Encroachers

This thunderous beat of waves on the beach

tries to reach

the hardest core of rocks standing

mute and sullen on the coast.

The sea and its maddening waves;

uproarious, stormy, and boastful most.

For years, its stormy passion kissed the rocky face,

The fury of its infatuation caught the unsoliciting

lover in a grasping embrace,

The rocks mellowed and crumbled as beach sand,

Once where there was land

now becomes the soft love bed

for the waves to shed

their gnashing fury on its soft grains,

where love sighs in gay abandon

and soft showers turn into torrential drains.

In this land—sea love pit

a new passion gets lit,

Surrendered to excited storms

we forget all norms

and let loose waves

that break false rigidities and forced facades

build inside us for decades.

Waves to waves!

Rocks to rocks!

The sea just watches meekly

this sensuous storm on its bed:

The encroachers with all shame shed,

Its warning shouts ebbing away in distance,

as if afraid of this rival stormy surge

on the beach,

It recedes to save itself from this

huffing, puffing , grunting, tempestuous game. 

The prisoner

I’m ragged old,

I was once the youth icon

of the fauna around me,

Delhi was far and nonthreatening then,

We just enjoyed its lights from a safe distance,

The city didn’t seem at war with us,

But then it just spilled over,

Its bridges, roads, cemented pavements

ate into our innards,

I witnessed massacre of my near and dear ones,

I’m now caged in a high rise residential complex,

I’m just a poor, tiny banyan tree now,

Standing as an archaic symbol

in my cramped corner of this little park.

I go out of my way to give shade and cool air,

But I’m horrified and scared.

Even a kid picking a tiny pebble

to playfully hit my canopy

sounds like a terrorist hurling a deadly grenade.

So, against my nature

I’m always on guard,

crying for peace and mercy,

But it is too noisy around,

My mercy petitions fall on the deaf ears

of the stony facades standing haughty and proud,

I’m afraid any day the judgment

will arrive against me! 

Holy Harlots

Yamuna!

A black, toxic, putrefied nullah.

Cow!

A sewage-eating big pig

surviving on garbage dumps.

Two holy mothers turned harlots

in this age of Kaliyuga!

Delhi, meanwhile, pumps

more pride in its polluted lungs.

On stinking sewage-layered banks,

The skinny cow grazes on

noxious weeds and poisoned shrubbery,

Its beneficent, teary eyes

ogle at the human-industrial waste

mocking and mirthing over Yamuna’s sighs.

Who needs a holy bath now and cow’s blessings?

Two pillars of faith

now crumble down to pieces, 

Any listeners to their dismantling shrieks?

Iron Lady

It is noisy chaos,

Delhi at its best,

Impatient horns, smoky guffaws,

tired engines, shouts, dust,…

The lotus, but, shines in the mud.

Pulling the carrier rickshaw she is unfazed,

Two kids, a goat, a bundle of poor provisions

safely in tow,

Like a valiant captain at the best row.

Clad in a dirty saree

she shines like a queen,

I don’t think femininity had ever been

so illustrious in its sheen.

Meanwhile, madly mechanized world hisses,

But its lolloping tongue meekly kisses

the dirt on her hardened feet,

She pulls the rickshaw with pride

in full maternal heat,

Cramped for space she turns the tide,

The goat and the kids though panicked,

but the mother carries on the fight

in the traffic jam,

Fights for space with utmost grace,

and clears like a swiftest deer’s brace.

Old Bull and the Dead Wood

 I’m an old bull,

My rock-hard bones heave and pull

the rickety cart,

I’m skinny but perfect in my belief

that I’ve to justify my morsels before I depart.

I carry a dead body that once was

a robust attire for some sylvan soul,

It was an honest being;

this long, hard body,

It fulfilled all its duties without exception.

But then this is the age of vandals,

They can just vandalize only,

They axed it, chopped it.

I now carry the carcass

as the trophy of their triumphant glory,

I but silently mull over this murder story.

Delhi around me boasts of its mechanized colors;

cars, megamalls,  skyscrapers,

westernized guys and galls,

and thousands of glamorous pitfalls.

Haa..wonder they can’t do without me!

With salivated gusto

my labored breathing eggs me on,

while my victimized skeleton creaks and bemoan.

The flyover is the challenge,

My owner beats my back like an enemy,

It is a treacherous task,

But it is my duty to carry the body

for its final rites,

otherwise someone will miss

many a drawing room delights.

With softly pining majesty, silence sings a song,
Shadows grow long,
Her soft fingers brace my face
and go along a tears trace.
Delicate tip of her finger bears the jewel,
The tear the would have been lost as salt on my face.
Sandeep Dahiya

Love Bites

 The poisonous black coils hiss

and entangled in fanged loops go for a kiss.

Two glossy-black slithery bodies

lost in the fearsome quagmire of poisoned passion

eat each other’s identity in some unheard fashion.

The venomous fangs,

Lay bare their monstrosity,

making the moments vicious, stealthy, dangerous.

The tongues of death

nastily sway to a mysterious song,

It is like brutal soldiers of death

marching on a bloody path endlessly long.

It is like death dancing:

Its poisoned lips heaving, pushing its mighty pout

against the innocent, pure face of mortality.

Pitted against the cataclysmic forces of death,

the lovely pink sheen on the pristine face prevails.

Its softest brace breaks the hardest stones.

The fierce aura suddenly bids time to stay still,

to extinguish its fire at the acme:

the pleasure-topped hill.

The love prevails,

The horrible storm loses its restless travails

in the hazily lit mellowness of ecstatic surrender:

Defanged, depoisoned.

They are now just two beautiful creatures.