Revisited

 He revisited.

Came and sat beside me,
And asked why my mix-tape
Mused to melancholy.
And I stared blank into
The whiteness of the blank walls
That surrounded me.
I looked out the window
Waiting for answers to pass through me
But the day was as silent as my lips
And no winds blew
Carrying the replies I needed.

His smiles started to level.
And he demanded reasons of my silence.
And reasons, were met with silence.
The window was still open,
The horizon grew invisible
Covered with gray clouds
I could feel the rain's first drop
As could my eyes, wettened, by rain?

He gave up, told me I needed help.
But didn't offer.
The rains weren't concealed anymore.
That day saw a deluge.
And he left, like always,
Under the coloured shades of his umbrella.
My mix-tape kept playing
And rains poured, everywhere.

He was me, younger.
He was happier.

Eclipse

The luna had arrived and hid the sol
And plunged in darkness the
whole wide land of the masked souls.
And the souls did come to view the glory
of a barren moon
Concealing that which
whose stories were told.
The birds illusioned
their sun had gone .
And their time
to chirp and play was slept
to rest this rebelling day .
Then came the brainiacs with
ideas thousands.
And theories of how the lives of
humans lay in unrest
For an arrangement of
bodies unheard away had been
so naive to nocturnal nascency .
And the glittering
eyes of a tad fat teen
Shone as white as a keen sunday,
And another box of a
checklist was ticked away to glee . 

Chaos

What if man never came into existence?
Man, funnily enough, a synonym for humans,
And not the half of them.
What if man, again, never came into existence?
Existence, that demands to be proven.
Existence, that tests your threshold of tolerance.
Tolerance, another creature of mythical memory.
Memory that is a bubble waiting to be popped open
And deluge the unknown air of nascent nostalgia.
Nostalgia, an over-worked vagrant
That used to be a prince,
Until memory turned malignant,
And desires turned dark.
Dark, the reigning emperor
Of the gentles of night.
And night, the mysterious warrior,
That wins the lost war against truth.
Truth, that is everything but true.
Truth, as fickle as fame and flame are.
Truth, so misrepresented in its different chronicles,
Disguising lies as the absence of true reasoning.
Reasoning, that grows scant
In the irrationality of broken belief.
Belief, that existence should be worth it
And be not a solemn song
That placidly plays away to peace.
Peace, that is unknown, unheard of and unwilled
In all years that man, and woman, existed.

What if man, and woman, never came into existence?

Inside The Watcher's Mind

I am being watched,
Constantly.
And every decision I make
Is judged
By a mind so much more experienced
Than I could ever hope for my time.
I become conscious and
My forehead folds with every action,
And the watcher is always a step ahead,
As if he could rewind and play my past
And knows what my future is.

The watcher is me.

My future self, perhaps watching me
As I write this,
Adds the unwanted pressure to write good.
My future self, perhaps watching me,
As I eat and dwelve in lethargy,
Is cursing me for his ailments.
My future self blames me
For anything that goes awry,
Perhaps, I didn't do enough in my time.

I float in a bubble of memory
Inside the watcher's mind.
Scared for the bubble breaking open
And me flowing out, shrieking for help,
Help provided by the watcher me.
My rendezvous with what is yet to come
And I'm clueless, vacant on my speech,
Yet brimming with questions that I want answered,
And some better left unasked,
Wishing I could get him to stop the replays,
And implore him to stop watching
But I know I'm stubborn
And time could only have worsened that.

My shower turns drier with
The ascending scarcity of life's liquid.
And mind slithers back to normalcy,
Shower thoughts are a fancy world.

I, The Poet

I, the poet, can turn graphite
Into murals of history.
I, the poet, don't survive, but thrive.
And I, the poet, don't hide my word,
For my thoughts condense, and condense into
Ballets, by a quill, overt with the
Music of blue inkishness.
I, the poet, with the flows of my hand, reckon
To sweep the sand off the writing paper
And besmear it with golden dust.
Dust of my hidden past and gold of my art,
Gold of experience and dust of rampart.
I, the poet, can invent words,
Like I just invented inkishness.
I, the poet, have liberty,
To conjure spellings out of thin air,
Air that is thinner than the bottleneck
Of our filters of social acceptance.
I, the poet, can cleave expressions
To make my rhyme.
I, the poet, can single-handedly
Challenge time.
I, the poet, am powerful,
And I, the poet, have no doubt that
The pen is mightier than the
Guns
And shells and hand-grenades,
And nuclears,
And for the sake of memory, swords.
I, the poet,
Sanely swim,
In my insanity.

Echoes

The clock is ticking, my life inert, frozen,
In moments as old as a relieving summer,
In memories that are but alive.
And the coldness of their frozen replays,
Nothing but sand slipping away
From a palm so wide open
That all my strength is still so scarce
To close and grab the last grain of present
From falling away to kindred rivers.
I struggle to sail my boat,
Away to safer streams
Unrippled by the fall of boulders of yesterday
But i'm stuck in a whirlpool
Swilling myself in yester smiles
While I drown in ignorance of now's nuance.

I hear echoes, my past is still calling ,
My mind ceases the journey
But hands begin rowing to escape
The hollow reverberations of sunflower-ed memories
As if feet struggling to climb a steeping slope
Braving through chilly winds of my mind's coercion.

The unkempt boat breaks in two,
And the crack echoes to far and within.
The clock stops ticking.

Reflections

And what troubles you?
The nothingness of reasons,
The confusions, cluelessness
Like a bird stretching wings to fly
And the wind drying her eyes
Yet unaware of where to fly
Unaware of where she flew from
Unaware why she flies.
But her tears are drying,
And isn't that fine?

And what do you plan to do of it?
For a moment, just swim deep
In the blues of ocean
But not so deep
That the pressure crushes me
And I fail to swim up again
For the ocean is lovely
But the air is where my breath lies.

