कुछ बेदर्दी का अफसाना ज़माना फुसफुसाता चला गया
कुछ तनहा रातों की शिकायतें बढ़ती चली गयी 
 
 
मेरी खुश किस्मती थी, जो हवा के झोके से
तेरी खुशबू मेरी रूह से आ टकराई 
 
 
यूँ तुझमे खुद ही को फना करके,
मैं ज़माने को ग़ज़ल-ए-इबादात बना चला !

आईना

तुम नसीब की बात करते हो,
हम उम्मीद की राह चलते है

तुम दिल से इश्क़ की बग़ावत करते हो,
हम टूटे दिल का भी जश्न मनाते है

तुम देख के अनदेखा कर देते हो,
हम देख के चुपके से दिल मे बसा देते है

तुम समय के साथ चलते हो,
हम थमे हुए समय की धड़कन बन जाते है

फ़र्क बस इतना है मेरे दोस्त,

तुम आईना देखते हो,
हम आहिस्ता आईना दिखाया करते है!

When giving is all we have

One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

~Alberto Rios

why do people find each other

Why do people find each other, at all?
What brings them to each other?
I’m tired of the rush, the rush around love.
The rush that ends with seeking,
a seeking for healing.
The rush that makes people need people,
than want them.

Sometimes I suspect a cosmic conspiracy-
the voice breaking over the sound of waves,
the heart pivoting in directions of the
sparse summer breeze, the moon lurching
in incandescence of the sorrows of the past,
roads sleepwalking into an uncertain hope-
little bit of everything appears unnatural.

You can tell, there are more things at work,
disrupting the usual course of a man’s
behaviour-that’s where they’ve met them.

You can now tell, there are more things to be blamed.

I believe

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake
in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,
the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,
used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,
abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,
gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls
who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies,
leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,
turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods,
the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands
of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs
that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow
me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,
the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see
from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling
to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.

~Jim Harrison

Amiss

He asked me, if I’d miss him;
it was as if, he meant to ask
of those flowers that stopped
blooming on my window,
despite the warmth of
the sun and the chill of the
water I nurtured together.

It was as if, he knew,
I remembered the nights
parched in the lack of
warbles, the only thread
of acquaintance with the
alien October bird.

It was as if, he knew,
November this year,
settled for more cold and
and scabbed fingers.

He asked me, if I’d miss him,
as if he knew I would, and still
wouldn’t know.

Untitled

Today
I hold my breath against yours
and stoke this barter of living

counting the hours of a bus ride
suspended in the rugged steeps

counting the hours of a sleep
just before a dream strikes

If every measure is a moment of understanding,

then all the distances
from this candle
to the dark walls,
shrink into a wick,
blazing the air,
membrane by membrane

The spark is as subtle
as the opening of an
old, almost forgotten book-
spilling dust and drudgery,
as if the only way for
the light to transpire
is from within

Turbulence

Sometimes
coming close
is the same as
going away

Is it the turbulence
of a camphor or
the air, that
builds a fire?

Some stars explode
and become dust,
others linger
for us to gaze upon
and render meanings

Brooches, frames,
scents-leftovers
are an indictment

Schism

From the banks of nostalgia,
recedes a ripple of shadows
on the translucent, moss-green waters,

disfiguring the present from the time.

Forgetting is a skin-deep wound,
it takes a while to grasp what
has been crooning over the senses,

is not merely the whiff of sandalwood.

You begin to let your questions
astray on the beaten towpath,
that once charted you out.