Key

A roving troubadour is in a fix.
Shelter and wine, is all he seeks
Faraway lies an abandoned cabin
Mile walk from this dull and drab inn.

A narrow orifice- a portal.
Key to which, sits in a bottle.
A key to the avenues unknown,
He’s left to explore, all alone.

As he unlocks, the door creaks
Ominous lull punctuated by squeaks
Bleak ambiance, redolent of mortality
Here death lingers with alarming alacrity.

He hums maudlin and dark tunes
Of stories told by the wall runes.
He pours himself a shot of whiskey
He drinks to the moon, stars and this key!

Vespertine Melancholia

Mind harks back to the near past.
As my somnolent brain tries to
piece together incoherent fragments,
into something cohesive.
Your portrait, your visage
-an argument against entropy.

Oh, how on that innocuous day
you rekindled love inside a forlorn heart!
How you made a stoical man
quiver in an ecstatic shock!
All that and much more,
without even acknowledging my existence.

My futile attempts at
requiting our love.
I have resigned.
Your existence-
a refuge from my stultifying life.
Mine- your dire tristesse?

“Vicarious Embarrassment/Fermdschämen”

Scanty boulevard.
Leaves they rustle
to sing in gratitude,
of the blowing breeze.
As another balmy
spring day culminates.
And, as it always has,
death lingers.

The dusk is upon us.
oh look, the moon has risen!

Your gait is placid
mine is rather hurried.
We strategically time
a furtive glance.
Alas, we fail!
Our eyes, they meet!
And, as it always has,
death lingers.

Shame is upon us,
oh look, our ego has fallen!

Ah, a sigh of relief
we collectively breathe.
No passersby to
this odd encounter.
Only the moon,
who hides itself behind
the diaphanous clouds
in vicarious embarrassment.
As, I, go my way,
you, go yours!
And, as it always has,
death it lingers!

Love was upon us,
Oh look, out of love, we have fallen!

Quiescent quotient

Abominable lull, a dreary vacance
Morose you, a distinct smell
Eerie spirits, there are none
It is just you and your thoughts.

Doors creak, floors they squeak
Hands tremble, your legs go weak

Gamut of emotions, in your countenance
A blind raven caws in a vocalized Braille
His wiry legs betray the necromancer’s gun
Fallowed and dormant, your brain, it rots.

Death glances a sneak-peek
As you quiver, and go bleak.

 PS: Hi there, my staunch blog readers! You might have picked up on my frequency of poetry (if we can call it that) in the past few days. I apologize profusely, if it didn’t stand up to your standards. All I am trying to do is get my mojo back. It shall remain so, until I state otherwise. Thanks, anyway! Have a good one.

“Letters lie/Questa Notte”

 

Oh, we used to write letters!
With ink to our pens,
and tears to our notebooks.
We used to wallow
in each other’s
joy and misery.
Hiatus, there were many!
But the exchanges
they never ceased.
All we did
was revisit
the old letters.
We drank the wine
of our love
to the bottom
of the decanter.
Till the acrid sediment
was all that remained.

But now, I don’t!
And dust has gathered
Inks have smeared
in the hallowed pages
that once housed
the paroxysm of emotions,
that once beget tears,
and that once explained
the ineffable.
Those letters lie
piled up in a corner.
It is a nauseous melange
of a repressed past and
the hairs that I’ve shed.
The immured memories
they still haunt me.
I might be hungover
from the wine,
But I am sober, now!

And all I write now
are these tales
of the harrowing turbulence
imbueing inside me.
I write to subdue
the disquieting
melee in my mind.
On second thought,
I still do write letters,
but to no one
in particular.
As a protagonist
of my life,
I recite a soliloquy
in an empty theater.
And I no longer drink,
but I’m still hungover!

“One colour: Blue”

I

I only listen to the blues
Music is an expression-
a microcosm of something visceral
and something intimate. 
I have no patience for ballads.
Blues is permanent. 
The riffs oozes 
a paroxysm of grief!
The lyrics speak of
the sorrows untold!

I don’t romanticize death.
It is liberating. 
and easy.
So much so,
I vex at its prospect
and its unrelenting insouciance.
Closure is not what I want!
I enjoy the capricity of life.
I long to convulse
at the throes of despondency!

I am not a masochist
It is too conforming.
It is absolute.
I am not like this,
not every time.
It all comes in phases,
not systematically, though.
Also not erratic
Not even unpredictable,
because unpredictability
is predictable.

II

My pain has become self-aware.
It has freewill or
is at least
fighting for it.
The pain doesn’t want me
I am incapable of pain.
I don’t deserve it.
It wants to extricate itself
away from me.

I don’t sleep, I am already asleep.
My life is a somnambulation.
But I don’t live in a dream.
Not even in a nightmare.
I am in a stupor
fraught with hysteria.
My listlessness 
beleaguered by internal conflicts.
Insanity is the closest refuge,
and I fight for its elusive asylum.

My existence now is a vestigial
shadow of life that used to be.
Catharsis seems far fetched
Because purging of emotions
is futile
if I don’t have any
to begin with.

 

“‘An imprecation to no one in particular”

 

May the violent of earthquakes
demolish your ivory tower.
May you witness
the faux-pinnacles
of your delusional empire
crumble before your very
eyes and may the debris of it
bury the happiness you hijacked.
And may the last of your nights
be infested with the nightmares
of the cataclysm, bygone,
instigated by
your own follies and
arrant malice.