Does it hurt? Or is it a relief?
It hurts, yes, and it relieves, yes, too,
Uncertainty doesn't hurt, does it?
Does watching the stars hurt?
Lying on toughened glass, gazing above,
Only the glass is now broken and piercing
And the redness deluging from you
Finding its fade in the black of sky
The glass hurts, yes,
and the stars relieve, yes.

What do you do for ending it?
I don't.
I can't.
I don't wish to.
I just let it flow and it flows, like Niagara,
Hits a rock and speeds up
Turns into a mist for a summer relief
Or falls, down and down,
And down, and down,
Lost forever or perhaps on another journey.
Perhaps, a cycle to flow and return and fall,
Again.
Isn't that the cycle of life they talk about?

What does it feel like?
Like a farmer watching rain.
He needs it and the wheats yearn and yell.
But will it overdo and rive his dream?
Can it not?
Or like a knife stabbed inside.
There is blood on me and within is metal,
Sharpened.
And if I remove, it hurts and I may die,
Do I wish to die?
The knife remains in, as if part of me already.

And what helps you?
This does.

The Passersby

A boy was crossing the staircase 

But bumped into a group

As heavy as he was,

Shot with comments of a truck tyre falling

On the poor passersby

Didn't quite like it, tried to comeback

With "sarcastic comments

 To outsmart bullies",

Something he searched for 

Just the previous sleepless midnight 

He tried to do the best savagery

But a shoe came out of the blue

And smacked him fallen onto the ground

With pricking laughter piercing within.

He trod home troubled with terror

And overthought the whole live day

To complain seemed a child's play

And to appear helpless was sheer dismay.

And so he went to the school, the tyre went back,

Thoughtless still,

Yet so brave in appearance.

Pretending to ignore, to not care,

While contemplating replies

To the constant dares.

And soon did he notice

That more had joined

To relish laughs out of his bulky misery.

And thinking happened again

And mocking happened again

And each night and day happened again 

So different the calendar said

Yet all the same, perhaps each day worse

Than the worst of yesterday

Still wondering what to say

For excuses of illness didn't work,

Promises and bets never did work,

And nothing stopped the mocking bird.

There were pictures drawn

And enjoyment fair

Glasses smudged 

And jokes shared,

All with a pretense of deep ignorance

While words kept winning the war within.

And finally did he confront,

Not others but himself, the tyre,

The elephant, the hippo, the cow, the him

That normalcy is but no judgment

And the zoos did fit, the tyres still called,

Each staircase brimmed with grinning passersby,

Just the words now mattered a tad bit less,

Attacked and hurt a tad bit less, a very tad less,

And now, he grew used to them

Used to the badgering words and howls

Used to sharpened words so foul,

Used to, not relieved, they say,

Because not all stories end in happy days.

Not mine atleast.

Misfit Managed

Flashing teeth and tinkling cheers
Of dazzling smiles and clicking glasses
The red unwelcome to my misfit me
Whose eyes seek a rarer corner
Far and away from the fraught flood of funny folks
And so I pretend and put on a show
Of preoccupance and engagement

I receive calls from fictional phones
And numbers drawn out in my mind
And the talker talks without delay
Constraining me to those cut-out corners
I chose for my inability of indulgence.

I laugh and I then chat in seriousness
I listen, pretend to listen, and nod my head in agreement
For even in calls from nothingness,
I hesitate to disagree.
I introspect my little theatrical
And contemplate my next excuse,
For concocted calls too demand an end.

I then need to hustle in,
In and into flowing conversations.
Imploring the worth of my presence
And the difference of my absence,
Both answering out to none.
None, also my will of merriment
And my strength to pretend more
of all alright
As if i'm no misfit that walks among all
Playing parts of silly strangers,
Strange to even my misfit myself.

So Do I

Humans make mistakes
And so do I
I wish I could use that excuse
But humans disappoint
And so did I

And they let you down
And I do so too
They fail you, they're selfish
And so am I

Humans are obstinate
And I am too
And they fall short
And so have I

Might I hide myself behind the curtain
Of human tendency to err
And fade into oblivion
I cannot and hence humans cry
And so do I.

Poetry

A poet's words found me and sheltered
My wrinkled forehead,
Embraced me and whispered
That I wasn't alone
Not the first to run into
The darker shades of blinding light
From the gentles of the nascent night
And not the last one strugging to inhale
The seldom ever seen freshness
Of the morning winds- unpolluted.
They read my mind and imprinted my life
In verse of ones I had never known
Yet felt so near that they could hear
All my whining in no requirement
Of utterances from my vocal weakness.
I breathed in and out and felt the newfound
Freshness of the breezing stanzas
of nature's poets.
And in my confidingness,
The sibilance of sunrisen sighs
of stoical satisfaction
Lended me a notepad
And a pencil sharpened enough
To write a lifetime of my very own verse.
Gave me a home inside mine
And a room so filled with metaphor
That solace itself found solace,
Tucked beside the barren bedside,
Under the pillowcovers
Of oh so poignant poetry.

Waiting For The Night To Arrive

Running towards avocations
And delusive laughs and smiles,
Towards comfort from second-strings,
Towards a shelter safe and far from my latent insecurities,
Towards a simpering mask to put on my face
And conceal my very self.

Wish I could change like weather
And stop my silent trickle,
To rainbow-ed sunshine.
Transit from roaring tempests,
To the coolness of a cloud's shade.
And be lesser like the sea,
Forever same, churning within,
Screening salty secrets of solemn sorrows,
Yet strutting a sunny face at the morning's sand.

I reach my mask and put it on but it slips, For my face is oceanly wet with a sea of salted tears.
Tears of tiredness from expectations ,
And not living up to them.
Those of others and many more mine, Tiredness from disappointed eyes of those around and away,
And those staring at me
From behind the mirror.
And my mask slips again,
Exposing the redness of the black in me, Waiting for the night to arrive
And lend hope to breathe again
In a world of suffocating strangles.

