
A Wolf’s Dream



The subways are empty
at the dead of the night.
Their exits recoil themselves
in the ashes of the ashes.
I whiff a pure smoke of a forgotten memory
and let it breed within my substructured brain.
A graveyard of cigarettes greets my shoes.
The lights go hazy as the winds turn warmer.
Another dull night has been devoured today,
with the help of a fifth of liquid courage.
Darkness needs darkness.
Its an immortal curse,
an undying thirst.
It travels with an agonizing silence
from the corpse of an empty bottle
to my eyes, staring an abyss
I wanted to curse everyone
with my eyes, while slitting their throats
by my tongue.
But I reach home dejected
whirling myself into an abyss
of nothingness.
I try the usual grind,
to type something beautiful,
but the words have escaped my prison ago.
I need a new remorse, to vomit a new grief.
So I set the whole garden on fire
and wait.
The morning lights do not dissolve for me.
I don’t know how you all do it.
It becomes a rain of a million unapologetic needles
ruffling my hair, the scalp and the bored skull.
Damned, be they, Damned be the generosity for its alluring brightness.
Since the time, these eyes have forgotten to shut down early.
The madness has been accumulating
ounce by ounce.
Like a cat ready to pounce with its warm toes
on the dead freezing body
to taste the cold, with its tongue
in successive unforgiving licks.
The madness pounces in the morning.
I have become used to these never-ending work shifts,
by driving a dying car to a dying place,
in a dying body.
I have become used
to the half-baked bacon burgers,
to the caffeinated miseries.
There is no end to it.
There will never be.
Just a beginning exists.
Just a light that wrecks the day.
After every night.
And I got used to it.
Eventually,
I became generous
for the little ounces of madness
to survive.
© Shashank Bhardwaj

A promenade with no ends,
near the sea with no beginnings.
We could just have walked and walked
and walked
but the reverberations
from the salt-laden winds
convolved into a imputes purpose
of touching the crimson light softly
while caressing its voiceless moans.
The tongue relished upon its silence,
while the soul warmed its sumptuous flesh.
We embraced the blood spilt sky,
like a stranger
who makes love
to his vehement past
with eyes closed.
© Shashank Bhardwaj
The fire burns
the ashes burns
the head goes in for a spin
to a vortex which sheds reality.
I seek a cold ale
to subvert the dimensions
to escape from its wretched walls
of nothingness.
In a land of smoke,
I seek feathers,
rather than satiable grounds
cause I have been there,
my history in way of your memory.
A rain of ale
A rain of memories
A rain of wishes undone
A rain of regrets regretted.
Help me, with everything you can.
If you can,
If you all can,
Our dominion is doomed,
but the night is ours,
the shadows are ours.
We were ours
once.
Now we are for them,
we were,
Why didn’t we realize?
© Shashank Bhardwaj
The links are an illusion
the lattice is just
a thread of veins
that hold, a fragile old bottle
of sanity.
Some say, the lattice floats
in blood.
Some feel, it drowns
in dreams.
How do you beset a vision,
that contains everything
and maps nothing.
Its eyes do not work,
like us, it sees what it seeks.
It feels what it needs.
It dreams what it dreams.
© Shashank Bhardwaj
I wish the glasses
in the broken mirror
to melt and take my face along
with the lonely sharp edges.
Let us turn together
into a faceless silver
that floats and floats,
but never expresses its tides.
How good would it be,
to start all over again
to let others search for you,
for days and nights,
but you are there inside,
you were always there
and no one cared back then
and now when you are melted and pure,
they simply lose their minds.
How good would it be
to again become a newborn child,
with just curiosity in the head
and with no taste of memory.
I could laugh again,
again and again
without knowing the reasons
to stop.
© Shashank Bhardwaj