Death Request of A Coffee Addict

Don’t flood the casket of mine

With the rain of tears

Rather pour the porcelain cups

Brimful with brown hot coffee

And remember memories of us

Discussing the floral notes of coffee

Instead of chanting sacred rhyme

Mother

After wiping my running nose

She force-cleaned my face

Smell of butter in her palm

Lingers in me to this day

It is winter again

Butter I have in plenty

But life line on her palm short

I wish I had known

Little bit of palmistry before

Love of a God

You shouldn’t look at me in my eyes

I bring tears

Skin burns and tan lines are my usual

Side effects

But who evaporates your worries

Only me

And shower you with pleasure of rain

Still it is me

Just for night I will be gone

Trust me

Love of light comes with a condition

Otherwise

How can you master dark separation?

Reservation Gene

(Bacteria- Plural; Bacterium- Singular)

Why you bothered to grow at all?

Bacteria in a petri plate

Laughed at a bacterium

Growing alone in the periphery

Of the plate

He kept growing

Bacteria kept barking

Why are you growing in our plate?

When he didn’t reply

Bacteria tell to each other

No worries, we’ll quench all the nutrients

The media in this plate is only ours

Not of someone who just happened

To land in the plate by chance

Still growing? How come?

It must be his reservation gene

Otherwise how can he resist our

Toxins designed to kill invaders

On the second thought

If he has it, why shouldn’t we

Have that gene

We must protest

How can we see him

Growing peacefully in

The periphery

Of the petri plate

If we don’t do something

Investigator will pick him up

And throw rest of us

After 48 hours

We must overgrow

Investigator came to check on the plate

He couldn’t find a single colony

Seeing the overgrowth, he told to his students

“Plate is contaminated.

Throw it in autoclave for sterilization.”

Aghori anatomist

Details of the bone

How much more can you cram

Mind-bending words like

Foramen, fossa, and condyles

All look the same

Next to the railway tracks

What lies beneath the soil

Dogs bark at you and

Everyone out of their homes

A jute bag on your shoulder

And you knock the door

A cloth over her nose 

Still mother lets you in

Bones with muscle strands

Boils in an old pan 

Soup you are going to throw 

You just want bones

How many handshakes

Long time

You have forgotten

To handshake

But you must practice

In order to look

Professional

Now, they had called you

Not to know what you have got

But to know who they have

Accidently hand-picked

Usual problem of big people

They forget their accomplishments

Since that email

Everyone greeted you

Your new celebrity status

Discriminatory

Where no one shakes hand with

Your colleagues

What would have happened to you

If the morning sun has been unkind to you

You tell your colleagues

They openly claims they are jealous

Such open remarks bring laughter

An affair gone wrong

It was like going to another temple

And loving other goddess

When the goddess

You were married to

Couldn’t give whatever you think you deserved

Peace, love, and care

A reasonable ask in the company

Of other goddess

Alluring with a red dot on her forehead

With breathtaking positions carved in her temple

You start to expect too much

Is that a problem if you imagine that                              

Other goddess would love you more than anything

But once she got all the flowers from you

She kicks your butt to remind you about the god

She had been happily married to for eternity

To repent, you return to your goddess

Only finding her temple is now crowded

With many devotees like you

It is like going to a crowded temple

Sound of soul

Birds in a sanctuary

Raindrops falling on banana leaves

A stone rolled on a barren road

Beaches, valleys, and rainforests

Sound

Draws you deep inside of you

To connect with the sound

You very own

That you have forgotten

The Last Dinner

Wax of a candle light

Gathers at the table now

Dinner has gone cold

Waiter brings liquor

I sit next to people

Smelling booze and perfume

Expecting to hear

Your unsteady feet

After your bossy tone

On my phone

Your head on my shoulders

Reeks of an familiar perfume

My roommate recites a poem

About your long hairs

And brown eyes

You probably him

She says

I nod

Wondering

Do I know you?

