Faasla

Tum bint-e-khwaab ho
Mein thos haqeeqat ka sheher.

Tum mein
Aur mujh mein
Sirf
Waqt ka faasla hayil hai.

Obeisance

I have cheated several times
In this game of life
by chanting your name passionately
In the historic valley of my soul -
the echoes of which
could easily be heard along
The banks of my blood.

Forgetting is the only way
I'll die.

Or not.

Ritual

I tuck the verses of your hair
Carefully behind the metaphor of ears.
I organise your eyebrows
With the pen of my thumbs.
I arrange your fallen eyelashes
Like commas in a text.

For
In the morning
Your face looks like an unedited poem.

Yet another Year

She celebrates
major love events
According to the Gregorian calendar.

While I -
a disciple of the lunar one -
Wait for her face to rise
To the occasion.

Our events rarely match.

Cataclysm

Despite everything -
The remote building had
expectations from the earthquake.
That it would 6 and not 9 her
That it would caress and not throw her off.

The earthquake
Likewise expected
That despite its instinct to shake
The building would stay strong.
Not crumble at its behest.

What happened after is a poem
by an unknown writer.

(The land, we are told,
along with its debris was
sold to a fucking capitalist.

With pristine zest
To welcome the foreigner,
Even after exhausting every engineering trick,
The new building still does shake).

Spatial Difference

She weeps
Like an old tap dripping
In an abandoned house.

She laughs
Like the thudding of stairs
In a festive house.

Life is the distance in between.

The Answer to Love

The answer to Love
is not love
in this age.

It probably is
A place where you find yourself
Thrown away
All alone
Almost depressed
Looking for answers.
Alone but still judged, condemned
By people to the very act of pouring love
In the first place.

The answer to love
in this age
is not love.
(Or it never was)

It probably is
Calculated hate.