Cold poem

Words foggy

Poems cold

Metaphors frozen

Similes

Like summer birds

Gone

To different country

Different world

My love,

December has been cruel

I make bonfire of our memories

Every night

This winter I’m alone

This winter I’m alone

Geometry of your memories

Your memories are round

When your gifted tiny globe on my desk

Spins between my restless fingers

Your lip prints on it

Like the conqueror's flag

Mark your conquest over my world

I see through rectangular windows of my home

I reach out to my wasted lawn

Where flowers still smell of your unnatural presence

The sphere moves in my eyes

I look at the lonely moon every night

Waxing, waning, hiding, rising

Like the tides of your love inside me

The flatness of roads

Create an illusion of destination

I keep walking the long unending paths

Those no longer reaching you

However hard I travel them all

Huge minarets taunt me

With their sharp edged arms

Pointing heavenwards

I look at those ancient monuments

Ruined, deserted, fallen, neglected

Stuck in the history of time like me

But quite often, my love

Your memories are

Irregular

Chaotic

I look into the broken mirrors of your eyes

I see myself scattered all over your face

In abolition of freedom

My love,

Even if you set me free

I’ll be known as your slave

Forever.

Kunaer

In the cold lonely nights of foreign land

You are

The only poem that fires my Kangri

The only name that warms my Phirin

Seasons in love

My love,

Such autumn in your eyes

Forces winter within me

Smile

And I will believe

All the rumours of coming spring

Coldest night

My love

Today was the saddest day

Tonight is the coldest night

Tonight,

I fall

Like December snow

Like false promises of the moon

Tonight my love

Cast some different spell

Conjure some other magic

Even your smile tonight

Can’t cure the pain

Tonight is the saddest night

And nothing of hope is left

Tonight,

I am an orphan dream

No one dreams me

On the cold streets of hope

Except me

Tonight,

Like the lonely traveller

I sit by the fire of burning past

Tonight,

Like the dying farmer

I love the rumours of happy spring

Infinite ground

My love,

Broken clocks don’t stop time

Broken hearts don’t stop loving

I love you beyond the limits of time

Far beyond the recurring meeting of days and nights

I love you beyond the comfort of your approval

Far beyond the spells of your bewitching beauty

I stand on infinite ground

I exist in your timeless dreams

The calender of love

There is no December in love

The year never ends…

Twin soul

I feel it when you breathe hard

My heart is entwined into yours

We are the twin drops of two different rivers

Both merging into same sea of pain

We are the twin stars of two different nights

Both intensely lonely as the moon

I feel it when you dream fear

My sleep is entwined into yours

We are the twin lamps of two different streets

Both leading only to one place

We are the twin souls in two different bodies

Both living a single broken dream

I feel when you feel

I am entwined into you

We are one to the other

There is no other to one 

(Dedicated to someone whose nightmares became my nightmares and whose happiness became my happiness.)

Last letter

After everything and anything

That world could say or do

My love,

It has come to this only

You and I

Have to die

Doing

What we do best

“Love each other

Unbearably.

Incessantly.

Eternally.”

I am superstitious

Yes my love

I am superstitious

I believe!

I trust!

I love!

Metaphysics of love

In your love

I am the universe

In your love

I am an atom

In your love

World is a living metaphor of God

And 

We, the similes of each other

Tonight, I am Gaza

Tonight, my love

Don’t love me

Tonight, don’t!

Tonight, don’t tell me

The pains of our separation

Tonight, don’t show me your tearful eyes

Tonight, don’t hold me back

With your sweet voice

Tonight, don’t ask me to dress my wounds

Tonight, don’t remind me of our dreams

Tonight, don’t sing songs of our love

Tonight, just stop!

Stop!

