From the future

A sadness from future
becomes a knot around my neck.
A poisonous clot of knowledge,
it decorates me.
I look around the room
and names fall off
the register that is kept.
Books turn cold
for the lack of warm hands.
No longer will they bury the noses
and twist the glasses askew
in their last attempt
to change a perspective. 
Oil stains on the keyboard
will not be kept up.
Hurried calls will not be made
to share something minute and monumental.
Cracks too will disappear from the story.
Walls knowing no inhabitant
will crookedly laugh.
A place goes cold.
It spreads out into darkness.

Inner breeze

I have gravity in me.
It pulls everything towards
a lurking unknown centre.
Happenings and stillness
flutter the inside breeze.
There, in tracts of nowhere
I exist.
Yes, it is just me.
Self looking at self.
In a mirror, so polished
reality and image
merge into ambiguity.

Keep the night going

They keep the night going.

The earth turning.

They, the scarecrows of the dark:

The long dead and forgotten.

The bustle that I hear

is beyond the reach

of the enveloping night's screech.

An invisible plow

keeps the furrows intact.

Wells condense the winter

down their throats.

A potter's wheel turns itself.

And the blacksmith's fire

is alight with care.

Chatter fills the streets.

Leaves take shape and fall

Become tomorrow's waste.

A distant traveler's eyes rest

at the sight of civilization.

A general bonhomie

of a parallel universe persists.

Meanwhile, the deathbeds

left behind at home transform

into working desks of fertility.

Some stay

Some memories always stay
the same extent of yesterday.
But they grow deeper today
Pull me in from the quay.

In threads of dark streams
a river runs in my dreams.
Taking with it the memory-tombs
while the Present hurriedly combs.

Every day ends

A thud of the axle.
Goosebumps of rain
shiver into life on the window.
Wipers flail their arms
like the oar-men of Onam.
En route the intestinal turnings now.
The city suffers a leaky gut.
Whirlpools of dark water
become the door knobs to invisibility.
The last foothold.
Its size changes constantly.
Our ship connects many islands.
A slithery snake with fangs of light,
it bites its way out of darkness.
And our hope, shiny and hard-
a dead starfish-
decorates us amidst everything.

Watch your step

An immigrant bird
White as a handkerchief
Stands with its one leg in air
Not to ripple
and drive away the fish.
Its early breakfast.
The deer's ears are twice as alert.
Some noise which only it can sense.
May be wind's footsteps!
There is no twitch in its legs.
Not yet. A heightened silence
before a bolt of running.
A commercial break
in cawing of the city crow.
Gravity eases its pull.
And a drop that ought to fall
hugs the leaflet, for one last time.

This place

There is this place
well lit in the tunnel.
It says you're special
and should continue.
Like a mother
who tells you to behave
on the first day of school
the walls guide you towards light.
There is no turning back.

Lights will soon be switched off
but a dream
of their warm touch will continue.