Lost Summer

I haven’t had a chance
To stitch my heart together
In a long time,
There’s been no mend
To the pieces of me
Cluttered in my backyard,
I haven’t reached out
For the warmth
Of a loving hand
In all the winter nights gone by,
My home now reminds me
Of a gelid chamber
Of frosting walls,
The sun sometimes
Peeps reluctantly
Through my window
Only to be frozen
Behind the glass panes.

I don’t remember summers anymore,
My skin can’t recall
How the touch of
Morning beams feel like,
For I am only treasured with the nights
That you carefully left for me
Behind the olive curtains,
And a condensed blue moon
That still rests inside your closet.

All I do now
Is wait for you
To bring back
My lost summer.

~ Chhaya

Do Wake Up!

Tell me,
Did you hear me
Grub my dreams
Last night
Or the nights before?
My eyes turning into
Makeshift shovels
Trying to dig out
The skeletons
I have been hiding
From you
Beneath the layers of
black mud nights.
I remember
You murmured something
As you slumbered next to me
With your head on my shoulder.
Perhaps you did sense
The heavy gush
Of tired breaths
From my mouth
But barely could you hear
The loud thumps on my chest.
Could you ?
Though I wish you had.
I wish you had
So you had woken up
And calmed me down
With a kiss
A hug
Or may be just your hands
Reaching out for mine
Helping me wipe those shovels
Of all the filth from past
That I had been soiling them with
Night after night.
I wish you had
So you could have
Reassured me
That my dreams
Need not be
Endless excavation missions
Yielding nothing but
Debitage memories
But that
They were meant to be
Beautiful gardens of love
And everything else
That I have ever wished for.

Tonight when my heart thumps
I hope you wake up
Please, do wake up!

~ Chhaya

The Belonging

I don’t belong to you
The aureate sunshine.
I am of the darkness
The sapphire nights
The gloomy sky
And the murky shadows.
I dwell
In the abode of dreams
Dozing
In the arms of the moon
Gently caressed
By its silvery beams
Wrapped
In the soothing warmth of
Velvety astral duvet
Reciting
In my mind
The unwritten
Poems of love.
No, I don’t belong to you
The aureate sunshine.

~ Chhaya

Put My Fears to Sleep

The stars are mute tonight

The sky is in a silent phase

The wind has lost its music

And the moon has no story to tell

This taciturn aphonic night

Is what my heart abhors

So sing me a lullaby, will you?

And put my fears to sleep.

~ Chhaya

Empty

Drained eyes

Yield empty dreams

In the vacuity of

Ransacked nights

As a sunken mind

Unveils memories

From the dark depths

Of times unplumbed.

~ Chhaya

Rain, Romance and Lunacy

So glad to share this little piece of poetry that I did in collaboration with my dear friend and fellow blogger Ankan. It was so much fun to bring this out here, and we really hope that you would enjoy it too. Do check out Ankan’s page here for more of his amazing poetry.

(My lines in italics) 

The fluorescent is oscillating
between blue and red luminous upliftment
like some bohemian art 
flickering spirits of a drunken maverick

Windows are open
still there’s no light outside
I have evident this darkness before
hollow and impenetrable
in the chaotic silence of 
anxious and ominous days

clouds and the choirs of hallucinating waters
take over me like a devastating spell

there’s a rhythm in it
there’s a music in it
like that of a
withered primitive melody
sentient and hypnotic

and I am the madman putting words through them
words through rhythm making a poetry of wet and damp urban mess
words through music making a poetry which doesn’t make any sense
arranging semantic distractions in vague orders
to yield textured connotations from volatile tenors
provocative yet soothing
shallow yet abyssal

but the third one is magic
the third one is words through both rhythms and music
concerted into an enchanting symphony
with the synergy of sonorous quietude 

Well, I get a song there
significant and from the roots of melancholic rain.

