the city

i reach out to the trees
that reach for shade
lost to me
as i lost to them.......

a smile to remember..

each time
in the lowly streets
i blink
for every smile that looks me straight

the sun rises remissly
subdued by the lecherous night
elevators start punching the thickish air
as ropewalkers take the stairs

one of who


after perishing beneath the beastly morning rushers
putrescent by the sidewalk lay
cold in his own tepidness
sniveling heavily over whose headless remains
the woman who blinded me everyday....

a black day turning blue

"i've not been having the best of days recently"

"why ??what happened??" i replied..squirming for space

there was an effervescent zest in everything he talked about
how may killed april and the lilacs with it,
how the ashen foliage in the corner wasn't fooling anyone
how the girl he thought he had married was not
the one he did marry when he married her

the whole political conundrum was a scam
orchestrated by some obvious friend of his
half the world would soon come down with a flu and
fascism would soon be the only ideology left
and everyone's predilection towards busty women

"i just lost my job..it was a mess..."

"why ??"i asked again feeling the cushion for a wider hinging

"did i tell you about those lilacs??"

"why would she leave you ?"
i retorted...
"who ??" he politely inquired
"the girl you married "

"what girl ?? "
what an oaf .i addressed myself.
"aahhh !!! leave it.." i scoffed with disbelief as i denuded one of the gleaming bottles

"Again who are you ???" he asked me...but i had already gotten up to leave
irated by his boorish attitude..

"where do you think you are going" he asked beseechingly

i ruminated for some time standing there...studied my hands for a moment ....
"why would she leave you"
he seemed unperturbed by my question..a smirk abrasioned his face
"who the hell is she "
"the girl you married " i confirmed...
i thought he did not want to talk about it any further ...so i mitigated
"its okay if you don't want to tell me...i can understand"
 he pushed his chest out and glared with aversion

"what the hell can you understand....you don't even know me"
i smiled and almost gloatingly announced...
"nobody does ...nobody "
and left the place in breaking din

cacophany

Resting on his vagrant windows
the sun flickering pendulously in his head
the moist grime sticks to his elbows
splotched with morning sickness
as the draught dwindles under his festering breath

he had not seen the sunrise
until today
when he woke up from his occult dream
lying deflated and nailed to the floor
staring at the wet ceiling
that dripped with pours of sweat
probably off her breasts
and kissed the embers
of his deliquescent eyes


In his room like a submarine
lit
he wheedled himself
that she will knock on his door,
and  illustrate how she gouged the plaster
do drop her love like
paper pins on his impressionable pillow


she
above his somber slough
                 all night long
stared at the floor she had flooded
                            again
with a drowning pail and ubiquity
of the frequencies she changed
beseechingly
as her confidant embarked on
his widowmaker
                       one last time

'totem'

i dreamt of black n white
      rainbows
cycle over dry
   meadows
that hung perpetually
 south
from the roofs of
  vestibules
that rested without pillars
on my vacuous
     conscience
i have dreamed being awake
but not waking up
i have dreamed  falling
from innocence
but not how i got  there

i now wonder where do objectives
come from
and just how many
              elevators
run in this space

maybe the awakening still awaits
the right elevator
a dream half remembered
or
half forgotten

5 days-aditya bahl

Aditya walks down this awkward backstreet everyday

the tin roofs collaring vividly the designed windows
glisten with smears of red and yellow
that bounce off the sun's flaccid cheeks
somewhere behind the pruned
gray hallmarks,they call houses
the air jerks off
the pristine walkers
with its sultry overtones
managing to prick those who sit and watch

Some ordinary curtains married
to a wooden frame
blow towards the west that stares
at him from beyond the thoroughfare
As the wind is pushed through the alley
his head disappears behind the muffling curtains
he feels as if stabbed by a smile
running through
the air divided alleys
that sidle hi arms

the windows feel betrayed
and so do the people inside
Aditya remembers it was westwards
he had to go
he has been standing here for more than a minute now

the sun is about to go down on
the incumbent curtains
while the east is already groping with flashlights
This was the first moment in the last 5 days that he did not feel like crying....

CHECKPOINT !!!

                                                                                   "i thought this was it "