Mother's Touch

Clasping on like a soldier his sword,
Little hands swaddled in
The gentle warmth of motherly care.
Eyes squinched and forehead wrinkled
At a look of the world's hasting crowds.
A voice unable to reach out and up, Towards the enduring heights
To his mother's sharpened ears.
He holds her close like indigent nomads do The bag of their only right and earning.

The cattle moves like a bat out of hell,
And a soul as little as a single raindrop in An ocean contrived by mighty rivers
Is ever so unnoticed.
The earners move and now they move
So rather like raged elephants,
A path hedged is a path stomped away.
And the white shine in innocent eyes does Not wish to yet be stormed, like many Others who willingly would.
A teeming rush deluges in,
And drags the gullible eyes away,
Away from the only home they had known.
His shrieks of panic and dire distress
Shunned to nil by the crowd's grey noise.

And as he feels the final touch of maternal concern,
Reaching for him yet dwindling away,
His mind avalanches with trembling thought.
He stands alone, as little as a second,
To face the world of a billion years.
Piercing through builts worth ten of him, Slithering away to find the touch
Of the white cottons of his mother's fate.

Seconds, twelve, stretch away to a million moments
And the sharp eyes of evil scare,
The value of a captured young is never too less.
A hand grabs him so fixedly,
And pulls away from the mortar pestle,
Wettened eyes frighten to terror and turn,
To see a mother's relief, a clinch so firm,
An embrace locked and a ruffle of hair
Finally bring the nightmare to an end.

Ocean

I try to mimic the song
Of the ocean waves lapping onto my feet
Dotted with sand as tiny as the value
Of those feet in the untold of space.
The white froth of the melange of this aqueous air
Whisked by a tide for another,
Flooding to ankle-depth of my brown skin,
Darkening the ochre of the sand with
Wettened paleness of rusted grey sea,
The saltiness of the ocean's call
Overpowering the salts of sweat and tear
Like nothing ever could.
The forever flash of vermillion is down
For the sand is still sprinkled magic in its absence
And glinting colour is not the only beauty.
The rushes ruffle the sand again
And my feet sand-wiched between both
Go cold and blue with the taste of sea
For cold and blue and winter can be happy too.
My eyes, they behold the swiftness
Of this natural enginery, older,
Much older than all our ages collected
And much longer than all our breathes could ever be summed.
Larger than life and larger than death,
The ocean's gentleness evokes motherly caress
And my eyes shut down to its acceptance of love.

Dystopia

The ocean boils and ices flow
Like whitened despair on hope's surface,
Wings cry and then drop dead down
To scorched concrete,
For there's only concrete all around.
Trees shed their green as homage
To the earth that once used to be,
And prepare for death in the dry of dusk.
The winters wallow in woeful winds,
The summer screeches of searing sorrow,
Terrorized beyond the threshold of tolerance
And on the bleak brinks of dire blights.
The monsoons deluge as if for the last ,
Brawling to realize the bible's prophecies.
The fall has fallen, given up to fate and
The spring had left so long ago.
The blue planet has turned to grey,
The greens have turned to fire and marble,
The future has turned blurrier than
The air of blooming urban marvels.
The sea arrives to seal our homes
And immerse them for its rising spikes,
The coastal plain has dived in blue
To rid the sand of its plastic guise.
The left of mankind now battles for life
Both with the earth and for it
And among itself to seize supplies
Priced like ivories of a fossiled mammal.
Givers of breath now struggle for it,
The mortal faces have nowhere to hide
But face the wrath and vanish, to return
The earth its sanguine sunrise.

The Eyes Behind My Mirror

The eyes behind my mirror
Look straight and speak no false.
The eyes behind my mirror
Do not hesitate.
The eyes behind my mirror
Hurt me and hurt so much.
The eyes behind my mirror
Are bullies, but only to me.

The eyes behind my mirror
Body shame and hit me.
The eyes behind my mirror
Do that physically and mentally.
The eyes behind my mirror
Question my skills that I never had.
The eyes behind my mirror
Compare my misery to the bliss of others.

The eyes behind my mirror
Point at my insecurity.
The eyes behind my mirror
Laugh at me and my anxiety.
The eyes behind my mirror
Do not stop even if I beg them to.
The eyes behind my mirror
Are ruthless and shut me down.

The eyes behind my mirror
Speak bitter truths so unwanted.
The eyes behind my mirror
Mock my shape and my inner doubts.
The eyes behind my mirror
Make me cry with no sympathy.
But the eyes behind my mirror
Also cry along with me. 

The Greener Side of The Grass

The better, the greater, the fitter,

The brighter, the greener side of every note,

Enclosed in wishes and floating dandelions

On footsteps of temples and in crosses of faith,

In bowed prayers and joining palms,

Forever a wish of a finer fate forth,

Oblivious to the share of somber bads

In the realization of the subtles of bliss 

For it is ordeal that ordains the open gusto

And the dark isn't evil as evils think.

It is honest and it speaks,

It speaks and it reeks

That not each day shall be yellow and glee.

It reeks of truth, truth that is

Sour to hear and thus oft ignored

But ignorance is never so fit to face

The tread of trembling turmoil

The thread of threat and trouble

The tasking ticks of wishful tomorrowland.

For reflect, if it wasn't for bad

How would you pick the good among the crude?

If the blue and black and brown 

Weren't pinned despairs of dark,

Would the yellow be always sunshine?

If pain was a demon ever unseen

Would the fairies of frolic ever bless of bliss?

If tears of terribleness never fell,

Would the tears of rejoice matter so?

And so if the grass never turned to yellow

Would the greener side still be so green?

