Upstream

Inside a bloody womb, ripples upstream

Wait for those sleepless spring nights of frenzied harvest

Only this body, cut in pieces, can testify

How you overcome the pain with bated breath, monsoon-smeared.

Field of Silence

Monsoon under an incessant downpour of fiery yearning

Rice bubbles inside the wound,

A rural mendicant is playing

In the foggy afternoon, saturated with the aroma of boiling paddy,

Deep within, they have been tear-worms all along their lives,

Travelling from the roots of life to its confluence,

The earth turns into an ascetic with amazing ease,

A river of sorrow and sob,

Washed ashore on the melancholy wings of sea-gulls and pigeons,

Waits for a cry to announce the death of a century.

This verdant field wakes up in dawn, every day

Trudges along in silence, in pain…

Days of Living

Crossing one milestone after another, our lives

Now stand at the door of emptiness.

Our days could have been prolific…

Our freedom illuminated with blinding light.

Each surviving moment is a celebration of death.

As the hungry earth stirs the embers,

Days and nights pass by.

Hatred Too Will Write The History

It is pitch-dark inside the one

Who sees the state through the eyes of power—

Eyes brimming with explosives, smeared with tears and flame

Hatred too would write the history of silence…

Hence I will Return

Hence I will return to long-gone feelings,

Inside me, ‘You’ is a fistful of destiny still alive—

Our lips halt on tear stains in a deafening din,

Generations pass, and you watch me setting the trap of sorrow.