You suffocate me, yet

In strange ways you liberate;

Inwards I walk, yet

I see the shadows of my thoughts

Reflected

Upon your bridges, columns and arches—

More than two centuries old

Their cold largess

Inspires ideology,

And drives me mad

With lust for revolution.

You bred me in your body, yet

Ravenous, I feed

Upon your dying flesh,

Just as you devour my life-force

To sustain your hunger;

Your poets, your songs, your insanity—

Are mine to hold,

Just as my loves and desires

Are yours to engulf.

Tomorrow,

An alien space may take hold,

And unwalked streets may seduce,

But you will cling

Through known voices and faces,

And, even as I lie dying

You will absorb my traces.   

To a pair of blue jeans—

Perhaps the lather was enough!
Yet … I scrubbed you clean—

Peeling layers
Left by
Unknown lanes and unwalked roads,

And by shaky fingers and trembling lips

Which perhaps paused briefly

At the zip.

I scrub some more…

Am I a mermaid still?

In these jeans of yours

With their names still on it?

Should I clean the traces

Or let them remain?
The choice isn’t mine to make.
I scrub some more…

Even as I know
I won’t ever do this again!

The ritual of cleansing
Has freed me of legs

And given me fins.

Waltzing through corpses
I can finally breathe—
The stench, the filth
Are all mine to bear…

I can lie back now,
And observe the play
Of lust and decay,
Did you know?
Doppelgangers howl too!

Moments will turn into minutes
Minutes will turn into months
And my feelings, too, will become
Museum objects—
Shelved and preserved
Antiquities on display…

The corpses will return
To haunt my waking hours;
But next time—
I will let them pass
Maybe.

Ode to a train

Post by Sanjay Ghosal—

Good evening train, good evening train; 
Took my 'boy'- friend to the hills
Too much rain, too much mist; 
'Boy' is the one my friend kills.

Good morning train, Good morning train; 
Bringing back friend to me
All the rain, all the mist; 
Now the 'boy' belongs to thee.


Post by Author—

The 'boy' died long ago
And distances just seemed to grow
The train carries his frozen frame
As feelings too have lost a name;
Mist outside, rain within
Pasts... presents collide, cave in—
Spent 'love' is all he could feel
Yet...the 'friend' remains...and always will.

To Kanchenjungha

For you could not be seen, you could not be seen
As my eyes strove to find their tear-kin,
For I knew then, as I know now—
That all beauty is meant to die somehow...
When my hand reached out and clutched his sleeping frame,
I knew then, too, this love had no name.


I smelled his breath, I tasted his woe
Even as my heart dreamed of the golden snow;
I lost my self with each thrust of his weight,
And regained my self in the frozen cold after-sweat.
May the mist clear, may the traces remain,
Even as I may not hear this song again.