What I will do

What I will do instead,

here, in this poem, is

to gently rub words on your face

like your late-night lotion ritual -

and then

leave you stealthily,

imagining the Earth,

spining forever 

on the left side of the galaxy.

I will edit the world,

afterwards, stanza wise,

early morning,

while you are sleeping and

dreaming about a love poem.

Teachers

One taught indifferently,

as if she was hiding herself 

from the school of Life,

taking asylum in our classroom,

and smirked at our ignorance.

Another taught like Life itself,

uplifting and terrifying us 

subtly, at intervals,

usually asking me to sing 

in front of the whole class -

as if rhythm was the only thing

amiss in her way of teaching.

Yet another, while teaching, 

one day wept, as if 

we were dead at the word,

and wiped tears, not with any napkin

but with a paper, as if 

the ink had solidified enough.

This one, however,

keeps ticking everyone off

as if no one existed, as if

nobody uttered any sounds,

no one wrote anything down - 

as if, even this poem wrote itself off.

Macadamisation

- a tarred road 

is a white noise

of the other world.

- a leaf on it

is a random signal

of ours.

Somewhere,

between all this,

thick smoke like Genie,

unable to fulfill any wish, upsurges -

stranding the concrete road behind...

The Poem

She met me,

accidentally,

after a gap of years -

thirteen to be precise 

                   and

it was evident 

how Time had her

skin dampened,

teeth splintered,

nails smudged,

hair des​ic​cated.

She, however

courageously, did not

make any effort

to hide all this and said

"Yes, I'm living a Life! You see?

What about you?"

(I wanted to reply 

but withheld:

maybe there will be a poem about all this -

reminding you how grief 

gatecrashes over us all,

stanza-wise -

without rhymes,

in loneliness)

You will understand it without a summary.

Sole

That night,

I slept with a shoe

in my heart.

In fact,

anything to hold on to

could have sufficed.

The body just yearned for

some semblance of something 

that sounded 

or at least possessed 

a soul.

Nothing much.

Overtime

They say

a poem on Overtime

should always possess

excessive words.

It should, simply, be overabundant.

The poem should overflow

It should overwhelm.

Overexert.

Overpopulate.

Overburden.

In other words,

it should unrestrainedly strive

to overthrow 

the overarching meaning of the genre.

Or,

it should be content 

to be sold cheap in a word factory;

on some picture perfect social networking site,

like any ordinary worker

drenching in sweat,

eating by the roadside and, 

on phone, talking to his far-off family -

working on the construction of a mall 

he would never dare to enter.

In the labour of breathing everyday,

Life's an overtime.

Strangers

The least,

he thought, he could do,

(after listening intently

to the old woman's chronicle

of losing sight at an alarming level 

while keeping his own unemployment ratio

in the current scenario,

clearly in sight as well),

                                            was to

take those grimy, heavy,

thick glasses gently from her and

rub and clean them diligently 

with the hem of his shirt

that had lost its sheen due to overuse.

Meanwhile,

the other person went on blabbering -

failing to

witness 

the tears.