Schizophrenic Sky

spears of sunshine come
stabbing through wayward
branches. and the wind is cold
in my face, almost erratic.
it shakes massive
jackfruits to the ground. my
walkway is pulp-splashed,
and this lazy drizzle does little
to wash it clean. sprinkling
soundlessly like fine sand -
dusk-colored and oozing
out of this schizophrenic sky;
touching everything, drenching nothing.

my garden is a messy emulsion.
enough earth but too little rain.
enough water but no real mud.
i am not looking forward to a rainbow,
for it will be dark before it breaks.
an electrocuted crow falls to the
pavement; feathers ruffled and claws
turned inwards in death. it’s one
distorted rainy evening, i wonder.
all i am hopeful is about the petrichor.
but the drizzle hangs on grass blades
like evanescent mist, too light on the
gleaming green spine to go down to
earth and break the fragrance free.
is this even real? i frown.

then
i remember your naked body against mine.
damp. just out of shower.
the sensuous odour of your floral bodywash
permeate through sheets
to become my breath.
i had felt ‘us’ on my fingertips
treading down the knobs
of your slender back; on my lips
in salty memories of mouthful kisses.

just so you know,
i sleep alone in that bed now.
becoming increasingly privy to rains
that fall without filling.

- Sobhan

The Wait & The Welcome

last summer
we sowed lemon seeds
in a plastic pot kept on the balcony rails.
it had been empty for a while,
and pigeons idled
on its edges, pecking
at the sun-hardened soil.
twigs of grass broke out
of the soil and perished
on its own. mostly torn away
by pigeons and squirrels to
cushion their modest nests.

for months after, with dots of green
hovering low over moist soil, we kept
it covered with a wicker basket
lest it became nests in no time.
and shooed all birds and squirrels
from the resting shades of our balcony
through four quarters of a day.

it's close to a year now, and the
plant has grown to a couple feet.
it has climbed past the balcony rails,
as a soft green wing hangs out
from our fourth-floor apartment.
its leaves big with prominent veins,
and stems, mud-laced, tad too thick
for pigeons to be beaked home,
to be chewed by squirrels.

now a steady rain continues to fall outside
and i watch the tendril bounce in the torrent.
the leaves washed, look like the delicate green
of its birthing days. a lone pigeon leaps up
from the ledge. its feathers damp, and perches on the pot
to drink from the puddle at the plant’s root.
the squirrel too is back, and is waiting at the rails.
it lifts its dark-buttoned eyes to my
unhurried face and waits. i wait too.
almost holding my breath.
then it slowly scurries over to the pot
and drinks the rain.

- Sobhan

If rains are lies...

my weather is
not in the radiance
of the sky, but in the
colors of my being.
what's daybreak
but my fond recollection
of your laughter, a silver
brook my poems sailed
to become songs;
the mellow nights
- our secret hideout,
where in the shadows
your ravishing spirit
milks my longings into
the tired blue of a crestfallen
sea. and the great rains, the
devouring downpour
is when the old postman
slips your letters under
the doormat when i'm not home.
you write to me asking
if the summer is
bearable at home?
and i look out into
the obscure light of rains,
and tell you that not a single
cloud has stopped overhead
since we hung our boots.

- Sobhan

Living Again

this city is stopped
and started by windows,
sweetheart.
stopped when shut
against the dust
and destitution of lives
sweating at the hearts
for the night to settle upon dew.
and started when pushed open
at dawn to drop breadcrumbs
for pigeons, and water the pallid hibiscus.

i’ve been your beckoning
both as the evening din and
morning's gentleness.
but it’s been a while
you’ve been out of bed.
drifting between shots,
syringes and men every new
hour. that's not the way, trust me.
you can choose not to fuck
and hold my hand. and we
can open doors to a new place
where there’ll be no gravity,
and you’ll feel no weight of
your scars. we’ll float. near
and far. in thoughts.
of forgetting
and loving anew.

there's always a way.
but this is not it.
not all pleasures can
be touched through
writhing naked bodies.
open your eyes. there's
a morning in the way i’ve
been wanting you for long.
and now it’s here at the
end of all your drunk nights.
for you.
to live all over again.

