-Rajesh K. Jha
Painting: Manjit Bawa
—-
I can’t stop counting stars in the hazy night,
half awake, half delirious
while my mind wonders in the lost smell of your hair
accidentally blown across my face, long ago.
Will there be a time to stop
and say no more?
Will I ever
blow a kiss yet again in the empty sky-
Hoping it finds the lips that vanished by long ago?
The fantom limb of desire refuses to say goodbye,
The flakes of hot embers caged in me
scatter in the lap of time, backward forward, backward forward,
and renew with vigour like King Yayati of Mahabharata,
and I remain smitten with the embrace of a shadow.
The vulture of longing
fattens on the crumbs of memory,
like seeds splintered on a distant horizon, growing tentacles.
The circular wasteland of desire ensnares me
while I wait for a messenger to appear from the crack
in an endless loop of barbed wire on the border between two nations.
***