THE COLOURS OF SILENCE

 Listen!!!

There is a rainbow silence in the hall
of weary souls wanting to be left to their lots-

The cunning silence of the experienced waiting to explode into flattery,
The hopeless silence of watered fire smoking in the depth of some artery,
The miserable silence of hungry bones yet to forget the rumbling in their guts,
The placid silence in terror of dictates that refuse to be rubbed,
The blind silence ready to nod at every word,
The servile silence of the hyenas waiting for their turn,
And then finally-
The silence of an echo hushed by the breath of the dead

"Tell me your problems", they say
Their mighty butts rooted in revolving chairs
Their ears plugged with the music of helpless power that hardly cares.
"Tell me your problems" they insist.

And the vibgyor curves into a smile gone wrong.

STARS

I never gazed,
For hours at the stars,
For I had them in my eyes..
Until like meteorites
They fell from my skies.
And then....
Wet ashes they dried;
And I grew up on stardust,
Forgetting that I had once cried.

THE WOMAN

A single woman, happy and once married
Is a dangerous game.
Her strings are in her pockets
And there is nothing to pull.
Her laughter is free and her silence stinks
Nonchalance for my meaningful concern.
I scratch her wounds, but her barks,
Too thick to bleed, hurt me under my nails.
She needs no shoulders, for she has no tears
And she cares nothing for her name
For she has discovered joy in her shame.

Did I see her smile,
At the taunts of the married
From their patched up  homes?
Does she know about the rides,
The deleted messages from our phones?.
Can she see through the banter of love
For our loveless spouse,
The silence of aging monotony,
In an otherwise abundant house?

She throws me no bait
But I sniff around waiting for some.
She sails the seas, with the salt of adventure
Stinging her fickle eyes
And I sniff around, my nose in her past,
In her garbage bag,
Planting my filthy thoughts, a scandal
To bring her down to her knees.
But she has learnt to love
The dust in her dress, the tan in her skin,
The grime in her name.
                             Dedicated to the 'virtuous'
                             By Sreeja Nair

A river in the throes of dry menopause
Gasps at the lows of a hot monsoon flush.
But,what rain can bring back the virile sand
Drawn out to birth a landscape changed.

I am breathing on borrowed love
her scent in the musk of his sweat.
I envision no wrinkled togetherness
but a mossy step to rest an iron heart
and a velvet dusk that smells of dew.

Guilt in Glass

Your world is now framed in pink
Clearer through a scoop of glass.
But it breaks my heart to see you frolic
In the happier greener grass.

I revealed to you the stories woven in words
But did I leave you too close to the pages?
Or so lost was I in the glow of my screen
That I missed the lines blurring in your eyes?

And while you discover new bugs and birds
I skim through time
to find you messing with lens and lace
missing a vision clear, on the pretty face.

The Other Woman

I breathe your breath and make it mine
In the shallow bowl of night.
I wake up to the smell of unwashed love
Of skin rubbed deep into mine.
I have taken the forbidden fruit of Eden
A fallen woman
Now I know chastity is not divine.