My love, just stop

Tonight, I am Gaza

Tonight, let me fight

Die

Tonight, let me die

Fight

Love in exile

In exile, love is a different magic

Its spell is unlike  

Your eyes are mystic

Your smile is sorcery

Your hands are hypnotic

Your touch is trance

Your lips are mysterious potion

The spell is unlike

In exile, I have become so small

You shrunk my world into you

Now

You are my only family I live with

You are my only neighbor I speak to

You are my only home I live in

You are my only lawn I play in

You are my only garden I rest in

You are my only dream I dream

My love

In exile, love is a different magic

And your spells are unlike 

The story of my death

Death is a brooding thought

A firefly in the dark

I think it

It vanishes

Somewhere inside the labyrinth

Of my head

Death is a culled flower

On my careful palm

I smell it

It dissolves

Somewhere inside the capillaries

Of my chest

 Death is a story

Handcuffed to my life

It searches me

Every moment

Somewhere inside the fabric

Of my time

Someplace

Not far from the place I die

I know

I am

The death of death when it reaches me

I am

The end of story of the story of death

Purana sweater

Tumhara

Pyaar mai buna

Purana sweater

Aaj bhi

Judai key sard mausam mai

Mere badan se

Purani yaadon ki tarah

Besaakhta lipat jaata hai

Amnesiac mirror

The mirror in my room

Has forgotten all faces

Except yours

Karva Chauth

Meri jaan

Tumhara Karva Chauth ka vrath

Meri tumhari dooriyon ki umr na badha de...

(Karva Chauth is an annual one-day festival celebrated by Hindu women in North India, the Indian state of Punjab, Haryana, New Delhi and parts of UP and Rajasthan in which married women fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands.)

Rendezvous

My love,

Meet me at the traffic jam

And take me away from this crawling world

Light hangs from many lamp posts

But roads are too dark

I walk around with a candle

Of your burning memories

My love,

Meet me like the traffic jam

And crawl into my world forever.

Trust

My love

Don't say I can’t bear the pain of your separation

Desert is never afraid of autumn

Knots of love

I have tasted salt on your lips

I have sailed seas in your eyes

I have been collecting my shadows from there

Come closer

Do you hear noises inside my head?

I have been reading all your letter whole night

I haven’t answered any of them

My fingers fail me tonight

Come closer

Do you hear sea inside my chest?

The moon of your face inspire high tides

Tonight the sea inside me is rough

Tonight

 No sailor is going to pass through

Except you.

Reflection of the self

I threatened the mirror with a stone

But I couldn’t scare the reflection

Without scaring myself

Ode to throat infection

There is a stranger in my throat tonight

It doesn’t allow me to speak to you

The voice creaks

Like an old rusted iron door

So my love

Come closer

Tonight

I can only whisper my love to you

News at dawn

Your eyes cast hooks

Onto me

And send thousand ships sailing 

To my heart

Carrying blessed news of your arrival

At the dawn of my hope

Politics of love

There is no democracy in love

You rule my world 
Forever

What if!

What if every moment we lived together

Becomes a kiss

Or a long-awaited hug!

What if all the winters we have borne together

Become a cold memory

Like a book on my desk!

What if all the letters we wrote to each other

Become butterflies

For me to search in every garden!

What if all the pain of losing you

Becomes an empty cellar

Bigger than my empty house!

What if all the doubts between us

Turn out to be lies

And what if I find you reading my poems

In the balcony of my winter sun.

Lehaaf

Jaan!

Aaney wali sardiyon se daro nahi

Mai baahon ki lehaaf liye kabse khada hun!

Love's manifesto

Let’s count the clouds again

And name each one of them together

Let’s not make them feel neglected

So they might cry rain!

Let’s wash every mirror with rainbows

And hang them on the walls outside home

Let’s not make people feel stranger

So they might walk alone!

Let’s listen to the sea flowing inside us

And surf on the eternal waves of love

Let’s not stop when storm comes

So we might save ourselves!

Being matrix

You have reduced me

To nothingness

Virtuality of a cyberspace

You paste your password on my lips

And enter my world

Like a fearless obsessed gamer

You tap with your agile fingers

All the apt keys

Writing unknown mysterious words

On the pages of my heart

Whose reference I find

Only in the curiosity of your ravenous eyes

You have created a world

Of your own inside me

I am becoming a web

Convoluted in its own being 

Confession

In the prison of your eyes

I confess my only crime

“I love you."

"Forever!”

Suno!

Suno! 

