In the lonesome backwoods behind our vintage house

We buried our souls deep just to have ghosts around.

But phantoms, they startle, howl, scream and weep

Way past their bedtimes because the night doesn’t seep

Into their cavities where they safeguard our souls,

Still glowering in caskets of gold.

And that’s what they’ll ever be-

Fossilized memories,

Vessels of love...

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Millay, Millay,

I saw you clad in your colourless plaid dress,

Ambling about those three islands in a fantastical bay,

The ones you spoke about when poetry found its renascence

Through your hands, which fed elegiac suns

Their share of glint and gold dust.

Millay, Millay,

I like to believe that the pigments of your dress escaped,

Only to seep into the roots of freedom a...

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In the memory of all the flames that ignited coastlines,
The strings of dazzling Christmas lights,
The long-forgotten chronic normalcy,
The countless ceremonial wreaths—

I realize that from one beginning to the next,
We often overlook the vast expanse of nothingness.
Our stories swing from one pole to its antipode. 
The aftermath, a distant folklore.

But every grocery store receipt,
E...

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I stole the soul of the moon,

Kept it unclothed to illume

Dark, deserted manor rooms 

And fireflies that forever loom 

Above fifty forsaken tombs.

I secured a piece for me,

Kept it between creases deep 

And verses of revered balladry 

Written on the tattered leaves 

Of my hands rickety.

But then came a shooting star,

Its hands stocked with bits of its hea...

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Streams of consciousness,
Trapped in a panoply of celluloids
And abandoned plastic films,
Catch my eye.

I share them on the big screen
Where silent silver stills breathe
And glide across skylines
At midnight.

They inch closer to me.
The starry-eyed starlets seal
The gulf that lies
Between our eyes,
And fill my ears
With secrets and whispers
That I've heard before
In theatres, st...

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A lonesome vagabond

Whistled away through his life-

Through autumn, summer and the cruel cold.

He lived a life, so kind, so benign, 

Myriad pathways he could've chosen.

Pathways adorned with petals of roses,

But a bed of roses would've given him no thrill 

Through summer fever and winter chills.

Today he lies in moth-devoured drapes,

At the edge of the very road that gra...

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I weave daisies
Into garlands and wreaths-
Cottagecore fantasies-
Where toil appears easy,
And tempests breezy,
Where sour fruits are glazed in honey.
My fingers claw
At the garlands they birth
Till petals fall
And blend seamlessly into the dirt.

They blend seamlessly into the dirt,
Like brown tatters on the ground.
The sun's sinking into the earth,
As winter's coming around,
The w...

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My eagle eye sweeps
The room nursing maimed dreams 
And stifled memories
Which make walls bleed 
When drubbed by the hollow breeze.

Who am I except a mute bystander?
Unfazed by the detritus,
My steady gaze punctures
The flesh of aged and nascent delusions.

Stay, stay with me,
Before I leave, 
And catch a train 
To a place where summer rains 
Submerge mundane lands 
And bleached s...

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The other day I caught myself staring at your image
Embedded in the cliff-side pool.
Surrounded by flowers and foliage,
Miles away from you.

Your skin porcelain,
Flaws hidden,
Eyes clement,
You didn't even seem human.

And maybe you weren't.
You were perhaps just an abstract concept,
An evanescent concoction of pigments,
Who swam away, leaving behind no remnants.

When I thought ab...

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These days I feel a kinship with the four white walls,
Which guard my every move, every breath, every thought.
Observe how they close in on me, irked, distraught-
They make the world look small.
I speak to them in unfinished puzzles,
And superficial metaphors,
And subdued gurgles,
And defeated murmurs.
My words are nothing but a brook,
Whose melancholic babbles fill the chilly air.
They ...

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Honey glazed canopies 
Shelter you and me 
From the piercing rays 
Of the sun, governing us in dismay
As we remain ensnared
In our reveries,
Oblivious and unaware,
Our fantasies as fickle as the breeze.
Perhaps it's not always a sin
To stay confined within
The bubble of oblivion;
To wear an armour of neon;
To shield our eyes
With rose-tinted glasses;
To sing with illusory passerines-
...

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Blessed be the silver spoons
Which feed us till we’re replete.
Blessed be the dream-filled moons
Which oversee us with glee.
Ambitious, aren’t we?
The moons illume 
A thousand seas
And take us to 
Places and people unseen.
Vagabonds, aren’t we? 
We hold the power to love and seduce,
To ensnare and release
These people and places till insanity ensues,
Till blooming roses fuse into debr...

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It presents gravels before my feet,

The sea

When it meets the sand,

Holding my longing gaze as I stand

Atop coffined treasures

And pebbles filled with flints made from memories,

That weigh my slippers

Down to this deserted beach.

Myriad secrets encaged in their bottle shaped ampoules

Float aimlessly like vagabonds do.

Imprisoned in cells of reminiscence,

They await...

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Plath's poppies bloom
In days of gloom,
From July through October.
The scarlet florets burn like ember,
And line up before tombstones 
And hallucinatory portals.
Some look up to the sky, their eventual abode,
And some like a skirt, tent their petals. 
A sprightly bird's staccato trills 
Fragment further when hit by perils
That tag along with the siren of the ambulance
Carting a lady who...

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My anklets fill the air with resounding laughs 

As I scuttle between tall blades of grass.

I feel free 

Like I'm the breeze.

A yearning dream

Lounges among the clouds.

Her hand caresses my cheek,

I feel safe and sound.

Did I tell you that I feel free?

Free from the restraint of a rhyme scheme;

Free from structure;

Free from obsessions

Like a speck of dust on a t...