- Sobhan

White Lies of Wronged Nights

i know you didn't
sleep with him. but
neither does it take
a hammer to break a
heart. and i have died
a hundred deaths in the
thousand little things
you did around it.

there were days when
the summer got the better
of me, and i had dozed
off without a good night.
but i did get back to you
late, close to daybreak,
only to know that you'd
been awake - in a candid
conversation with a dear friend,
and i admit, i felt terribly
substituted. i remember
leaving at your place my
favorite novel on your birthday,
and i had called you to check
if the story was in line with
your taste. instead you sent
me a video of your special outing.
shaking a leg with mr. candid
in a lavish one piece; his gift
to you. 'beautiful' i had replied,
watching you gyrate to the music -
your body a spinning flame
reveling under sweeping lights
- choking on a fresh batch of tears
that i regret having cried. on another
day, if you remember, we had
an argument. and we didn't talk
for a week. i was alone, and wrong
enough to hope that you were too.
mr. candid kept you company, you
told me. that you being upset was a
pain he couldn't stand. that in his arms
you divulged about my lovelessness,
and he, like a true friend, offered you
solace with his lips on your mouth.

'but you love me, right?' i retaliated, furious.
'yes, baby. with my soul. and so i
didn't reciprocate to his smooch.'

if going down is the benchmark
of adultery, i have been cheating
since day one. for on my knees
i have prayed to heavens - thanking
for this life that has you in it.
it's to close this chapter, i realize
i committed a sin. having held your
profanity in the sacred rooms of love.

- Sobhan

Shadows, Sorrows, Sorries

the dusk upon my office street
has no color. this strip of road
down the deserted lake, cutting
through closely-huddled buildings,
and a looming cliff has the sun
slowly departing behind it, leaving
hollow clouds in its trail.

and all we have here are shadows.
lengthening every minute to become
the night. the flowering trees, windblown.
their blossoms one with dirt. the clinking
of glassware from the milkshake kiosk.
and employees on smoke breaks: fatigued,
frustrated flanking the pavements like
boats grounded in low tide - waiting for
night to fall, for the water to rise,
and take them away.

i look into their hollowed eyes. wide open,
but barely seeing, let alone realize.
smoking over a call, the mechanized laughter
and practiced pauses drives the client home.
there’s new task at hand now. time to head
back to the desk. the cigarette stub is tossed
into the gutter, and i almost hear its burning
tip extinguish in sewer.

close to 8PM, the offices start to empty.
motorbikes screech out of the cellar and
melt away in the dark. all i see is life slipping
away between shifts, in the quest of
making a living. are they aware? i doubt.

the dusk on my office street
has no color. and i walk away.
trampling the yellow flowers under my boots.

- Sobhan

Unkind Dawn

oh what an unkind
glory you’re, sunrise.
perversely you walk-in
on people possessed in
intimate dreams with hot
burst of light, and fondle
them to lurid consciousness.
you seep past curtains
into dim, sweaty bedrooms
of lovers naked and snuggled
under sheets and have
them break away from
night long embraces
to get on with life. you
break a drunk man’s reverie,
pouring like molten lead
into his blurry, double vision.
and raid the unfaithfuls escapade
in a shady hotel room, as their
betrayed counterparts dry their
wounds in your glare.

i have this thing about nights,
i tell you. who isn't’ as boastful of
its serendipity. one who’s calm,
grounded and liberal, and is okay
sharing the moon’s sheen with
the jaded stars of distant sky. it’s
the night that gets the poets drunk
on touches of lost people and time,
and have their scars bent into
literature. it’s the nights that embellishes
the warfare of subatomic particles
into the ever radiant northern lights at the artic.
it’s the nights that tames the mighty oceans,
nights that brings the birds home,
and lulls the wearied into dreams.

do you see how they fade out
without slightest resistance? at the
brink of dawn it dissipates into day.
the dewy grey falling away,
like the melting tip of an icicle
held over the flame. most importantly,
nights aren’t egoists - for they let you put on
lights if you're afraid and feel like day,
and even strike fires to keep zombies away.
nights, you see, can be emulated -
anytime, anywhere – in the cave of your palms,
and behind your closed eyes.
they live with you, inside you,
never abandoning, bringing out the intellectual quiet,
in a strong peg of darkness and destruction.

it’s on one beautiful night that
i am sharing this tale with you,
and i already feel edges of your
promises scrape my insides.
is it true that you loved me with
your night time fantasies, and
ditched me for the ambitions of day?