Temple Run

In front of temple

Females stand in a queue

With milk packet and vermilion 

Just to touch phallus

Encircled by vagina,

Splattered red with vermilion,

Ejaculated milk dripping in drain

Unknowingly they claim

Their sexuality

Yet they complain

A case has been filed

Against the condom talk

That held in the shrine

Banned Love

Such fragility of mine

And audacity of yours

Don’t go hand in hand

Words twisted and

Used against each other

After a while

Love became a cold drink

A time pass

Drank at a liquor bar

Where vows and agony

Of Relationship

Were scoffed off

Like some superstition

Republic of Abused kids

A seven year old girl yearns

For what her friends have

She knew she will get

By doing what her friends

Have done it

She gets in the camp

With the flags of other country

She comes out in tears, sweat

And blood between her thighs

Carrying a sachet of cookies

In one hand and

Gin tonic in another

Rama O Rama

Neither were you picked up from the furrow

Nor I have broken the bow

Lovely bickering of yours got me hooked

I keep staring at the bird

Of ambition which took you away

A sea filled with deadly serpents

Stretched between us

No ten-headed demon is

Scarier than wounded ego

Seed of ruin has been sowed

Planted with tears  

Fed with fertilizer of guilt

A tree took shape

Under which

I took the refuge

No monkey could help me

If your phone is always busy

By stroke of luck

Distance between us were erased

Yet you shied away from family

And I wanted to hug mine

Either you had a young mind

Or I had grown insane

I felt we’re still in different time zone

The bitterness of the fruit

I ate when I was alone

Still lingers

You were never asked

To prove your virginity

Yet I became a folk song

People keep singing

Purification of Sacred Ground

But the sacred ground is

Flushed with water

And idols washed

Only after someone

Who had been raped

Accidentally steps on

The rapist’s toe marks,

However,

Are like a sandalwood ‘tilak’

On the idol’s forehead

The love story of teabags

We are like

Two teabags

Abandoned

After drinking

Dehydrated in a tea cup

Whose brown bottom

Resembles that of

Dried blood

Parasite

Parasite draws blood

With its long proboscis

Creating new wounds

Leaving old ones unattended

I become cold and bitter

Yet unaccepting to the fact

That I have been infected

To kick me into awareness

A wave of chill brings back

Complimentary hallucination

On the back of my eyelids

Play decades of memories

In less than an hour

How parasite had bitten

When I least expected it

Not only after rainy season

I kick off the blankets

Covered like a mound over me

I get up with my body in tears

Crying over loss of what

We have shared

Out of nowhere

Emptiness shrouds over me

I am fine, I say when people ask

As if nothing has really happened

Yet my breath warm like the smell

Of an old man and his clothes

I have been following on stairs

This is when it occurs to me that

It is I who have been following

The mosquito in hope to get

Bitten once again to live the dream

Reading Phylum Porifera

How can you expect me

I can only give you

What I have been sucking

Water contaminated with

Temple and mosque wastes

Even my internal spicules

Can’t hurt as much as the hatred

Yet I keep forgetting

I am a Porifera

Holes in my body perform

One major function

Ingestion and excretion

Fear of Garland

It was

A garden full of young flowers

Swayed with gentle breeze

Fragrance all around

Attracts flies and wasps

With open mouths to Sun

God burning bright to light

Top of matchsticks

Potential weapons

In this world

Now it is

A park full of trampled flowers

Fragrance of nausea

Disaster could have been averted

People blame God

In white clothes

Standing with folded palms

Yet greet him with the garland

Of squashed flowers

God bent their neck

With a looming fear 

Onions smell last longer

Pillow still wet

Flooded with memories

Sun burns his back

Through the window

Last night

Was like any other night

Except

Him behaving

In certain way

That was

Unexpected of him

A mother tells

A goodnight story to

Her daughter

The Beggar and The Coin

The streetlights converge on him

Lit him in entirety like

Some unshaven god

Drags himself along

The corner of the streets

Raises his dirty palms

To vehicles and passerby

When his leprosied fingers

Curve in a cup and

He stretches his lips in gratitude

That very moment I came to know

The value of a single coin

Frog Love

Early in a relationship

They used to hug each other for hours

Like frogs clasping each other

Still she hesitated

Hymen has become her hymn

He almost in tears for his demand

Like a toddler for milk candies

She knew very well that

Unlike frogs, they had no chance of

External fertilization

In wet undergarments

At the same times wishing

About less judgmental water

To have their own tadpoles

Swimming around them 

Soul Healer

Wounds bleeding fresh

Like a sliced pomegranate

Her words ricocheted

Like bullets of his soul

Though morning air had

Cooled down his hot tears

Past events walked along

As unwanted memories

Jingling anklets of a young girl

Momentarily cures him from pain

Undercurrent

He spoke a little

Yet I understood

The way

He averted his eyes

Sighed at some questions

Scratched his arms

Wetted his lips

That  

World is tough place for

Romantic like him

She named me Myshkin

As if she had known

What would I end up

Doing in her absence

Stares at the stars

In hope she would be staring at them

Abhor the tutty-fruity ice-cream

She would be eating alone

Watch the movies she hated

Nothing much to do in her absence

Read the books she liked to question

Why I haven’t seen this coming

Walk on the lover lane

In hope for catharsis

Get up in the night sweating

Dreams of her kissing me

Wondering why

Why?

She christened me

Myshkin from ‘The Idiot’

Called me

“My Skin, you are mine.”

I, now,

Lose a part of

My skin daily