'll be
today I submit another day to my destiny

Wanting for it to germinate till it becomes my greed,
I hope to keep the fuel burning with my poetry

Away from home, but close to my might,
Learning to fly while hoping to flee...

Opening of the eyes

Closed to the world
and guarded tender

shy and savory within

blossoming quietly, my love

In amidst chaos and grappling

cacophony of wanting and asking

somewhere the salty seas rose up high

The tide came down,

and merged back into the sea

the hope that arose never did set back again

Starting then to look around

a face and a name,

and a spring season to crown

Sometimes, adrift in blind dismay,
led astray by a seed of doubt
I prolong my need for a company
and hold myself in reprise again

Amidst shadows I duck for cover
and this solitude, though much better off,

doesn't quite seem alright

Do you exist? Do I look around?

Why am I like this if you are around?

longing for an entity amidst shadows

As if reckoning in my memory,

you turn up and we're one
and I seed my thoughts
into your being, even if in vain

What was hope then and what is present
in the absence of being alive and inane?

I hail incessant this belonging
and overlook any absence
that's so been an everlasting one now
to avenge my reign

Between then and now
and everything that was
never to remain, there it was ...

Not knowing what was left
and what was asked for before
the vows were read and spelled

but if were understood,

plenty of time to wonder now

that the boat left the shore

Where was it heading?
Where are the tears buried?

What is this anamoly and

what leads this might?

Open your eyes, dreamer,

such vanity is unquestioned delight

Dreams, like hope would often

graze the surface

what one finds is hope hatched out

Start dreaming then,

start dreaming beyond a shadow of a doubt...

Distance

How can I define
A love that's neither yours not mine
but our's
and the overkill too
that plauged and plunged
the emotion somewhere along the way

In hoping and of wanting more from life

this time

and realizing every tide in the ocean

will reach this shore, for sure

Quiet noises have begun humming

and in this monotony

silence has begun its own encore

Gradual distance and afterthoughts full of doubt

wanting to say what I can't hold on about,

waiting on seed of premonitions to never sprout

hoping to surrender to reason

than the thought of staying without

The break in flow is for both to see

when you don't look back

I can still see

and when you do

I know you don't see

what you're looking to find either

The peripheries have now become the core

what was the surety that this would be as before

and where is the reason that was without doubt

the engine, the fuel and the driving force of my today?

With as many roads as there can be

Walking a mere endless journey

two passengers with no one but

strangers to befriend and disown

distance in our belonging and between the unbelonging

when both are fighting to be dethroned.

Be here now

Places in my head
I travel without time
bringing me home
to where I can still hear your name chyme

Hope in my heart that you're mine
and some new space for myself
to not lose it when I find you
Be here now...

Bring me to me
Bring me to you
And when we get there
we'd see what really is true

Hope insane and hope till you remain
and hope in vain if that's all that you do
till it becomes your nonchalance
And someday it will come true

Ask for reasons that you can't name
and name the ask that keeps our name
Be here now

And in the distance
long lost lonesomeness lasts
of the promises
that are stitched to the hearts

we live to grasp
these lessens inane
and then the sanity
that calls them profane

Be here now
cause together will be better
than me and you

Be here now
for reasons just won't do...

End of days

Nearing the edge of reason,
thoughts sway

between never ending seasons

of doubts, what lasts

and what stays

Don't say it,
just let it come its way
I've been let down before
coming through the ways
that I thought led
to where I made my shore
and perhaps our bay was too

Remember, how you taught me
to see magic in the world
You know what,
I still do

The occurence and the reccurence of it all
is no more an abysmal blur

They say I have a heart problem now
I tell them, I always did

They tell me I can't love everyone

and but one who I can't see

but must deem is out there true

I wonder how it's still alive
but then I realised, its not
where is the love?

Every step of the way
giving up a little more
everyday, in one or the other way

Remorsing on this journey
wishing for more steps in this play

between wanting and giving up

and this bittersweet foreplay

Let me breathe
cause I'm drowning in my shadow
while you sleep hiding in your sun

The end is what we don't see

and the beginning what we can't define anyway