- Sobhan

Damn, your PDA!

a jovial you pranced
about the kitchen counter
in your instagram story. there’s
this annoying clanking
of pans in the backdrop
that wants me to close it.
but i stick around. like always.
looking at your dimly-lit face,
and your delicate lips tinted
by beads of moisture, while you
pour a thick stream of lavish
chocolate into an egg-mold.

it’s bewildering to watch
your Easter preparations.
last year i remember your asking
me what’s good friday
all about. i will be honest,
i had no clue. but i read up.
about the Catholic faith and
Christ's sacrifice to absolve
the world of its sins. easter is
christ’s resurrection, i would
have told you, had you not left.
but how could tales of return interest
a mind that was quietly hatching a goodbye?

so yeah, this looks made up to me,
and chances are that you still
don’t know what’s easter.
in fact, you don’t need to know.
for this is just about your love
for chocolate-making and nothing more.
this doesn’t work with me: your shitty
show of merrymaking. for i see you
through filters and fast-forwards,
from a place deep within, that at some point
of time had known you for who you were,
before you started to fake: feelings first, festivities now.

how do i know it? oh! c’mon.
wasn’t our courtship just another
enactment of yours? trying love
to substitute the monotony of your life.
you vouched for love, for us,
not knowing the basics of loyalty.
you attempted it like any other
instagram story of yours, only that i
played real in there. what erased
off your timeline in a day,
stayed in my life like a scar for me.
to continue seeing you scar,
many alike me.

- Sobhan

ABSAR

(i)
absar cannot tell
red from orange.
with a clumsily held crayon
between her fingers, she
continues to paint
the rose orange
in her drawing book.

(ii)
the last words of the
aazaan had barely
trailed off the loudspeaker
that a massive stone
comes flying down the sky
towards the army cordon.
it was enough to set off Downtown.

(iii)
‘red, jaan! roses are red.
like our blood.’ says najma,
her mother, rolling her
prayer rug off the floor. the falling sun
tremendous on her smiling face.

(iv)
stones rain on the streets, as
clamoring chains of people pour
out of narrow bylanes. the army
immediately on the backfoot. slogans
and stones rise up the sky.
tehreek, they say, is kashmir’s soul.

(v)
i will be used any moment. i am
banned. but still i will. that’s how
they keep peace. by breaching
laws, by barbarism.
at the end of the street, the 'peacekeepers'
lose their shit. the water cannons
and batons are already biting flesh.
now it’s my turn – i hate this, i swear.
can we not do this, please?
oh! they already have me out.
the sky’s now dark with smoke.
my trigger is pulled.
now i don’t know where i am.

(vi)
absar covers her face
with her palms. the crayons
rolling about lonely between pages.
najma swallows tears
and screams for help.
‘ammi, red?’ asks absar,
with blood pouring out
of her pierced eyes.

- Sobhan

Conquer

i know places you reminisce

your melancholy in, and no wonder

you never evolved.

the park bench you

burn frigid nights on,

dew upon your eyes and

menthol cigarette to your

lips, with your ashen spirit

winding skywards in smoke,

is where the aging gathers

every morning to whine about

their arthritic knees, or quietly

count upon their rosary.

the coffee shop you

invariably frequent,

taking to the farthest corner

that looks out to a bustling

road, the chair’s foam there

irreversibly sunk, and tabletop

warm with sun-tamed shadows of

vehicles crawling down its limbs; it’s

where the high school doers escape

with their infatuations: hold hands under

the table, and clandestinely pass

phone numbers on folded napkins.

grow up, boy!

for a change, wander the

old city fortress on a bright sunny day.

wait under high echoing domes and

watch the bats sleep-swing

from invisible alcoves, the air

redolent with bat shit. wrap

your palms on the heavy bars

of airless captive chambers,

and peek into the dark: you’d

see emptiness repenting the

death of inmates died hundreds

of years ago. war slaves Aurangzeb

had pronounced banishment from life on,

in cells of his fort - with ankle locks, torture

and starvation. walk out into the porch and

watch the garden ablaze in bougainvillea,

the walkways green with sheets of moss,

and the sound of water trundling to roots

along channels dug centuries ago.

reach out, drag your fingers on laterite walls

and feel the hot prick of friction ushered by them

from countless craters and broken edges

gaping at you. know that they are wounds

caused by mortar shell, enemy bullets and

earthquakes that couldn't manage more than

a crack. spend a day in the dust of history.

roam the citadel's darkest of alleys,

and read its brave stories of sustenance.

or maybe you should just be there.

just be there with those walls that

defied bombs and calamities; the spring

that never left the garden; the rains

that still pour in its honour; the prisons still

bearing the haunting cries of men who'd

kneeled on its cold floors and begged for death,

and the sun continuing to rise over corpses

of derelict times, shining like a jewel atop its minarets.

it’s amid blood, battles, banishment,

and the ultimate triumph of braving it all,

that you'd know why they’re called monuments.

now go back to reminiscing if you will,

to whimpering of your betrayed heart.

would you still say love damaged you

beyond repair?

.

.

