Communicating Gift

I 'pick up'

your gift

Your cracked Voice

attentively toned 

to produce

Mein bilkul theek hoon  effect.

I see it

Carefully wrapped 

in twinkling tears.

Miles away

I receive

from the dilapidated balcony

your gift

as dear to me as your silence.

We stop talking.

Probably

We exchange same gifts.

The phone call ends.

Dasht e Imkaan

My blistered feet of Love

tread the dreaded path

again and again....

Again

Love takes me

to a labyrinthine journey

devoid of you...

Again

On the fringes of nothingness

I wait

for no one to come...

Scarlet footprints of heart

My love bleeds...

"The Liberty Tree"

SCENE I
That Tree
commercially painted
once green
dusty
arid
in the corner
of a crowded lane
kept thinking and
thinking of future….

SCENE II
One busy day
The Heritage workers
laboriously
cut the tree down
“A thing from the past
should, at least,
act old”
they kept assuring themselves

SCENE III
The Stump remains
Its roots are out
in the streets now.
They demand Azaadi

SCENE IV
Every moment
roots rage out
A tree grows inside me.
I keep thinking……

SCENE V
Cries

Sometimes You Meet Me Often

 Sometimes

When I need you - desperately

And you are not there

I do not weep

Or cry

Or cling to your memories

Or search you

in the abstract projections -

Of my silly heart

No

I do not do all this.

I...

I write it all down

This piercing,weakening

Benumbing disease.

I write it down on the

Page playground of my notebook

I write it down

Sometimes

Sometimes like this!

And

It all soothes down

To words.

Dear,

I am a poet of your absence

When I need you - desperately

I write you down.

And

You meet me

through words

In distant mindscapes

In the heart of hearts

And right there

The poem ends

It ends

Sometimes like this!

Diasporic Kashmir

Kashmir comes in ripples

As I imagine Dal in Delhi

Like a Phiran

Kashmir engulfs me

In this heat and dust

A distant Azaan

I hear

From Hazratbal

Like hope

I sit unaccompanied

Somewhere in a local mosque

I am a Char Chinari in Delhi

Here

Too afraid I am of these

Scorching roads

For

Kashmir walks barefoot in me