Friday, 12 October 2018


You 
I have been looking for you
to feel your eyes on me 
read 
comprehend 
analyse
speak 
repeat me 

I don't know your shape
I just want you 
to let me 
roll 
on your tongue 
breathe 
your lips
allow
me to hold you
let me 
surprise you
stay,
go, 
like a dream you don’t remember

You 
may love me
sing me
change
me
get lost
remain...
but right now?
I am
this.


- Titled ‘With love from Paper’

Sunday, 7 October 2018

Mirror

A look at my lover's face
And I see a mirror
The circles under my eyes
Are now as heavy as his


I presume the fate of a heart
that loves to heal an injured one
is quite the same -

It's not his fault I got cut
from the reflection of myself
I saw in him. 

Tuesday, 17 July 2018

a figment of my reality

your mind is a live painting 
I can see my strokes 
on your conscience 
and your mistakes 
reflect on my 
inability to draw 

how I wish 
you lived on canvas instead
so I could
fuck you up 
and call it 
Abstract art. 

Friday, 15 June 2018

Stranger


People ask me
How is it that I live in a stranger city
That I visit far away strange places
Laugh with strange people
I tell them
I have been raised by strangers
Known- unknown were but a divide of time
That I have been passed from strange hands to stranger
That every one in my life have shown
how the best of them could be
Stranger.

Sunday, 6 May 2018

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound. (Chant of a Masochrist)


STRIP THE FLESH, SALT THE WOUND


His wounds
Like parted lips kissing
The coffin on his back.

Strip the flesh, salt the wound.

Crack of leather discipline,
Whips through the arid air
Caressing the skin with scars.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Above his brow
Rests a crown,
Thorns prickly sweet.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Mallet crashes from on high
Nail driven through flesh
Wood suckles like a hungry babe.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Behold his form
Stretched against the oak
Revel in the pain

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.

Sin shalt only be cleansed by pain
He suffered so we did not,
The selfish prick.

Strip the flesh, Salt the wound.
































The Salesman


THE SALESMAN

Hello,
May I bother you for a minute?
I sell in fake smiles.
It will cost you nothing,
On my honour I swear.
The trick is
To pull your lips back,
Just so.
Expose the first molars,
Just so.
Notice
Just how my canines
Show the fierceness
Of my joy.
If you wish you can,
Use your fingers
To pull apart the sides,
Just so.
It may be hard to talk,
However,
The pure beauty of it,
Is you don't have to talk
At all.







reflective essay


Reflective Essay

I really found this course to be very productive, I believe it taught me many valuable skills to help me progress with my thinking skills about poetry and of course in my music. This course is set out clearly and logically and has all the information necessary about poetry. It was really a well-structured course and here I also got to know how things take shape and how things structures step by step. It was a great experience to see a small exercise converted into poetry. Initially, I don’t have any idea that how we would do this but gradually we start getting the idea. Our knowledgeable faculty Mr Akhil Katyar who were able to balance constructive criticism with positive encouragement. They have been very supportive throughout the year. I've really enjoyed learning from faculty and getting their professional perspective on my thinking, I now feel that I have the necessary knowledge to develop some ideas about poetry.

I am not from the literature background and never  wrote poetry in my life and here I got chance to learn poetry and the lovely part is I am also getting love towards it. I think I will never stop writing poetry from now. Basically, I am a music practitioner, I have learning Hindustani music for a long time and Hindustani music is something where we more emphasis on swars rather its lyrics but now after did this course I am thinking about its lyrical value too. And not only this there were many things which I have never thought but after being the student of performance studies and crafting poetry student I am able to think towards those words and areas. This course not only limited to poetry rather it was a whole package of many different skills.
I really enjoyed the teaching method here and the way faculties treat us. In our initial classes, we did some discussion on love poetry and sir said that love poetry is a way to get in the poetry world. Being a student of music I have heard lots of poetries but never think about the genres of it here I learn about a big world of poetry and its grammar. this kind of poetry is really new for me I am really thankful for this course for introducing me this kind of poetries and method.

I really like the way when we read poems in class and discuss it together in small groups that really helped in connecting with the poems and with my classmates. And the way they give us freedom for thinking on it and also doing it freely really helped me.


