Ahmedabad

They met over some hot,
acidic coffee and pungent
garlic bread.

Writers, poets and more poets,
eating, chatting,
reading and talking
texts.

A short story began
germinating
and will grow up
to be a novel
soon.

She spoke of relationships
and alienation,
that co-exist but last a lifetime.
He
spoke of gory impotence
that is part of a bureaucrat’s life
who lords over villages.

Then,
they who think too
of relationships
but
in a different
sort of way,
struck.

We saw it on TV.
And read it in the paper too.

A boy,
just seven,
his long story
cut short.
His skin cut through
with acid hurled
by the aliens,
fighting
scars
and the pungent
hospital smells –
the smell of dead flesh
that the living carry
and of living but
decaying layers
of those,
already dead.

July 28, 2008

TV

They put a few coats of golden paint
on the bigger clay statue
and made the smaller
metal statue look like such a dud.
That’s the power of makeup.
At least on TV.

Oct 21, 2008

Secret service archives?

I opened the page
to type a few words
and the computer said
it was a new document
that I must name
before I start writing.
I never thought I was
creating documents
that had to have names.
This is interesting
in a sinister sort of way.

October 21, 2008

The setting sun

Do twelve bizarre
thoughts
put together make a poem?
Not during normal working
hours.
No one writes during
normal working hours anyway.
That’s the time when we
gather poetry
like fairytale characters
collect
berries, flowers or mushrooms
in woven baskets
the sun setting unexpectedly –
the reversible twist in the tale --
their only big concern.

October 21, 2008

Compulsion

I am going to sit here
tonight,
all day tomorrow
and so on
searching for what I want to write
in what others have written.
Because, my pen has
run dry.

October 21, 2008