..answers in you

On such a day
when I left my thoughts out in the open sky
to dry up, shrivel under sun's naked gaze,
tiny raisins of left over ruminations
to be picked up by strangers
and nibbled on with strange ennui
It bothered me
that like the pigeons that came picking after
leaving droppings of undigested desires,
how for my incessant questioning
I still rake for answers in you.

Hijab

Tonight while dark vermillion parts my hair,

in a hijab studded with wines of black pearls

that sings of a dreamless night

I have wrapped a secret whose

ends I don’t know, where lies its beginnings.

I can close my eyes and touch it

and hear you behind me

parrots from niches above us

flying into the dense clouds

casting shadows we cannot see.

I kept the hijab from flying

with the wind that murmured

apologies of delayed monsoons and a defiant sea.

You washed your feet on the marble sink

And I watched as you smiled at me.

I waited outside as you offered salah

And as if I always knew it 

like the scar behind my ear

that you'll trace with your fingers on another night 

I wanted at that moment to be

your prayer,

your belief,

your god and

 the earth you prostrate on.

Slightly laced with my perfume,

 I’ll return you the hijab tonight

and with it for safekeeping

this secret of a memory.

Pardon her
stretched out haikkus
somewhere
a butterfly flaps

In simaisma
where desert looked to the sea
poet he was born

i cant write haikku
even my cat purrs out one
i swear i tried hard

wilted jasmine flowers

Yesterday's jasmine flowers
lie wilted,
smelling salts of your betrayal
prod painfully into consciousness
sedated dreams of trusting  love.
In the mirror looking back
smudged kohl, the ghost of  an expectation, uncertainity of a prayer.
the rain has left,
cold lust remains peering over the rusted gate in
failed attempts to find searching glances of hesitant goodbyes.
Tonight I shall not wait with jasmine flowers in my hair,
Tonight my ears shall not hear imagined footsteps in the falling rain
staying on in the hurried lines of a poem,
tonight i will..if only.. listen to the telling arguments I have with myself.

...tears of a woman

To my astigmatic eyes

You are two stories untold

embracing in a lonely dream,

yet fluctuating apart in the undulating sleep.

When we make love

I discover my lover, my twin,

buried under centuries

of oblivious memories

reaching out to me in a moment’s fading scream.

And when you kiss and leave,

You have the face of

those countless averting eyes,

 looking away in awkward embarrassment

unable to face

 the tears of  a woman.