- Sobhan

On Being a Writer

grieve if you must,
but know where to
draw the line.

any further than that,
and you'll be trapped
for life - in this quiet
squirming of words on
your skin. like the gentle
hands of a woman roving
down your chest, and you
cannot resist being taken.

it's alluring, but it'd
twist your soul and
clinch your breath.
make you see the world
in absolute inverse where
you'd cut your vein to laugh
at the throbbing blood,
and weep hard at being loved.
where you'd shun laughter
and friendship to close yourself
in burning silence and let it kill you;
slowly.

know where to draw
the line, oh! bereaved lover.
before thy heart transcends
all human realms
to be a writer.

- Sobhan

Adolescent Summer

it's still some time
for summer, but the tropic
sun is already harsh.
a brisk walk causes
my head to perspire,
and the hibiscus too
on my window has
begun to wilt at dusk.
it's what one would call
an adolescent summer.

but i loathe adolescence.

i loathe adolescence for
the soft bristles of hair
that made my face patchy,
and bore my voice an impolite
androgenous lilt that made
me sound confident, but
never convincing. i loathe
it for i how i discovered
myself in the dark: feeling
places that i never knew
was part of me. of blood
pumping into my groins,
and blissful contractions
lived over and over again
in secret sanctity.

i loathe adolescence for how
internet became interesting.
how the thirteen something
who had to be reprimanded
to finish homeworks and tied
shoelaces, grows the wisdom
overnight of realizing the most
genuine of humane truths through
loud voyeurism on adult websites.
i loathe adolescence for the
aloneness it brought to my thoughts.
for the new feelings that though
being powerful and spontaneous,
was surmised as a fleeting emotion.

most of all, i loathe adolescence
for how seeing her would cause
my heart to start thudding in my
chest, and my palms would go sticky,
and i would helplessly harden
only to be adjudged as an infatuation.
because of course, she too has been
preached the same: to not believe in
the truth of her body, to disregard
growing up, to shun love.

i loathe adolescence for
how it was trying to grow
me up, make a natural
evolutionary difference to
who i was, and the world
dismissed it all as unreal.
erratic.

no wonder how broken relations
are now an everyday reality, and
people move on with broken hearts,
like they had with scraped knees,
with an 'ouch' and a band-aid of
'chuck it' stuck across it.

easy, and without remorse.

aren't we, after all, reared
to not take feelings seriously,
from the time we begin
to feel it all?

- sobhan

Terrains of Truth

i remember being with a
trekkers tribe once at the
Shivalik in Himachal.
amongst a drunken,
singing ring of
backpackers around a
sputtering golden fire,
and four greasy whole chickens
sweating on the flames.
the stars hung low in
the night’s looming net:
like balled tea leaves in a
strainer, as we drank the dark
that filled the cup of our eyes,
over moist whispering and words
that became intangible
smoke leaving our mouth.

‘it's gonna get colder through
the night’, the instructor remarked
gulping from his hip flask.
that all tracks would be
snow laden tomorrow, and we
would have to shovel our ways
into the trek. but I wonder anyone
paid a heed. we were stranded at
a remote hilltop cut off from all
possible mode of communication -
from sustainability and comfort,
from sunshine and abundant oxygen.
and the only way out being the way ahead:
of wading through steep snowy terrains,
and unyielding pine forests
waving in the blizzard with ice in their veins.

i sensed a deja vu,
for it felt a lot like love.
of how it happens to us.
and when. amid the wilderness
of our hearts when we are
most unguarded, open,
vulnerable. when our feelings
are buds unopened, seeking
sunshine, and the sky denies
and darkens, raining in hails
to deny all blossoms of desire.
i have known people perish in
test, giving up, renouncing thereafter
the idea of courtship. but i have also
known souls who braves the
torment with arms crossed on their
wounded chest, half-smiling and
hopeful about gentle winds and clear
sunshine that lurks behind all devastations.

that night on the mountain i was
glad to be be amongst the tougher
bunch. the ones who looked ahead,
into the climb, on an airless,
snow-shielded morning on the Himalayas.
the ones who didn't consider calamities,
let alone fear, put up against
their ardent love for mountains.
and as it started to snow with flakes
floating into our faces, i saw men lift
their smiling gazes at each other,
opening their arms in welcoming
to their partners who nestled in their chest
with trembling jaws and purest joy.
i watched them retire to tents,
booze in hand and clammy chunks
of chicken on paper plates.

and surrounded by the medley of
feasting shadows on fluttering
tent walls, i felt no cold, no hunger.
but the profound reverberation of
hearts put together in hardship
caressing my conscience -
that love and only love is the
answer to this ailing world
fragmented by differences -
like forgotten songs awoken
in one’s heart and set on tune,
to a lost lover’s forgiving kiss.