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Stars fall from the sky 

And congregate on the ground to erect an ivory palace,

As bright as day, as searing as the desires 

Entombed deep under the earth's surface.

It doesn't take nightfall 

To lure them inside-

The eager, the crafty, the venal, the mortal.

Every nugget of their flesh blazes in the lambent lights.

Inscrutable power it gives them 

As they undr...

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Tufts of dust 

Caper about my mosaic glass.

Blotches of ferric rust 

Offer me an unceremonious welcome at last.

Things I'd once befriended

Seem distant and cold.

Deaf ears to the chime of my footsteps

Tell me they've forgotten their companion of old.

I wonder when those mellifluous repartees

Turned into hollow echoes,

And the blithe breeze 

Into a stiflin...

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(Inspired by Death With Dignity, Sufjan Stevens)

Stoic and sober silence, I can feel you,
Like a blanket draped 'round me
When I'm down with flu.
Why don't you speak?
Decimated dreams, I can see you
Even in the stark bleak.
The color of coal.
When will you heal?
Whispers of floating phantoms, I can hear you,
When you hover over my cot
And sing a berceuse.
Why did you stop?
Flowers p...

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He witnessed the rise and fall of the tides

Of the sea that seemed so milky in the moonlight.

Gloating over its graceful strides,

The rumble of the colossal sea was all he could hear that silent night.


The stars twinkled in the darkness,

And the moon in the blackness

Gazed dotingly at him and his boat,

As the decrepit carrier carted its master swiftly afloat.


How long...

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Can you hear the moon sing at night?
A distant melody from the most dulcet vocal pipes?
Have you ever nestled in her crescent bed
Like the kid in the DreamWorks emblem?
My winsome lady
Dotes on me.
Her visage,
Part amused, part exasperated.
For she knows why I've come to see her again--
To steal the roux from stars, milky and fulgent.
To hoard fragments of the night sky in my wooden ches...

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City lights,

Fireflies,

Half-hearted smiles 

And ugly cries.

Bustling roads,

Narrow and broad;

Abundant with shops and bars,

And people- their bodies, minds and souls scarred.

Edifices tall and sturdy.

Trapped in it are people content and happy;

And those walking on thorns, barbed and merciless;

And those breathing but lifeless.

The city is a plac...

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I awake on a bed of roses, 

Whose petals crunch like orphaned autumn leaves.

A ray of sunlight towards me approaches,

Dancing in the light are muddy speckles aplenty.

​I can feel the air around me toy with my locks,

Which is as feeble as your grasp on my hand.

But I hold on

To you, this very second, this very moment.

​​​​​​

The mere sight of you sugarcoats my disill...

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Far above us

The sky bursts into colours-

Blue, purple, grey, orange,

With red and all the hues in its range.

Miles beneath our feet

Are secrets buried,

Arcane and deep.

Their ampoules once known to everybody.

What goes overhead

Suffuses stars and their milky shells.

The departure from earth melancholic but serene,

Leaves behind shimmering trails that spe...

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There once stood a chocolate tree, a bearer of desires. 

Its leaves melted when it inhaled passion.

Its fruits of fire

Set ablaze lands, verdant and barren.

Its bark was festooned in ribbons

Of rich gold and smooth caramel. 

Like Midas' touch, gluttony abundant,

The tree was nothing short of magical.

I basked in the shadow of the canopy

Atop the chocolate capped grass bl...

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Sweet summer sunshine

And her warm embrace,

Her radiance, as pale as egg-whites,

Veils her face. 

She shies away from you and I 

Behind the soufflé of clouds, 

Mighty and high,

Far, far away from the mortal crowd. 

Or perhaps she's afraid 

Of the power we hold

To birth, sunder and devastate

Those shaped from the same dough. 

Fragile feeble fingers...

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I embellish my arms with bangles

As thick as two strands of hair.

Their raucous cackles

Suffuse the tepid air.

Air that's fragrant with spices

I add to my copper pots. 

Air whose redolence

Reminds me of what I've lost.

The dough that I mould

Sans a scintilla of strain,

Boasts imprints of my knuckles manifold, 

Knuckles on which those kisses still linger, ...

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I sliced the sun into two

And looted shimmering bars of gold

Which lined her womb, 

Her beloved broods I stole. 

I plucked the sturdiest mountains, 

The choicest adornments on the face of the globe. 

All it took were my hands, raw and unrestrained, 

Their maimed rubbles now abuse those they adore.

I remember the sea that like Moses I parted

And the ocean floor ...

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I wonder what happens

To the poorly drawn images

We keep abreast as children,

Sheltered inside our notebooks and their crinkly pages.

I envisage those pages accompanying

Balloons, bubbles and butterflies,

And the colors in them adorning

The sallow face of the sky.

I like to believe that my poorly chalked out blades of grass

Somehow appended the greenery on earth

Or th...

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I died yesterday

With a pen in one hand and a diary in the other. 

The latter's pages were inlaid 

With prints of my curry stained fingers, 

And splotches of tea, 

And smudges of ink, 

And spools of memories,

And streams of ridiculous cravings. 

I fashioned the contents with the loose threads 

I'd been stockpiling since forever. 

Vibrant, prismatic, but half-completed...

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On a snowy day,

In a dimly lit street,

An ailing girl, utterly dismayed

Perches under the canopy of an enormous tree.

Looking heavenward,

Her eyes well up a little.

Perhaps she’s waiting for a special someone,

But all that comes to her are snowflakes, frosty and brittle.

She tears the icy veneer of the earth

With her gloved fingers.

And buries a white rose b...

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