The one

This twilight sky, flickering in the wind, blithe and free, a vagabond kite,

Stars far, you close by and the smells of love, our fleeting touches and the whispers of this passing night,

Reading you like my favorite book, warm and wrapped within your world, 

Your simple ways, my long lost heart, and the last sliver of orange in that sky,

All the life that's yet to come, these moments will stay with me for evermore.

Invisible

Some days seem longer than years', I am caught in one such today.

It isn't something I know about you, it is all the things I wish to know. 

Meaning, purpose, and hopes, an interminable pursuit, that leaves me alone in my mountain woods, where I have dreamt so many dreams.

A year of this mysterious attraction,  of stumbling along with your undulating flow, 

invisible like the brook in my valley deep, like the wind caressing the grassy slopes, I stand invisible right next to you.

Invisible, invisible, so invisible to you.

 

Mountain Nights

I struggle past the teaming streets, these endless years in this city loud, 

Lie down weary, finally to sleep, and wait for you my familiar dreams,

The silent love of my mountain nights, set to the sound of a trickling brook,

The pines that sway, and the wind that whispers, 

Yellow twinkles from faraway homes, shimmering past the valley deep,

Waking up to the sight of clouds, hanging patient inside my house,

But all I get is this city loud, and lonely days amidst familiar crowds.

Kites and stars

The twilight sky, flickering in the wind, blithe and free, a vagabond kite,

Stars far, you close by and the smell of love,

Our fleeting touches, amidst the whispers of this passing night,

Reading you like my favorite book, warm and wrapped within your world,

Your simple ways, my long lost heart, and the last sliver of orange in that sky,

All the life that's yet to come, these moments will stay with me forevermore.

oh my river

Days go breathless, talking to you,

nights all sleepless, thinking of you,

oh my river, I sit thirsty by your side,

can't drink enough from your eyes, 

could sing to the tune of your voice, but I just sit all tongue tied,

if only this was a different world, and I could tell you what's on my mind,

I know you wouldn't still be mine, but I will be less miserable for a while,

oh my river, I sit so thirsty by your side.

A purple sky

Spending my days next to you, and I pretend to be just some guy, but not a night passes by, without you being on my mind. 

In passing as we walk, your fingers sometimes touch mine, set ablaze I burn, wanting to hold you just a little while, 

Lingering a second extra, I look into your eyes, and imagine you looking back at me, with that shimmer of the darkening sky, 

Running forever like parallel lines, how do I let go of this fantasy, that we are bending and will meet soon at some point,

Pondering why you have to be so unaware, when entangled in you, I just keep plotting for ways, 

I pretend to be unaffected, even as your love for him is splattered all around, I am just a fool, dreaming of you my impossible why

my life

I love you, and that's how fucked my life is. 

I pretend as if you want me, the way I want you, madly. 

I play the few miserly words we spoke, in my head, over and over again. 

I check my messages every few minutes, knowing well, that it is not me you write to. 

I imagine you in the moments I spend alone as if imagining could make you real. 

I call out your name, in my madness, as if my words, like magic, could be heard in that heart of yours.

I love an impossibility, I stop, I try to forget, then I keep starting all over again,

and that's how fucked my life is. 

A dreamer's muse

Wandering past the corner of my eye, whispering things I have long forgotten about, 

A bun or free flowing, a splash of morning colors, thrown careless on my thing of beauty;

Her momentary glance, pierces through my truths and all my lies, leaving me unrequited every time,

Listening, watching and hoping, befuddled by your bespectacled smile;

Like a cloud burst on a mountain high, you wash me over and everything within;

Oblivious, nonchalant, oh my distant moon, do none of my ravings ever float to you?

Mirror

Perdition, forgiveness, petty resolutions all, 

This myth of love, burning through me, on this cold long night,

Oh lover of moon, scalded by it’s very moonlight,

Slither away, find a dark crevice to hide,

Escape somehow, this torment, this perfidy, this pain of hope,

Mirror tell me, this face of mine, where is that shine of joy, that twinkle of youth, or a little love perhaps?

An evening at work

The day was ending just fine, 

until she walked all happy past my desk, 

a momentary sunlight, in the few seconds, as I saw her go, 

and then the cold rain started pouring all over again.

The perfidy of hope

Oh dreamer, seduced by the pied Piper of yore,

Where to shall you go, chasing illusions,

Deluded forever, by the charm of that unknown,

How will you let go, when there is nothing left to hold.

Oh stranger, your unreciprocated lonely glance,

A million times, and some more,

Stoned, crazy and forlorn,

Burnt out embers of coal-black dreams, and this smoke-filled heart.

Oh, singer of hymns, from those forgotten forsaken,

Rock faced mountains and the steely moon,

Cold long nights, and this myth of love,

Perdition, forgiveness, petty resolutions all, just to get through the night.

Oh lover of moon, burnt by it’s caressing moonlight,

Slither away into some dark crevice to hide,

The shine of joy, the twinkle of affection, the touch of love,

Escaping this torment of the endless perfidy of hope.

Ruminations

A bright day and this darkness within, alone in an office full of familiar faces,

A knot in the throat, and a fire in my eye,

Anything to lighten this weight inside, of my futile hopes and sullen dreams,

Dredging souvenirs from people I used to know, empty aches and wounded memories of evanescent joy.

Unrequited forever, still waiting on that perhaps bus, even as life has all but rattled by.

