In Arabic

Whenever we have a toothache
Abuji writes invisible duas in Arabic
With his broken finger
On our cheeks
As if we are pages.

I wonder
How many broken fingers
Would be needed to write on Kashmir.

Or
Would it work on multitude of toothaches?

Empathy

Our pantry guy
talks to himself.
Smiles most of the times.
Blabbers
Makes sounds.
Shares jokes with himself.

Unlike me
He doesn't need
People, books, television, mobile phones
To fight loneliness.
He is his own company.

Sometimes
When I see him
Half dead
Snoring on the sofa
I wonder how much life he has taken in.
How much is still left.

Just the other day
To top it all
Someone joked:
Let him sleep full time
He's been working here since 20 years
On a temporary basis and
Lives alone in the suburbs.

How I interpreted that
Is still a mystery but
Since that day
I am able to understand all his self-incurred smiles and sounds.
I get all his jokes now on a regular basis.

It seems the poet was right after all
"the world has failed us both"

Knuckle Cracking

It takes time
To learn the art of
Knuckle cracking.
A little too pressure and
The whole day is spent caressing the fingers.
Too less a pressure and you end up with nothing.
One has to learn the right amount.

It takes time
To learn the art of
Knuckle cracking

It takes time to learn that
There's still life inside.
It takes time to learn that
This dead wood body
Needs fire to crackle.

A John Doe Poem

Some call it a unicorn.

They are optimists.

Rest of them don't say anything at all.

A twenty-first century

Introvert poet

does not exist.

The Architecture of Love

You often ask:
What are we in this 
architectonically trivial world of someone's?

Listen:
I am an open window
That creaks when moved
The frame of which has lost it color
is rough and bug ridden
With ant-houses at corners.

You
My love
Are its curtain
With disparate hand designs on it
Crafted with nothing but love
by a small scale factory worker
In the wee hours of rainy morning
Fluttering away from the frame and
Sometimes coming too close.

Our love is someone's favourite spot
To forget the world.

We are that insignificant.

CASO

Hegel would understand it better.

The example I mean

of the conflation

of the political and the personal.

My mom calls me on my phone

and a military man picks up.

Buy milk for home

He says.

How many packets

I ask.

He doesn't reply.

Hardwork

We had thought "love you"
Would be replaced by "go to hell"
We'd thought "I'll never leave you"
Would be replaced by "this is not going anywhere"
We'd thought "we are so similar"
Would be replaced by "why am I with you?"
We'd thought
One of us would forget to call each other
At least for a day.
We'd thought one of us
Would some year by mistake forget each other's birthday.

But nothing like that happened
Nothing ever went our way
All our plans kept failing.

Then one day someone
I don't even remember who
Out of the blue said
If love seems like hard-work
One should concentrate on the hard-work
Love can wait
That's its best quality.

And everything fell into place.