The Journey of a Short Lifetime

Birthed in a white foamy fluff
Scattered across the peach blue plate
Melted into sphered heaven
Delight of the tired reaper's fate,
Dived a length of no mortal's limit
Plunged across the nothingness of winds
And swayed across to somber urban state
To soaring glasses and silicate.
Where some did reach it's birthing home
Cascaded around the exasperate,
Up and around the fatigued faces
And onto the wheels of a driver's love.
Where it rested upon the translucent glass
And struggled to keep from falling again
It trickled, alas, and trickled swift down
The view of a teenager's intentive eyes
Who perhaps would pen a poem down
For its very existence, the story of it's life.
The window edged and it dropped apace
To cemented floor which once was sod
And beheld a kid relish the pour and hint
The rarest smile, among the masking faces.
The kid with his shoe, perhaps a gift of motherly love,
In dynamic detained, vaulted up and on the fallen victim,
Now corrupted by the dusted brown of the shoe's midsole
And teared apart into countless pieces,
None with a hint of it's kosher soul,
The end of a very short lifetime
Of the tepid raindrop.

The Midnight Hour

This hour of the blackened cry

Mysterious as to so the beyond of this sky

Silence lulls to a calmer state

With melancholies of mind marking mournings

Of unknown reasonings, of the bleeding 

Of memories of innocent distances of time

It hits so different, each word spoken in the

Lightless of moon to each part of psyche 

The pen flows as if water trickling down

The windows of a rusted car on May's last day

Songs of agony, poignant, touch and leave

Their marks in ways they never could

Under the brightness of the stun of sun

The mystery of the magic of the devil's hour

Rather wrongly termed, perhaps 

To derive gentlefolk of the power of silence

For destinations remain a beauty so long 

As they never are flocked by herds of eyes

Some things perhaps be kept latent, misunderstood for the placid of purity

And so the tears of this beautiful dark never could hurt

For they bring peace, more so like the white dove,

Only this one chance, rendered black to stress

The eyeful calm at the stroke of this midnight hour

When vocals so nightly loved fall into place

For their greater effects

To turn the humour of eye into the smiled

Flow of salted water

With the lyric and tear and memory

This midnight hour shall have me so enchanted for a lifetime, however short or not

This midnight hour shall love me and so I love it back.

My Pen and Paper

My pen and paper know

Each part of me.

Perhaps, better than I do.

They were here before I can recollect

And they'll be here long after I leave

And they'll share my words and thoughts And my rushes and my clots,

Each one of them, in discerning detail

To whoever may stumble upon and ask.

They recognize each tear that once fell 

Upon their skin, it dried away,

But the paper kept the mark and crippled

And the pen scribbled the tear's pretext

On the dry crippled paper.

They hold decades of me, more than I

Can ever hope to remember.

They listen and they do so silently

To whatever drivel I do share

And they do not judge but heal

When I do so.

They're my first-responders and

They're my catharsis.

My pen and paper, I hold them dearer,

Than most.

Return Me My Sleep

Return me my sleep,

It's the only time I lay and cease

My overthought.

Return me my dreams,

I want to smile with no limits,

Ear to ear and forget the world exists.

Return me that smile

And return me my sanity,

Return me my happiness,

Return me my older me.

I'm done and dusted

With newer reasons to stay up,

With fewer people to stay up for,

With new quandaries to ponder on,

With few pleasures to smile for.

I wish to sleep and dream

For once a happier world,

With a better me,

Where my mind is uncrowded,

By the absences of rushing thoughts,

Where I sleep on a pillow arid, rid of tears,

Where I am okay and not attacked.

Where I am not attacked for once.

I want to sleep and dream

Return me my dear sleep.

The Rain of My Life

The sun looks for a shade to hide

As the sky reads rain to dawn early.

The first love of the thirsty soul of soil

Concurs with the redolent pure of petrichor.

The pour doesn't wait and dives for unity,

As grounded eyes grow wonder in size,

And rivet at the vista of tears from heaven.

It crackles click in my garden and

Bounces to touch my reddened knees,

My feet urge to amalgamate

And revel in the pacifying cold of each falling drop.

I envisage myself and my dripping wet hair,

Swaying around to melodies of earth,

And the folds on my head leveling out,

The clear plains and all of the joy.

I envision each trouble relinquish me

And melt me free from all the ropes,

My happy tears rushing out

Like captives out to the air of freedom

Unseen unheard among the dopple drops, Concealing among the conciliator.

My vision takes the better of me

And my feet amble towards the drips and drops,

But suddenly stride back

And frenzy enters my mind.

The pricking eyes around me shall judge

And the pricking judgement will be hurtful.

Forever can one say that words don't matter,

But my words have so proven otherwise.

I stand still and contemplate,

As I do each minute of sun and moon.

My chin moves up and brows sharper,

For once I'll do what my heart shall say.

I brave through tempest thoughts of prying irises,

And tread ahead to feel the rain voice for me,

But there is no rain.

My face, as dry as the ocean is wet,

Brims with remorseful barrenness.

For in all thought and reasoning alike,

The rain of my life had passed along.

The Velvet of Your Bindi

Your Bindi is still here,
Remains on the wall above my head,
And it keeps reminding me of you
It has been ten months since you touched it
And I keep feeling it
Trying to find a hint of your fingers,
Imagining how you would have picked it up,
Where your fingerprint still does lie.
I don't remove it
Fearing it might fall and I might
Lose a long memory of your trace
How hard I try to look for your words
In the red bindi above my head
All say it has been enough
I've mourned enough, I've grieved enough,
I've written enough.
But what else do I come to
To converse to you
And relieve myself from the clot of these thoughts,
But in the only way I know
In the only way you'd appreciate.
I run out of options and
The pen and paper do not judge
They do not ask me to move on and forget
For how can I forget,
Tearing up into a disturbed sleep
In this very bed where you slept each night,
It misses the blink
of your closed eyes, now closed forever.
For how can I, how can I forget
Your caress, your smile, your laugh,
Your stories, your scoldings
And your touch,
Which the paper and I felt.
The touch, which the red velvet
Of your Bindi felt.

