Inferno

A glamorous bureaucratic party

Over tortuous interrogation cells -

Bolaño once

wrote about it.

Here,

A pile of angry words

metered meticulously

cursing the oppressor

Dipped in cheap government ink.

 - 

The perfect structure of desultory resistances.

Workout Videos

You will either be bored

Or cry.

Yes, those extremities 

Of real life -

That can't be scrolled at ease.

 

If only we poor

Emaciated people

Start uploading it -

This cruel world

Our inexpensive gym.

Sighs of a diffident Lifer

It makes no sense

Calling people who don't pick up

Or thinking about them.

Or looking into the washroom mirror

When the usual chores are over

Holding your tears back and

Drowning them in their infancy.

The best way

(There could be others as well)

is to forgive them.

Forgive yourself.

Absolve them of their sins

Not because you are somehow

Optimistic about life

But to keep yourself sane.

Keep their memories safe.

In times like these

When hate is contagious

Like some airborne virus.

Or to turn them

Into fiction in your head,

In your life.

That way

They are always available

Always free.

Always attentive.

The only condition 

(like Orpheus) however

is to never answer them back.

Just keep listening

And forgiving

And continue living

As hard as it gets.

This:

(what you otherwise call 

the ordinary sighs

Of a diffident lifer).

Adam's Curse

When imagination is pitted against

Bouts of depression

What always wins

is silence -

Benumbing silence - that pierces

The arbitrary meaning of words.

People often ask

Why don't you write regularly?

Like others

For the poet's tiny corner

In the factual world of newspapers.

What they don't apprehend

Is the bloody landscape of the mind

When seen against the charred pampas of the heart

Set in a body

That wakes to grief

Like someone rudely awakened

In a jest

With blood shot eyes

Making sense of the world

That does not at all sleep.

That a poem is not poetry.

One needs to sift the words

Sacrifice them on the altar of feelings

Unless meaning runs through them like blood.

Imagination is not always enough.

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