I come back home,
to find a trail
of your clothes
and your inner-wear
leading me to the
swimming pool,
where you lay
with your legs spread,
nipples erect and
hands wet from
touching the
necessary places.
No wonder I forgot to ask,
‘What is for Dinner Tonight?’.
The Feast was ready.
It happens sometimes
between winter and the sultry summer,
my words and visions refuse to mate,
no amount of alcohol urges them
to this universal transfixion
on a piece of a patient paper
I have no choice left,
I visit the dusted mirror
in my inhospitable washroom again
the vortex of time swallows me inherently,
as I fall through the voiceless oceans
and painstaking cheap bars
that are out of beer.
I walk through the autumnal rains
where the birds have learned to hide
and the leaves refuse to be touched.
The maidens are no longer beautiful,
Houses full of Japanese crockery
and European paintings
are half submerged in filthy ponds
to be admired by filthy fishes
with filthy brains.
The kids are running and laughing
on the roads but I can’t see their faces.
The dogs no longer bark, but they have
tears of joy and my hands have forgotten to
pet these loyal creatures. Their tails don’t wag now.
They refuse to acknowledge my existence.
I see my twin somewhere.
The only one who smiles back at me.
Contented but not happy,
his eyes are his stories,
his soft hands; devoid of typing
are his unwritten poems.
I have to kill him.
Before he swims out of this vortex.
Before he swims into me.
Before he falls in love with himself.
Your fingers map my body,
The neck turns into a calloused valley.
The breasts are the warm deserts now.
This waist is a barren wasteland, dying of thirst.
Between my legs
flows a river unseen,
a forest untouched, by fingers.
A paradise lost in time.
Transverse this map tonight,
make it rain, just conjure a flood
all over my body.
the flavours of the paradise await you, come, seek a taste of forgotten heavens.
I don’t care now,
I can’t wait now,
Teach me this cartography, Just don’t ask why.
© Shashank Bhardwaj
My myopic eyes
in the whitewashed veins
dissolved a Solar Eclipse once,
sprinkled slowly in the transparent ponds
of vision, through a negative film of ours.
Call it now, The fate’s cruel jape.
A sky long-awaited
and devoid of sunlight
is forgotten forever.
I do remember though, the universe we created
in silence, while we lent our voices
to an air that couldn’t speak.
The negative is now a mere vicissitude of colors,
for a time that went lost in translation.
– Shashank Bhardwaj
The tepid air slowly sheds
its orange hue; collected throughout
the year while caressing the lips of the sunlight.
Half past dawn, it refurbishes its desire from
the warm currents of a sea, I never loved.
It haunts me still, the taste of salt,
that lingers over my coward tongue.
That is how I have learned,
to be a man of few words.
winds, salted and warmed
still, lick my neck as a mistress without eyes
as I sleep naked; sweating profusely, dream after dream.
This taste of darkness, I do not recognize anymore.
It is my shadow perhaps, clasping his
hands over my eyes, drying my throat.
A whirlwind has drowned my words
into an abyss of untasteful rust.
My shadow laughs voicelessly
in a room full of mirrors
as I seek him with my eyes closed.
It is just the beginning,
red hues of light disappear
The waves now are not beautiful.
They never were.
Do not bury me in the ocean.
Please.
I will never make it to the shore.
I somehow know.
© Shashank Bhardwaj
Writings to Heaven 