As I reflect upon on my strengths and weaknesses as related to this course; my greatest fear is the public performance and in this course, we have been performing in front of the public which I found helpful to overcome from my hesitation although I performed so less in this course I learned so many things about performance. There were many different stages of the course where I enjoyed so much one of them was writing gazals. Gazal is something which I have been listening for a long time but I have never thought of writing it, this course made me do it. When I was writing, I was in a big confusion that should I write in Hindi or English? Although I choose to write in Hindi and translate it. and  other difficult thing for me was to write political poems. As the major part of this course based on different genres of poetry because of this, I could understand different dimensions of it.


 Somewhere I have regret because I missed many classes due to my other engagements and responsibilities I didn’t want to miss but I had to I am really thankful to our faculty that they understood my problem supported me.

It was not just a course for me rather it was an experience of life which taught me many different things about life, about people and most importantly about music. I am from a music background and this course was connected with music in a different manner but that manner was new for me and that’s really an interesting part for me. I have been trying to take practical courses from the starting of my second year. First I took materiality and performance that was also very interesting and my experience was really good. And in this course crafting poetry, I got through many different dynamics of life, Music and professional things. It was a fully practical course which made us more knowledgeable and opened more paths in arts. I have to say that I changed after this course. I did many things here which I never did in my life. 

In closing, I would like to add that I have really enjoyed the experience of this class. It has been good for me to learn with experienced faculty and my lovely cohorts. Thank you for your help and patience.





Saturday, 5 May 2018

Pitter Patter Poetry - Reflective Essay


" Click click. Tick tock. Words drop. Tongues suture. Time flows. You try to leash it. You try to box it. You try to restrain it. You try to reverse it. You try to hold it dear, deep within the recesses of your phone’s gallery. Filled with screenshots of unfinished conversations. Vistas from untouched lands. Fragments of incomplete rants. You scroll up, and down. But the pictures never change. The conversations remain half-said, and full dead. The vistas remain immobile. And the rants still make you self-conscious. I have been in this city for nearly nine months now. Each day the city shrinks in its capacity to contain or offer. And I sit here, writing about the mundane experience there is to know. About living in a third world country. Having boys barely out of school, come and deliver drinking water to me. Other boys offering to pick up my garbage every morning. Other boys preparing tea by the sutta shop. Other boys beeping their rickshaw at me. And I sit here, soaked up in my privilege. Cocooned. Insulated. Isolated. Cordoned off. In a world of make-believe threats. A world of major digressions. A world of microaggressions. A world of inequality. A world without humour. A world without light. A world without adventures. A world with just enough to keep you alive. I sit here, pretending that I philosophise, I call myself a writer. I am deeply self-reflective, but just reflecting on the hollowness that exists is only making me hear the echoes better. Echoes of not conforming. Echoes of not living a life deeply. Echoes of the past; echoes betrayed by my memories. Memories which smoothen out the creases. Recollections which straighten up the clutter. Reminiscences of catastrophic lethargy and indifference swept out. Harking back to instances of humiliation - the first slap, the first rejection, the first inquisition - promptly expunged. Poetry brings these memories back. In fragments. In metaphors, images and epithets. Like summoning half-forgotten dreams. Distilling experiences. I attended a political meeting recently where a professor just before reading his poetry said, “Poetry is a luxury where action is necessary.” Poem implicates like news reports explicate. To survive in a world where educated children are human resources. Where wind and water are natural resources. Where all modes of kinship with objects both inanimate and animate are reduced to their material value. We need poetry. To name the nameless so it can be thought. Think the thoughtless so that one can act. Act impossible to know the constraints of possibility. To subjectify the world around us. Not to colonise."

Friday, 4 May 2018

response poetry

Pencil…

In the context of a sketching artist

Since the beginning of that sharply beautiful art

It made many masterpieces to comes alive

It doesn’t belong to eternity itself

But on the contrary, whatever drawn by a me

I can make that piece of art eternal

response poetry

Scissors…

When I cut, I do cut

When someone runs me in vacuum

I don’t cut at all

But the latter process is prohibited

People say this would start a fight in their family

And my whole existence is confused

Since they have this credence

Am I a scissor or a hoodoo?