- sobhan

So You Know

i am not used
to the water.
and at the gentlest
dash of waves
i stiffen and 
stumble; falling over
breathless, as broken sheets
of sea empty my toes
of muddy sand,
and i claw at the
seabed with all
my might to hold
up against the current.

once the
waves are gone,
and the new ones
swell at a distance,
i sit embedded on
the shore like a
washed-up water
weed, as my hands
form determined roots
into the yielding brown mud,
and a cluster of shells
in chalky hues
gather in my
clenched palm.

the new wave is a
frail one; it breaks
a long way from the
shore, and eddies of salt
rupture sunshine into
liquid rainbows under
my heels. i nonetheless
grip the beach harder,
digging my fingers deeper
into the bed, as a dozen
more shells press into my fist.

i vouch to bring them
home for you; something
from my marine odyssey.
so you know nothing
can shell your life, as long
as you wish to blossom.
so you know that life
can thrive in worst
captivations, as long
as you dare to endure.
so you know you aren't
ever powerless,
or inferior than any,
when a handful of
dead crustaceans
stuck between fingers,
can keep a human
from losing to the sea.

- sobhan

Season of Void

days have started to die late.
the dusk grieves along the
skyline in wails of red, soaked
by the uncaring monotony
of this city. i already miss
the early stars blushing in
masks of fog; the cold tremor
of leaves; and the winter breeze
that cracked my lips and flaked my scalp.

the onset of summer annoys me,
just as the unwarranted departure
of winter upsets my heart. did I
not love you enough? i wonder.
beaten blankets strung in empty
balconies flutter lightly
on nylon ropes: as if they were all
prepared to bid adieu;
to let go, and espouse the spring.

this frail January heat wounds
my memories, and i remember
the moisture between your fingers
on exhausted evenings: their soft
saline taste while you caressed
my face between your palms, like an
ocean wave lapping against my cheeks
as I napped tired on the shore.

but i have come to hate summers
for that one sultry evening
you left in my study your goodbye.
a transformer had blown off
down the street, and the blackened
night had men huddling outside
their homes with torches in their hands,
and salted peanuts in paper cones.
i passed out in the dark
with your note on my perspiring chest,
crumpled by fingers in disbelief. and i
had woken up to a similar, defunct reality:
of people having moved on with life,
as if there were no disruptions,
as if they were always prepared,
as if they all slept sound the night before:
on lavish mattresses, and in the
supple skin of their wives.

not grieving is no strength, but betrayal -
to the love you wove with pearls of tears,
and the puffing truth of your breathing.
being prepared for departures is no valor
but weak roots of love. i shall weep this
winter’s going, and be cold to the spring
flowers in my backyard. i shall loathe the
summer thereafter for the way it would
reignite her smell in my heart.

but then seasons return to our tired longings,
unlike loves that wash clear our imprints on
their bodies beneath tender touches of
juvenile passion. you see, goodbyes are not
meant for those who return. and those who
wouldn’t, never loved enough to pay for parting.

- sobhan

Fly Away

the pavements have swelled
with the thicket of boys. and the
rustic clamour of their lives drift into
my room coloured in January sunshine.
i watch them in vibrant apparels
huddled across the street: their faces
lifted to the sunlit sky, and
a legion of fluttering kites
swim in and out of their squinting eyes.

there's Mustaq at the promenade –
an oversized flimsy maroon sunglass
rests on his firm cheek bones,
with his sister behind him. a reeling
spool of glittering manza in her hands
while he stands upright like a mast
in sea-songs, his fingers wound around
the string, at the far end of which soaring
loosely in the blue was his kite. he tugs at
the chord as the kite dips against the wind,
passing close to another kite flying in
from the smoky northern sky. the spool
whirls faster in the girl’s grip and Mustaq’s
arms row in sync, as the strings
invisibly lock in the firmament.

as his kite starts to float away owned by
the wind, Mustaq stands sucking the blood
on his finger with a smirk in his eyes. a
boisterous cheer from the adjacent colony
rides the wind to them. and even before his
lilting kite vanished from the sky –
fading like a speck of fly ash in the face of light –
in a fall to earth or torn by a stray tree wing;
i watch him on his knees on the dust mattered pavement,
stringing a new kite, for a new flight.

it’s better that way, i assume. to not know if love
returned home or got wasted midway; and
instead set out for a new meaning. i recount
myself on the pavement beside Mustaq, flying
away with my aspirations till she joined me
under the sun, and i let the manza loose on my
fingers, surrendering to the romance that sliced
my skin and spilled my blood.

only that i never flew a second kite again.
not wanting to be wounded;
not wishing to wound her.

© sobhan