Amma

(Hindi: Mother)

I see you in your wrinkled smiles,

While you sit in your chair,

Resting your arms like you do

Telling me all about your cherished years.

I hear you laugh on my deliberate mistakes,

Your eyes roll on my foolish kiddings,

Your voice startled seeing me cry.

You take pride in me and I am glad

And your food tastes like nostalgia.

There's a picture- me in your arms

And your smile, unwrinkled yet, calming me down,

A memory that shivers me,

For pictures and memories are all that I have left of you

And I still refuse that I'll hear no more

From you, none of your anecdotes, your recipes, no reprimands, none of your love.

A day you called me close and told me,

I was your child, your pride, your life

That you'll never leave me alone,

That you'll follow wherever I go.

But hours later, your eyes roll for the last time and don't come back to normal

And there is nothing I can do

Besides shrieking your name, Amma.

And I lose all faith and fall to the ground

For that couldn't hold true.

I sit in your chair,

And rest my arms like you used to,

And pen down my tears,

One of which falls on this paper and searches for your scent.

And I miss you and I need you to calm me down,

For one last time and wake me up from this

Nightmare called life, without you.

Memories

They break the heart and mend it then,
Wreck your soul but love it more,
They tear you up but curve your face,
They let your cries past the shore.
Don the night and numb the day,
They come again and take you away
To evenings of laughter and snivel alike,
To mornings of smiles and dark of cries.
You get heavier as they lighten you up,
You need them and they don't let you down.
You hit yourself and they hurt you,
But you crave the hurt and want it more,
We all like to cry, for the better part,
And they make you so.
They stun you up at times unknown,
Providing proof your heart is no stone,
They bring you those you lost back when
Life was young and eyes not vermillion,
When teardrops came for broken toys,
Not gone souls nor lost joys.
They walk beside you when none does,
A call away from nostalgia.
They were born with you,
They'll die with you,
And stand by till you find peace.
They're your yesterdays and your forever,
A bundle of echoes, your memories.

Cry

Cry your heart out
And let the pain flow.
Sometimes, it's a passage
Blocked by societal wants
Of shamed masculinities,
Lost oppurtinities.

Cry because they don't want you to.
Cry because you need to.
Cry to feel relief in woe
Cry to feel your worries go.
Cry to mourn, and cry rejoice,
Cry to hear your real voice.

Cry in celebration and cry in misery,
Cry for the sake of crying.
Cry because they ask if you're a girl to cry.
Cry because not only girls cry.
Cry for you're allowed to.
Cry even if you weren't.

Cry because you can.
Cry because it feels like.
Cry because you were hurt.
Cry because you hurt others.
Cry, cry in distress, in anxiety,
Cry because it is simple.

Cry and heal, soothe your pain,
Unbind your soul in precious pearls,
And flow them down your precious veins.
Cry and cry, long as you want,
And then show them,
What the crying was worth,
What you are worth.

Fallen

A hair, short as moment,
Falls down my eyebrow and
Struggles in the air to keep afloat
Strives petrified and braves through the breeze
Swaying like paper bits stuck in storm
Resting on my hand and
Sliding down a fingernail
Looking at me in contemplation
Asking me questions I won't answer
And it is mundane, no special
A black flow worn out more than others
Except that it now carries a message
Intricate inside an enclosed drop
Of my eye's humour.
I stare and it stares back
And converses what made me lose him away
Unbeknownst that its answer lies in the new found translucence
Of its shell which followed quick in the drop,
And fell apt to shelter the old friend.
My tear fell on a fallen hair.

Black Blood

A surging rush of thoughts unsought
And they clog my brain
Daunt my rationality
And I keep lost in the blood of those thoughts
Black blood, as black as my tears
And I can't keep calm
And I need to breathe
I gasp for breath and
My eyes widen in agony
The pillowcase is wet and so is my face
And the rush goes on and I cant stop it
I shriek and I shout but my voice keeps silent
Ridiculing myself and all my curses
And my eyes close down to stop the flow
But all I see is cold white
Chilling with fear and condescension
Of myself and all my darks
And the white suddenly breaks
with the black of my blood
My black fears, my black tears
And I swing up again to catch some air
Feeling like I'm running out of dear life
And all my breath tends to nil.
But I gasp for more and borrow time
I'm just living on borrowed time
And this dark will end with the yellow light
But I doubt if I'll see it anymore
And I hope and I guess I'll make through this one
To hold my dears once more
To apologize for not being enough
Not as expected
And then if my tears blacken again,
I'll remove my mask
I'll jump in the void and fall, to the abyss
And hope my black blood dries in time.

Nothing Is Black

Black in the stellar and black in everything,

Back to the stars and still nothing.

Back to black and black to back,

Black is no color, it isn’t living.

It’s a void you can never fill,

It’s the light forever still.

It’s a poem with words unseen

And a poet too very keen.

It’s the art oblivious,

It’s a conspiracy serious.

Its hidden, though everywhere,

Its your dream and your nightmare.

Black is cold, black is old,

Black, it’s there in every fold.

It’s malice, it’s bright darkness,

Black is the philosophy of emptiness.

Black is life and black is death,

Black is the silence in every breath.

Black gives power and black steals glory,

Black is the plot of your story.

Words are black, hearts are black,

Endings black and starts are black.

Fear black, it’s sheer black,

Black repeats black to black.

Black is the subject, black is the king.

Black is no color, it isn’t living.

BLACK.                                          

Fading Colours

A strange smell of suspicion sickens,
For the dark of clouds has cleared to blue,
The black of blood has rinsed to red,
And normalcy appears to true.

The down days have rendered unknown
What it felt to be at peace
And now that the white has risen again,
I'm clueless how the grey did cease.

The violets in my garden bloom,
But I wonder how to nurture them,
I fear I'll lose to dark green thorns,
And lead the violet wilt to doom.