political poetry

In my dreams - political poetry


Lustres of dream
Kept wide open for you to enter
Remember when I said, we started out so nice?
When I wake up each morning and open my eyes
And the world is again opened in front of me
For me to search for in it
Me
I see it as a murder scene
With blood spatters everywhere
I don’t know which one to clean first
I see a building then, in the distance
Half done
With hollow concrete walls that are so dark
You can’t stop looking at them
Your dark eyes pierce right through the hollows
Into myself, into nothingness
I don’t mind the break
I don’t mind the fragility of my mind
I don’t mind the craziness
After a long night
I don’t want the empty lanes
The disillusionment with caught feelings
To live in the luxury of feeling your presence all the time
For every tune and every melodious word
And every noise to
Remind me of you
The lustres of my dream
I want them to speak of you
Every thread, every smell.

independent

poetry- ek khoj

मैं तो बस तुम्हें खोज रहा हूँ
तुम हो के उसे खोज रहे होl

वो भी जानता है वो किसे खोज रहा है
प्रत्येक उत्तर से परिपूर्ण है हृदयl

लेकिन जिस्म पर केवल प्रश्न टंगे हैं
मिट्टी की देह में कहाँ छुपी बैठी है आत्माl

उस आत्मा में कहाँ विद्यमान है परमात्मा
और यहाँ कौन है जो उसे खोज रहा है?



independent poetry

नज़्म- कोरे कागज़ पर  

रात के वक़्त रखा था कोरे कागज़ पर
ख़यालों का एक बीज,
खिड़की के करीब रख दिया उसको
वहीं रखी है तुम्हारी तस्वीरl

रात में बारिश ने बूंदें गिराई
सुबह खिड़की से धूप आई
ख़यालों के बीज में गज़ल छुपी थी
कोरे कागज़ पर गज़ल उग आईl

तुम्हें गज़ल भेज रहा हूँ
उसको पढ़कर मुझे बताना तुम,
गज़ल कैसी है? तुम कैसी हो?


Wednesday, 2 May 2018

If I am slippers, you are hands for me

If I am slippers, you are hands for me.
If I am a nose-pin, you are like feet.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

If I am ketchup, you'd be khichdi.
If I turn vegetarian, you'd be the meat
If I am slippers, you are hands for me.

If you be a broom, I'd be a clean dormitory.
You're the last person in an empty room I'd greet.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

You might be honey, I ain't your honeybee.
I am a red mark and you're a clean white sheet.
If I am slippers, you are hands for me.

If I am fire, you're definitely not ghee.
If I'm a sweater, you're the scorching summer heat.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

I now suggest, you let this matter be.
I hate it when I have to repeat.
If I am slippers you are hands for me.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.




OCD


Who put my honour between my legs?
I'm sure as hell I didn't.
You know my OCD quite well
and I expect you not to fiddle.
I assigned it to my indestructible head
or my fiery heart within.
But never did I place such a valuable thing
in my flimsy sheet of hymen.

I want to write a verse today

I want to write a verse today.
Art wishes to run its course today.

I want to break the boundaries of this cubicle.
This computer feels like a curse today.

I want to paint these blank white walls.
I wish my colours would disperse today.

I want to break this deafening silence.
I wish to freely converse today.

Don't want to deal with numbers anymore.
I wish to play with words today.

Change in Hanuman

Have you caught a glimpse of Hanuman lately
on blackening walls and the back of cars?
Oh man, has he reinvented himself or what!
He just does not seem like the Hanuman I knew as a kid.
The one my mother told me to look up to.
The good-humoured one
with a humble smile
and gentle manners.
Now he looks like someone I was warned about.
More butch
and somehow, more angry.
Blood shot eyes
knitted eyebrows
a threatening frown.

It almost doesn’t seem like him.
Maybe this one’s an evil twin.
It looks like the dark side caught up with him.
Or maybe it’s just protein and gym.

Whatever it is, I have to warn.
The Hanuman we knew, is certainly gone.
He is offended easily and losses his calm.
He is out to slay his “enemies”, or well
Ram’s.





Coffee Mug

Early soapy bath
out of the cluttered sink.
One teaspoon sugar
Two tablespoons milk.
Some scented brownish powder
water up-to the brim.
There now,
I'm ready for our morning kiss.

How to get ready for a date

Treat it like a performance
you got to play your part.
Make sure
you take a longer bath.
Scented soaps, scented sprays
a neat and tidy bun
no hair astray.
A skirt above the knee
a lacy prickly bra
Hide that zit!
It won't take you far.
Conceal the razor cuts
and you're good to go.
No, not that red a lipstick
you'd look like a whore.
Practice your smile
don't make it too wide.
And DO NOT forget pepper spray
it's late in the night.