SIDDHARTHA

He became the rising sun,
And the meandering brook,
Died the death of a heron,
Flew the flight of a pelican,
Dismembered his flesh in the fish decay,
He became the seer and the prostitute,
A man and a woman,
A child in the mother's womb,
He is the smell,
He is the touch,
He is the sound,
He is the taste,
He is the sight,
He is the thought,
He is unity,
He is cosmos,
He is now.

Yet the one who thinks-
Kamala's lips are freshly cut figs,
Red, Ripe and Raw.
He is Siddhartha.

MIRRORS

As I stepped into the cubicle,
The brilliant geometry-an enigma,
Stacked in rows to infinity.
Action and reaction,
Zeroed into a point of time,
There is no discrepancy.
Each miming the other in perfect symmetry,
In madness racing for its reality.

In chaos I reach and my digits contact,
I touched, I didn't feel,
But for the slicing chill of smooth plane,
Slithering ice into my skull,
Hardening the soft inside into a howl.
Lunatic tunes dance in my head like rats trampling on piano keys.
My clenched temples throbbed in pain,
Beyond the zenith becoming a sound of scream.

The figures around screaming too,
But mouthing soundless contortions.

Flames fly up in a jet of shock,

Shattering down the mercury coated glass.

Realization seeping in my pained head,
And in the glowing embers of remains,
My mind cleared of it's rubbles,
I was one and that was I.

NIKITA (A response to the French movie NIKITA)

Just out of her lapse of scream,
She settles in the cold liquid sprawl,
Head cocked in a curious angle,
She stares from her huge eyeballs,
Nested  in their deep sockets.

A flicker of sense disturb the stare,
And glassy the eyes become,
Tears carrying smudged kohl,
Streak down the bony face.

As more sense flood her face,
Eyes flare up in seething glare,
Pressing her knees to her breast,
Till bloodless they became.
She rocks in a frenzied pace,
The liquid pool splashing,
On the cold floor wild patterns it made.

Now, she grips the mouldy wall,
Sprouting weeds like worms.
Pushing her torso into it,
An insect squirming in pain.
Squeamish in her exhilaration,
In an odd convolution she fell.
Tossing in her lunacy,
Till all the fire dimmed.

Rearranged now she is,
In the stony arrangement that she was,
In her vacant and aimless stare...

CORE

All evening was in catanoia,
The crimson sky spread across,
Even on the still lake,
A rich Persian carpet it made.

Trick of illusion,
'Twas,
All fragile origami,
All paper landscape.

I bent over the placid lake,
My shadow cutting the fake sky,
An arresting scream, I heard,
Slicing the airless evening.

And there 'twas,
All evening was an eruption,
Bursting open the bulbous sky,
Bursting open the fake sky.

Receding into itself,
'Twas tranquil again.
But in that gasp of moment,
I saw the cosmic id.

CRIMSON LIPS - For my sculptor friend

On a cold marble face,
A line of hollow black parts the crimson lips,
Frozen in an eternal pain, as if in an incomplete speech.
Inside it, thoughts fervently chase,
The sound of words long lost.

Sun and bustling life greet it everyday.

Some stop to admire the crimson lips.

But who knows what it wants to say?

DESIRE

Caught in his fierce gaze,
In me the fire rising like searing bile,
Flaring every cell with desire,
I burned, I burned,
Until my last care became ashes.

And I broke into a free run,
My parched heart was the desert sun,
I plunged into his cool waters,
Drinking him in a wild frenzy,
Till I was him and he was I.

KEYHOLE!

I confess, I peeped in through the key-hole,
So now I know you.

It's now time for you to reflect,
It's now time for you to confess.

Are you what you announce?
Ashamed to step out?

But now you cannot ignore,
Where will you run to?
It is some one in your head.
The one who haunts you.

So now you just reflect,
So now you just confess.

'Cause I peeped in through the key-hole,
And I know you.