(Photo credits: publicdomainpictures.net)

FOR THE LOVE OF CORNERS

there is always a silent nook you tend
to find a dead thing may be a worm’s
wriggled fossil, a chip of wood around
a bone without pulp turning into a relic
of a sad evening when the steamy layers
spread over the extended length of the
doorway where a path made of agates
waits for attention but you seek crannies
there! loneliness sits like a continent you
can suppress expecting a visitor who can
spoil claustrophobia, and its franchise, still
dark cavities in walls, and recesses of
outhouse calling, but have you found a
niche for love you can take her to settle.



THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW

for cascade
 

what perspective you were hiding sitting on the window
clouds whitened the evening on a patch of misty green
descriptions must have made eye bags under eyelashes
something from past hung with the cup tremoring in hands,
who touched them last time maybe someone from a
a dream in which you transgressed running with that
sea of hair encountered by a lawn-mower shearing
assiduously giving the turf a new skin, you retreated
from this shadow telling that undressing is prohibited.

 

THE NAMESAKE
 

there was a woman named ghazal
and she was in search of a maqta¹
now or never a confidant who could
hide ripples from couplets cruising 
with fragrances of Arabia, potions
emptied from Persia, a verse or two
a khayal² strung on Sitar, by a player
maddened by his own notes, but it is
an uphill task, someone with a djinn’s
might, and patience of Shahrazad can
simulate her fantasy, and tell her
love is not an end, it’s like a poem that
waits for a critical fodder, so when you
want someone to pen down a ghazal
make sure the namesake could bring
a curse no one can lift you out,
admitting a poetaster set to polish
a doggerel disguised as a serenade
waiting on the roof, meet me there
to embrace, and let the flesh come
under dentures, Oh! No, let the kiss
meet its destiny before the ghazal
expires prematurely, living issueless.
 

Notes:

¹Maqta: The last couplet of a ghazal, typically incorporating the poet's pen name in a creative way.

²Khayal, in Hindustani music, a musical form based on a Hindi song in two parts that recur between expanding cycles of melodic and rhythmic improvisation.