All seems to tint to yellow,
And happy hues win the better,
But it feels unsure, an orange obscure,
If the darker shades of darker days will arrive again.

The brown petrichor sure is pure
The tan of sand is a bliss,
But lingers a fear, a charcoal smear,
That the vibgyor shall soon fade away.
The colours will vanish in a boundless abyss.

Into The Night

The day shall cease and mercury drop
As you dwelve into the dark
Your hustles sleep, hassles stop
And calm will be all around.
The arrow moves around the clock
And the sun sets to rest again
The gray of clouds will turn unseen
And the bliss of black will bless you.
Motion will halt and chaos curtail
And the noise will fade out to nil.
Your eyes shall close and breath rhythm
Your mind weaves a vivid dream
And the white will rise to define the black
And guide blinded legs to home.
Faces shall blank and innocence return
In slumber of a calmer mind
As the stars rise and dot the lightless
Into the gentle of the night.

Thirty Nights Ago

(Reference to poem: Black Blood)

Sitting by the corner of my bed,

Where I bled within thirty nights ago,

Forced to reminisce the bleak of time

That I hit my head hard to forget.

The ail that I thought had left for good

Has returned and split me.

Each of me wandering between 

The painful past, so pure of pain,

And the less petrifying, but unwanted

Today that throttles me to torment.

It all returns and compels shiver,

For the closure is closing for all of time.

I stand and stare at the corner of my bed,

And behold a younger me in tears, 

In ever so unknown fears,

Clinging on to find a twig in an ocean

Of deadcrop, dead with hail and rainstorm.

Gasping on for little sighs,

To breathe and wish for the air to warm

His cold soul, chilled with terror 

Of he knows not what.

I distract myself from blurry visions of a gone past,

Put my thoughts to elsewhere,

In hassles of practicality and happening.

But all turns vain, for my blood is blackening.

The black blood is fear

And the black blood speaks,

In a language I learnt thirty nights ago.

An Apology

An apology is never so enough
But as human can I only do so little
And say sorry to each I care
For the disappointment on their faces.
I know i've been rough lately,
I know i've been a dismay.
But few are all I have to call my own
And I fear losing my all.
The things I said weren't meant,
It wasn't me, it was my agony which spoke.
The time I did not spend, I regret that,
But I'm scared to err again and let them down.
My paper is growing dark as i scrounge for light,
And the ink in my pen is begging to stop,
Its only restrains are the tugs of life
And I keep writing, and rushing my pen
In catharsis,
And as the dark takes the better of sky,
I have stories to tell, and troubles to share,
But no one to share them with
Except my paper maligned with my words.
For I know these words cannot be downcast,
By the crests inside me.
For I know that atleast in writing,
Pain does render beautiful.
That the paper will not tear up,
Redden or cease the talk,
When it meets the distress
That I may bring along.
The ink shall convey what words couldn't
In case my voice breaks or stops,
For I seek, with all my heart,
An apology for all dissapointment
That I, knowingly or unknown, have caused.

Alone

"I like to be alone."
Is a lie widespread.
Alone, is not isolation,
Alone, is more than confinement.
No one would wish to be alone,
Had they known what alone speaks.
Cut-off all ties and you are alone,
As if disowned by everyone, then you're alone.
To rest your head in the shoulders of solace
Only to find that shoulder wants you to be alone.
For no one likes a selfish carp,
No one wants the trouble kid.
Keep away and run from him
And the selfish kid is now alone
He wants to speak, but there's none to hear,
His echo drives him crazy.
For all are repulsed and all are annoyed
And silences yell at the selfish kid.
That is the parcel of being alone.
Alone is dark blue and black,
With whispers of despair, despise,
And shrieks of self-loathe and doubt.
Alone, is not wanted.
You don't like to be alone.

Nightmare

Dreams don't hold true, but fear does,
Unheard shrieks, sudden blood rush.
A falling man, wicked smiles,
Scarlet veins and scattered guiles.
A plummet to void deep wide dark,
Slashed skin but no cut mark.
Pricking pinches of reality check,
Unfelt sighs that none is wreck.
They say abyss means you're powerless,
Demons say you're not in control,
Chasing speaks of inhibition, distress,
And death means a novel goal.
Widened eyes and striking panics,
Yell and cries, scream like manics,
The word never heard
And the world doesn't care
How you cry or die in your nightmare.

The Faces Of Grief

(Each stanza representing a stage in the experience of grief.)

You left and I could never stop you
I cried for days and pinched me hurt
You were by my side one moment
And another, in a sirened rush.

I begged and fell, prayed to heavens
Like never before,
Threw myself to the ground in disbelief
And shrieked for you to appear again
I wished it was a nightmare like always
I wished it weren't true.
The cold tears differed.

I frowned, drowned and hurt myself
Hit me hard and widened eyes
Was it anger that you left me alone?
Or was it my helplessness?
I don't wish to know.

It should have been me,
It could have been me.
But does destiny ever obey?
I fell distraught and desolate,
The one to hold me up is gone.

My world stopped at a standstill
But time went on without a care
I kept silent as days struggled through,
Lost in the memories
Of bygone togetherness.

Months have passed
And you haven't spoken to me
Haven't caressed my hair like you did
You're really gone.
And everyone says I've dealt the best with
yourloss,
If only they knew the mask that I wear
And could feel the tears that flow beneath it.
If only you were here

To Those Who Were Just Having Fun

You pushed around me and I kept my calm,
You called me names and I laughed along
And soon you saw me calling myself out too,
Great work adding me to the list of my haters.

I wonder if you wondered it was all fun and games,
All an innocent joke, what harm could it do?
Have you ever been on the other side?
Have you tried to think for me?

It isn't a party being played around,
To cry to sleep every other night,
To fear your feet falling on the ground
To tremble on your way to normalcy,
When you know what happens again.