Meri aankhon mai rehtey ho

To aaraam se raho!

Kitni baar

Kaise kaise

Pighal ke

Beh jaato ho!

Winter is coming...

Winter is coming

And I am afraid, my love!

What if winter is cold?

As cold as your voice on the phone!

What if winter has two faces?

One in the night sky and one in my bed

What if winter is long?

As long as the silence between us

What if winter takes me away?

Like you took me away from myself

What if winter will be all yours?

And I will be left with only snow…

Love is...

Love has no past tense

Love is or it never is

Last rain

Last time

Finally

When we walked together in rain

And raindrops soaked our souls into each other

All drenched and wet in your love

I folded myself in your eyes

I exist only in the wetness of your eyes now

Kashmir: The garden of hope

Tread carefully

This is the country of flowers and tulips

You might believe that all the gardeners are gone

That the last one has been killed too

But the heart of the rose is not dead yet

The hope of the tulips is still alive

In Kashmir

Every flower is a revolt

Every color is a slogan

Even the dead tulips are an outbreak

Be careful

There will be a day when

Every garden will rise in revolt

And you will find no ground to hide

Sufis of freedom will ride the horses of fragrance

Love will triumph over hatred

Truth will dance with madness

Reason will sing with passion

And then that day

That blessed day

We all will be free, at last!

We all will be free, at last!

My country

I am the citizen of your eyes

You are the country I belong to

I work in the deep mines of your dreams

Digging day and night

For the diamonds of your wishes

I earn wages off your tongue

A word a day

But then there are days and nights

You leave me starving forever

On the gates of your kindness

I wait for my wages

I wait for the dime of your word

Justuju

Mai tumhe khat likhun

Tumhe apne haal ki khabar dun

Bus issi justuju mai

Aake dekh lo

Ki har raat

Kitney fatey rad kiye adhoore khat

Aasmaan pe bikhar jatey hain

Aur phir jo tum

Har raat

Wafa ka wo aakhri sikka

Aasmaan mai uchaalti ho

Jaantey ho

Wo kabhi aakey

Mere haath mai nahi thehrta

Twin exile

When I am not in Kashmir

What is God doing there?

The echoes from Kashmir

Burn my soul in exile

I turn into ruins inside my body

This foreign land robbed my sleep

My dreams

My mother calls me every day, twice

I speak to her

As I speak to the mirror in my room

“Son, your father’s blood pressure is low”

I see my eyes turning red

“He wants to see you”

I try to find myself in the mirror

“Come back to Kashmir…”

I break into thousand reflections

In front of the mirror

She drops the call.

I hold the phone to my ear for long

Hoping

When I am not in Kashmir

God will speak to me from there

Tumhare naam ek khat...

Tumhe aasmaan mai footpath nazar kaise aaye?

Tum thehre manzilon ke musafir

Mai thehra raah ka deewana

Mai to har raat aasmaan pe

Apne toote khwaabon ki

Mitti bikhair kar

Muhabbat ki meethi fasl kaatta rehta hun

Acha suno...

Naraaz na hona

Wo phal jo tum hijr ke bazaar se

Mere liye le aaye the

Mai wo raat chaand ko khila aaya hun

Wo kai raaton se

Aasmaan ke registaan mai

Bhookha chal raha tha

Aur haan...

Fursat miley to

Apni kalai pe lagi ghadi dekh lena

Pichli raat ke kuch lamhe

Ab bhi usme atkey hue hain

Unhe raat soney se pehle

Jhatak dena

Meri kasam

Apne takiye se lipat na jana

Meri neend toot jati hai

Phir ye khayal bhi aata hai

Ki tum jaag rahi hogi

Bus phir kya!

Beqarari ke sab samaan ho jaatey hain

Subha talak…

Aur phir kuch uske baad bhi…

Self-disclosure

Love! Tell me once

How do you hide it?

People see me

And they get to know

Everything about you

How shall I hide you inside me?

You are inside me

Like the picture in a frame

You are inside me

Like the wetness in the rain

You are inside me

Like a seething volcano

Like the thundering clouds

Like a contagious smile of a baby

How shall I hide you inside me?