Starry sky tonight

Deep dark starry skies, 

I am thinking of a strange evanescent and slipping someone ;
lying in a suddenly lonesome hotel tonight,

tucked in a far away oblivion, I am remembering few sunshine smiles; 

heart it's still caught in a long past moment,
as those eyes played wonder games from across;

Some deep dark starry skies tonight;

Cold touches

Can't make sense of what it may feel like,  parched and wet at the same time;

Fire or water, a kiss or a moment of passion;

Ruminations and dreams, beyond the edge of the water deep,

I will break my heart, normally yeah, but I am feeling otherwise tonight.

the promise of a promise

summer nights and moonlit untrodden paths,
on the silver streams sieving through the trees,
stars float on the wings of the flowing breeze;

dwarfed, I watch the trees with their heads in the sky,
swinging as if on a lullaby,
on the moist velvet greens, lost I lie,
watching the faraway blacks of the sky;

a pocket full of pebbles and an empty mind,
a poet heart vacillating in search of a muse,
I lie beside the gleaming waters of this stream,
rushing along, much like life, unmindful of the stagnance its beholder seeks;

someday I will seek you, oh queen of my dreams,
entrenched within this heart, sometimes close and sometimes afar,
I hear you whispering out my name,
someday I will, I vow, walk the long road to you

Few long miles

A few long miles is all I traveled since that old hill town and those hanging windows of my childhood house;

Heartbreak and aches, some laughs and shakes, like the white wisps of clouds I have floated so far, wind in my hair and sun on my back, many done and many more miles they come;

Someone up there looked over my shoulder, through every bend and treacherous turn, to get me through, a bit bruised & shaken, but undefeated still.

Naren Poker

I speak with the conviction of a strange mind, a mind that at it's will, either refuses to believe in anything or believes in everything. 

I speak from recesses of darkness that are getting enervated by a few strands of light, I can't see too far, but sure can make out some silhouettes. I am suspended in disbelief and grounded in cynicism, trying to fly multicolored kites of hope. 

I am the guy forever in transit, at beginnings, at the ends and somewhere in-between; sometimes waiting for the reds to turn green, and sometimes staring motionless at the greens. 

I am the crazy stranger with a far off look in his eye, I am the harmless tie-wearing man, already looking tired on his way to work. I am the enigma that doesn't really intrigue, I am the charmer no one really notices. I am an average bloke, with a very non-average agenda. 

I am Naren Poker.

Poker, really? I encounter this often, so to set the record straight, I ain't from a long line of illustrious but bankrupt players of poker, neither am I the kind who can live up to that name with their straight in the eye bluffs. I am just a chance victim of a joke, a cruel one, for a man who given an opportunity wouldn't really want to be noticed, for anything, carries a name that gets him a comeback each time. In a way, this also encapsulates what my life has been about, a series of circumstances unaligned to my wants.

Naren Poker, the private detective, reads the sign on the tired, beaten and forcefully held straight, the door of the humid and sweaty small room, I call the office, in a rather run-down corner on the fourth floor of a senile, old and wrinkled building in a busy, noisy and angry part of town. 

It is here that for inspiration, on rather dull morning hours of work I usually flip through the racy pages of the once glossy adult magazines I pick up from a pre-used magazine store around the corner below. The bored faces of luscious females pouting or twisting their faces into strange expressions of sexiness for my benefit, never seem to bore me. They just stare straight into my eyes, or sometimes even through them into the large empty space behind, not that I got any business judging their trade. But then neither do they desist from mocking my emptiness.

Outside the window, the world and its inhabitants were keeping up their maddening pace, calling each other names, shoving and nudging, struggling and despairing, hurtling along, trampling on hopes - most of them their own. Not that I could care any less. I looked at my watch, the morning hours really never passed, every day the same story. In the age of the internet, the self-promotion boom on everything social, a private detective was a vanishing breed. Especially the ones with no specific specialty or skill. I fell in this category, the kind of guy who will bring you all the information neatly copy-pasted and compiled into a report.

It was a soft knock, which sounded like a loud thud, I looked sharply towards the door on my right. The usual loneliness of mornings had made me so unaccustomed to a visitor that it startled me. It was a dream, standing in my doorway, outlined by the old dusty brown of the door, a brilliantly shining form of a woman. She looked at me through the small sliver of her bored half-shut eyelids. I looked back or rather gawked, not that gawking has ever really bothered me, the strange lasciviousness of my eyes, so often commented upon, failed to penetrate the impenetrable beauty of the twenty-something. She cracked a smile and the sun seemed to rise right into my old dusty office. As is my wont, in such moments I feign unaffectedness, a casual disregard for the obvious. I have always been proud of this ability irrespective of how foolish or see through my attempt may be.

I signaled her to the chair opposite, suddenly the layer of dust on my table seemed to stare back at me. I called it names and implored it to disappear. It refused to oblige.

Aloud

Unfulfilled? So what, for I am love and not an ambition;

Unrequited? Maybe, but a failure I will never be.

Drifting tunes

Songs which carried memories of my past, I have forgotten them all; today is a new destination, my old haunts, I have forsaken them all.

Nothing chains me anymore, no strings of love, no sliver of hate, I have forbidden them all.

Songs which carried memories of my past, I have forgotten them all;

An empty heart, I am free at peace, no fear no hope, I have foretaken them all.

Forever in between, no ends in sight, I unravel a knot a time, fingers sore but many more to go.

Strolling unencumbered through the labyrinths of my mind, I have forgiven them all.

Songs which carried memories of my past, I have forgotten them all.

The blues

I couldn't think of a better word, but then words get prodigal when you need them the most.

It was such a moment, it was a moment to express something my mind had not yet deciphered, a little something that was stirring in my heart.

Love isn't something I can believe in, it brings too much misery in it's anticipation, and the inevitable disillusionment that follows.

Some moments though still catch me wondering about would have beens, and the clouds they swallow whole a perfectly sunny day and it begins to pour from a deep blue sky.