Moments of frolic for you,
For me, years of self-hate, fear.
And I hope you know who you are,
For you laughed on how fat that boy looked,
And he tried to starve himself thin,
He dealt his sleep with anxieties
And his mirror was covered.
You giggled on how ugly that girl was,
And she lost her will to breath again,
She shut all doors and burst her veins,
She feels worthless still.
And you did that to them,
I pity you.

Monotony

The air around is sick of strident silence
But I stand with no more than empty hands.
The trees, with their stooping canopies,
Look at me and pry with hope, like the intrusive aunt,
And I respond with shrugged shoulders and rolling eyes.
I'm sorry I'm out of wits,
Just like they're out of leaves.
Both waiting for our springs to breeze in.

Desolation

My head feels heavier with all the guilt
An unending remorse of I know not what
And a constant prick is wearing me down
To squinching eyes and troubled thought.
I look for reason and find only voids
Unending, unknown voids amidst the
Dense of my pondering
And the dense folds of my head
Peaks and hills that I dare not tred.
The cranium holds a greater weight
As my mind turns to stone.
My latent incapacities
Shreak me down to every bone.
And I wonder why my head hurts
I wonder why I bleed, within.
Why I try and try but fail again
And start and end with sheer nothing.
The eyes now render scarlet
And scars taint the yellows with red.
My sleep is stolen, shadows broken
And I sink too deep in all my dread.
Rescue me from desolation.

Is It Normal?

Is it normal that none is normal,

That every question of well-being

Could be answered by a thousand anguished essays,

But makes do with a four-lettered fine,

That each eye has a reason for the hidden tears

That none display and pretend a lark.

Each of us with a vivid woe,

But the reply is forever okay.

Is it normal to not feel normal?

Are we allowed our share of cries?

Is it normal to be seen the happiest one?

Even when your bones shriek silence within.

Is it okay to ignore sometimes?

Is it normal to be selfish?

It is.

Congratulations...

The skies seem blue, how odd.
The stars, the stellars turn salient
And to disturb is no sound of metal.
The birds chirp all day long
And perhaps wonder where
The creatures with no wings have vanished.

Dolphins splash up and into deep wide blue,
Who knew there existed dolphins here
Wheels have stopped, egoes dropped,
And existence has come to doubt again.

The predator, now prey, shrivels up
Inside its turtleshell.
There has been judgement
And has it gone the right way?

What bustled with feet,
Holds none this night
And ironed fists now stoop to beg.
While chyrons scream, scream of rout and collapse.

What have we done?

If I Have To Leave...

What if it so happens
That a newer blossom wilts away
That people find it way too young
For someone like me to leave just yet
I hope not true, I have better gardens to be
More aromas to share, more stories to speak
But if it so happens that I had to go
Here is my plea and a request to invoke
Don't give in to the pyre so soon
I may have something left to lend within me
Perhaps, a vision for someone devoid
Or a part of me, if it remains any good
Or bless me away to the brighter minds
Do away with my belongings, most of them
Don't keep them for my essence, some may find it better
Don't greet my picture with weeping faces,
I beheld those enough with living eyes
Have a glad meal and share with the hungered eyes, and smile
Atleast pretend
Don't call in saints, nor holy fires
Give my stiff to science, and not superstition
And care for my friends who mourned and cried
There wouldn't be many
My work, my verse is yours to decide
Take a look or burn it down, how would I mind
I'm having the sleep of my life
Or perhaps, the sleep of my death.

Petrichor

It's the smell of soil post a fall,
The streets flow to the chiffchaff's call,
An ambrosial odour overtakes
And my sense breathes,
Wishes to breathe forever.
Like the water cold in earthen pots,
In the summer bliss, like mud cots,
Like nostalgia of cherished days,
Like villages and wet hay,
The clay sings and staggers my sense.

Like my thirst quenched with brooked water,
Like the earthy scent of the wheel of a potter,
Like the unreal haze of a hilly walk,
Like dew dripping down green stalks,
Like leaves drinking again for good,
Reminiscence of my childhood.

The petrichor is more than a redolence,
It's a bundle of emotions,
Of memories, Of joys and sorrows,
Of nostalgia, and the smell of bygone days.

A World Full Of Lies (Sonnet)

It's a guilty world no full of bliss,
Shattering truths lie amiss.
It's fib, a tale of gospels shrieking
A fable, no fiction, libels peaking.

Glaring smirks of crafted ruse
To sleights of life, all bemused.
Deceptive eyes on flattering faces,
Masks to hide their vicious cases.

To die is a lie, to live no truth.
An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.
All deceit, defame, deceive, detract,
Distort all true and pull their tact.

They revile the truth that underlies,
Evade the word, in a world full of lies.

Interstellar

It's night at a place night is all,
The earth is a grain of sand
Lost in the ocean of black
Dotted in pearls of white,
Floating in dark nothingness, an increasing void.

To each pearl her own world,
Worlds beneath each world.
Eyes defeating the chase of time,
Countless walks away, the world of mine.

I lived as if I lived the best,
But this dark tells there's more to be,
So much more than human transcend,
A calm in chaos, it speaks to me.

All the woes, all botherings,
Now smaller than a pinch of my hand.
Peace and placid, silence surrounds,
A trillion miles, and all unmanned.

A black expanse, no sight of land,
No weeping man, no screeching screams
I wish one day I could lease this life,
To live through all my interstellar dreams. 

-Shourya Shrivastava

My Mirror Laughs

I stand before the mirror,
My reflection mocks me for being me.
Hollowed out by tears apart,
My tears which move every night all alone,
My tears which wash away
The gloom of pain, the pain of gloom,
The voids of anxiety,
The guilts in gaiety,
The worries and woes,
Which wash away a party of me
The heart of me, my misery, my mystery.

