A memory of your smell :
an enslavement, so clandestine.
It tunes my arteries to sing,
like the waves sing,
for purposes unknown.
I ebb away , from this nonchalant madness
and turn into a moon-kissed star dust,
wishing there were no sun or stars,
Cause I now abhor the lick of light.
It separates us unknowingly.
How come I still dream of you again?
At what cost?
At what price?
© Shashank Bhardwaj
The wood savours its taste
Of the tasteless liquid.
Fireplace dreams
of its malignant kingdom
In the heavy cold downpour
I, rise as a sparrow,
To drench my non existent feathers.
My eyes dilate and reverberate
as a nonchalant child seeking
an incomprehensible vision.
The trees are showering,
Land is drowned in its brown ashes,
My dog peeks at the drops by the window.
His tongue is restless as my heart.
To stay, indoors
And bear the longing
Of this cold touch.
© Shashank Bhardwaj
The curves begin to melt,
Its astounding we remember
Everything we touch.
So your memory is a trace of fingertips,
From the callous neck, to the sculpted collar bones, you are a like a hidden lake in an island forgotten, where I dip to forget myself,
The curves extrapolate like rays of sunlight never knowing why,
From the breasts to the fine arch of the back,
Everything dissolves again and again,
My hands aren’t wet with your touch?
Are you really what they call as magic?
For my hands disappear within you,
Tracing every tips without whispering you,
Touching everywhere without telling you?
Making it a dream, with dreaming you,
Do you feel it all, or should I be dissolving you?
Not by touch, not by shyness
But by a pool of shyness and leaving you?
I never knew how to withdraw, so the dress is leaving you?
Maniacal? Sensuous? Are you mad?
All sound same. While your eyes teach you.
There is no shame in choking
the uneasiness out of one’s sleep.
My larynx melts
when it is this dark.
The neck dissolves itself
into a pool of subtle cold regrets
Silence drapes my bones
in a shroud of voiceless memories
rotting them, turning them
into the colour of a fragile copper
abandoned in an unnamed graveyard.
It is basically a practice of perfection,
to Death: the permanent sleep,
the unanswered question,
the unasked answer,
the god with no eyes
and a displaced heart.
© Shashank Bhardwaj
They served excellent crabs,
For they usually them boiled alive,
till their skin turned into fresh dark oranges.
Nothing tastes better than a submission ending without an ordeal.
Amidst the hullabaloo of the never closing cash counter, sun-baked foreigners awe over this never seen massacre.
The server, a lady of forty spews half broken greetings all over the table.
Her overnight dreams sweating from her eyebrows.
A mistake would be her beloved nightmare, soon.
I gulp down a dry martini and observe the horizon.
Beaches were always terrifying for me,
A place where I could drown and never be found.
Becoming a bitter aftertaste to my existence.
SB
Salt, bitter like fumes,
of a fire built of nostalgic warmth,
cures my homesickness.
I am again a toddler,
eyes blue as a turbulent sea.
Waving the currents
an untouchable goodbye.
A blank maritime flag,
holds a thousand words
dipped in indecipherable voices.
The language of longing,
Yet to be invented.
– SB
Writings to Heaven 