~ In collaboration, Ankan and Chhaya

The Last Summer

I have seen kisses dry
embraces shrivel
and the warmth of touches
turn into scalding frictions
of unfathomed rancour

silhouetted against the sky
I have felt our bodies char
in the sweltering surly nights
insentient of the placid moon
when the tirades of reviling odium
took over us like a febrile illness
and our words blistered malice

we lived with rumpled desires
and crumpled hopes
our wrinkled leathery faces
narrated impassive stories
of a vapid arid romance
and cracked eyes revealed
traces of shattered dreams
as we saw our love fade
from pink to blanched pale
in the ruthless spell of summer
that we last spent together.

~ Chhaya

 

 

 

 

 

Season of Hope

The shivers
that wake me up
at somber nights
are nothing but
gelid spells of
lingering touches
frozen in the
immured stretches
of congealed past

the lost summers
are patches on my skin
of parched caresses
and scorched fondles
Oh! How I undermined
the repercussions of
desiccated memories

but the springs
in my eyes
ask me to hold on
the trecharies
dead and burried
would manure
the blooms to come
they say
deceptions bygone
shall inundate
the barren brown days
with cascades of blue
giving way to
virescent grass of hope
I am told

so I wait
under the caliginous sky
where my tenebrous fears
hide in the folds of murk
until my dreams unfurl
and soar with a leap of faith
in the lambent eminence of
splendid sanguine aurora
elegantly emanating from
a slick turn of time.

~ Chhaya

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Static

The pepper night hues
seasoned with
turmeric lights
that we savoured together
are now recipes of
insipid vacuous gloom
plattered with pain
and despodency
the mothballed sleeps
yield no dreams anymore
and clock only drags
with a cumbrous weight
“time never felt as heavy
when you were here”

the only thing motile
left in me now
are my thoughts
peripatetic, wayfaring
vagrant and itinerant
rest I am all static
quiescent
and almost torpid
like the sky
with its immutable latency

yes, I know
I could have counted
my breaths too
the alter in my chest
from high to low then high
with every inhale and exhale
which follows
but let’s not be deceived
for I hope you know
it’s been fairly long
that I disowned them
and what I snort now
are only borrowed gasps
from the remains of
exanimated life
that you left me with.

~ Chhaya

 

 

Leftover Nights (A collaboration)

So very excited to share with you this piece of collaborative poetry that I got to do with my dearest friend, a lovely person and an immensely gifted poetess, Devika from My Valiant Soul. It’s an honour to be writing with her, someone whose words I deeply adore and admire. Here it is, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing. 🙂

(Me in italics)

A room full of rancid leftover night
is a reminder of repugnant voids
that conform to the oddities
of a desolate decaying mind

I hear my mind crackling and fading
with whispers gone, numbness sticking
the walls break inside my opaque body,
thrashing and mocking soliloquy wilderness
Pain: the metamorphosis of painkillers, death.
Hold my cryptic thistle cacophonies
Like a lotus scratching a lotus.

the senescent atrophic walls
that preserve banal prosaics
from bromidic tales of love
are a source of an abhorrent odour
clogging conduits of all my senses
and all that permeates my cranium
is an insistent sound of stale knocks
that still linger on brazen panels
placed on fermenting doors of oak

Devoid of a filter, cupid raspberry, air.
My veins play laconic tunes to deaf poetry
with sinking toes in a pool of madness
my body aches and desiccates, trepidation somewhere.
The wax image of my parched lips,
dribbles till the curtains evaporate.
Icicles of pain pokes my palm
Unheard epiphanies, unheard voices.
Wars occur and I am a black moon swinging.
Under the clock of stingy bees
I dedicate my memories
I dedicate my breaths, mirrors and lost talks

and I grieve for murky windows
with shrivelled wavering frames
held by creaking rusted hinges
the ones that steadily deflect
every beam of light and hope
yielding layers of mouldy mildew
to spread like a suppurating sore
on the bod of my mephitic room
filled with leftover nights without you.

~ MVS (Devika) and Chhaya