I was always amazed,
at the ease with which you said "love",
like it was 'fish' or 'rain' or 'blood',
"What is there to it" you would ask,
and repeat in my ears
like a chant,
Love. Love. Love.
and I would carry it afterwords
like a talisman tugging at my throat.

On my tongue the word tasted of death,
of loneliness residing in the center of my breasts,
Yet I  look for ways to show you ,
the countless times it foamed the corners of my mouth,
Like when I look up from my book
to watch you sleep with eyelids half closed,
Like when I feed you two white round sugar pills
and steal one for myself,
hoping to feel your ease after breathlessness,
Like when we are away
and everything could be forgotten,
how I can close my eyes and hear your lips brush my ears,
and inside of my eyes like a dream
I  can bring myself to say it all aloud.

My poem is down in the list,
read your way to it. :)
http://ourprivateliterature.blogspot.in/p/issue-1-poems.html

Loneliness walks in, stealthily on his feet,
like the black cat in my alley
crouching in fear at a stranger's footfall.

He hovers around silently
and sits at the windowsill of my heart
like an obedient child
looking on at his recuperating mother.
Together then in silence,
we listen to the strange cries of peacocks mating,
as if they were Morse codes waiting to be deciphered.

And finally when I turn to him tired,
and yearn like a woman in love,
he wraps me warm
a wounded soldier's homecoming.

Yes,
The doors are fastened and locked,
I am enclosed in this thought,
I become thinking,
hairs stand on my arms,
spiraling into kites reaching for the clouds
which coil and curdle into mazes,
puzzles of endless thoughts,
winged and spitting fire,
tired with inertia, yet
spurting out to freedom,
And just when the knots of agony
unfasten to leave along,
you barge in,
smiling always...
sickening my stomach
housed with thoughts and more thoughts
waiting to die and live therefore.

I count time
to know when my absence will be noticed;
to know when his absence will go unnoticed..

What makes me laugh with this crazy man;
interloper in a strange land?
The absurdity of his non-belonging
or the heart's pull to a kindred soul?
How long will the wait be
before I accept as home,
the world he reigns in with sceptres
made of lovers' bleached bones?

Violence of Time

Image Courtesy: Madhumita Roy, Trek Earth

The wheels of the windmill
try and make a revolution,
but half way through, at its pinnacle,
it retreats retracing its path.

The violence of this time refuses to pass,
and it stays hard, staring from the vacant eyes
of half baked durga idols,
bleeding crimson traces
of falling gulmohar blooms,
flaming and red in indelible suffering.

On lonely autumn evenings,
the mind follows faces,
moving in waves, looking for digressions,
as the fixity of your memory blurs
the world into stoic stillbirths
of such insufferable silence.