The polish laughs at a body unfit,
On flooded eyes, on loss of grit.
On thoughts to end this breath forever
For a thousand reasons
And a thousand to never
I can feel it within me,
My glee emptied by hours of deafened cry
My mind at bleak, the brink of goodbye.
I miss my gran who left me why.
But this is every night.

And soon the sky will turn white
My tears stole the sigh of night
I'll hide my face and wear a mask
But the sun will set and tears return
My mask unveils and anxieties stun.
I lament in blues,
Then, all starts again.

My reflection laughs.

The Star Herself

The eyes do her talking,
For her voice decided restrain
Like the glitter of white,
On this star-struck night,
Their shine speaks for them.

Twinkle eyes behold the stars twinkle.
Glowing eyes on a palm-sized face.
As if stars, which though unfathom huge,
Glint like minuscules on the black canvas of the dark sky.

She has a passion to stargaze,
A love beyond dimensions,
Of secrets and confessions,
Of permanence,
A love devoid of betrayal.

The ocean laps and swaddles the bay,
Her feet impression the sand beneath
The eyes still set admiring the black,
She is the star herself, a star away.

The Night Dreams Bled (A War Poem)

The earth cracked, shook the bricks,
A deafening thud with a death tryst.
The air pierced by swords and rifles,
Silence silenced by burning bibles.

Lives forced out of homes,
Out of love and out of bones,
Out of care, out of their share,
All you hear are fatal moans.

The dove was killed yesterday,
As shrooms of smoke took over the face of Earth,
Nations bled as people fled.
Scar-let turns the soil of mirth.

The war savage does more ravage,
Until we lead to cataclysmic doom.
My sleep breaks in time for good
And the battledust barely negates my room.

A Word's Worth

They say words don't matter,
But they do.
Ignore all you want,
But the word is true.

Words spoken ages ago,
In humour, angst or heavy blow,
All unite to pierce fine,
At the apt place and apt time.

Words spoken to your face,
Or those behind your back you heard.
Turning you against you,
Word to word.

Words that didn't matter then,
Words you didn't care about.
Words flung upon you,
Now is silence, now you shout.

You act like there's no care,
But the night gets darker,
And in the dark on your thoughtless mind,
Words wage a war,
And pain is all that's left behind.

Words preceded by "no-offence"s and "don't-mind"s,
Those latent in hurtful lines,
Words not meant to be taken to heart,
And words, they're so full of art.

Words pain, words hurt,
Words they lie with honesty.
Words, they speak and words, they shriek
Words, they're laced with mystery.

Paradise

(Dedicated to the town of Dalhousie)

A vision intense, no words pretense,
A placid for eyes, a stunned sense.
Blue peaks through foggy eyes,
The fog breathes to mesmerize.
The sol seldom gives a hint,
Though the sod does enough.
The whites and greens melange through,
To blink your eyes is oh so tough.

A pinch full of dotted township,
Gallons full of paradise.
Creamy frostings on sloped canopies,
Clouds lined with milky white.

My soul is captive of this pearl of eye,
To free myself, I will not try.
Play along, I wish I could.
Had the world not called me home.
Home back to crowded voids,
To scattered papers, to deafened cries,
To shadowy smirks of no paradise.

"HE"

When you sink in blues,

He'll care to save.

And steer your melancholies

to innocent pleasing tales.

He'll stand by, as he always did,

He won't ever see you morose.

He has his woes and worries,

More than you can reckon.

Yet he cares, cares for you to be alright

So he'll fix you, 

your broken will and your broken being.

He's got none who fret for

None who stand a call away

Reciprocals are a wordly scam

And he wishes he was unaware.

His face yet holds no stress, 

No sign of pain.

Not for they exist not, 

But for he chooses to conceal.

He chuckles and chortles, as if a lark.

But within he's dead forever,

His glee is gone forever.

The Tear's Shine

Sinking deep in lonely waters

There's no one around.

My screams render inuadible

Amidst the sounds of your preoccupance.

I lay on my bed, cry to myself

Shrieking for help when i know

They'll not reach you or anyone for that

That it's me who'll drown

In oceans of solitude and in lakes of frown.

The only warmth is of the blanket,

And it is so cold.

But i'll steer through, it's my regular old

Comfort myself that all will be right

And then lying to self seems so easy.

The non-existence of my thoughts defines me,

My sheer nothingness torments.

But I'm a prisoner trapped by myself.

Blinded by the dazzling bright 

Of my tear's shine, in the dim light of isolation.

The Mask

A world devoid of afflictions,
Flestooned around in teal-hazed flowers.
Barren; of sorrows, of worries and woes.
Star-adorned for his mirthful face, so apparent.

There is no anguish to pain him.
There is no pain to perplex.
His is the perfect life, unalloyed.
And only if that were true.

But his frolic hides a heavy ache.
His glee hides a gloom,
About to break free any moment,
And deluge like the fire that consumes him, inside-out.

A strange fatigue sweeps over him,
Of being the jester to their miseries.
While those his own ravage his soul
To the very brinks of his life.

Yet, he walks beside, when you feel gone
Holding you up while himself forlorn.
He cheers you up, forever smiles,
While his frail self invokes to die.
His grin still masking his melancholy.

Expectations

Something to be done your way
You try so hard, there's nothing to say.
What they say is truly true.
Expectations only disappoint you.

What you want to hear,
Will never be said.
Promises to you
Will never be kept.
You face will hold a shock, not new.
Your expectation will only disappoint you.

The ones you want
Will never talk.
The ones you love
Will never share.
Your words will come back to pierce you.
Your expectation continues to disappoint you.

Don't they love you? You do suspect.
Don't they care or do they forget?
Do they only want to disconnect?
But darling, the truth is to never expect.

I tried, trust me I did.
Tried to expect just the littlest bit.
No reciprocals will you ever receive.
Just you and that quote will cry deceived.

And then you'll want to try again,
To expect and expect and expect again.
And in every turn, you'll end the same.
You swear not to repeat but repeat again.

Oh dear, what a shame.