Is Not the world, charming?

I watch luscious watermelon lips
on weekend tv shows. I admit my getting
weak-on-the-knees whenever her eyes encounter
mine. They tell you HD is a sensation; each pixel
of a petal may invite you back to your spring even though
you are a long-time loner. I admit I find this third part
of the life more hideous than the days when I was awakened

by the sound of ewes. Speaking of warmth, is not
the touch of her pashmina tantalizing? You may reason
that the essence of a season is in its passing; that birds are losing
more feathers and poets are getting loonier in quest of eternity-
why don’t I share memories with the glass case clock?

I’m unsure of the cock rising up again, I’m pissed off and I’m broke.
Yet the tide returns with the moon that casts a dream on a sleepless night,
can’t you see me flooded in my unlit room?

Scent of mahogany

He is a man of many autumns
a man who weeps for his dead roses
His roses died from an epidemic
while other trees were in flowers
You can see the sad scene looking at his
modest eyes as he looks through you
with the sagging skin that folds his grief
beneath his chin

I'm in search for my roses he declares
the Red ones remind me of faces
lost in the outbreak every time i whisper
my agonies their shoulders start drooping
white butterflies appear from nowhere
and foretell death looming for my velvety kins

A reproaching wind carries a faint smell of mahogany
He sighs and tells you about the fragrant seeds
he has kept treasured in his valise

He is a man of many autumns
a man who still weeps for his roses

Midlife

Autumn has arrived. With a look
as bewildered as a caged bear, a vision filled
with angry maples, he looks around himself.
He’s accustomed to coldness of the concrete floor
and the dry wind that brings in memories.
Of late he’s been more of a poet thriving upon
the flame colour of forest. Animals and fire
have a strange magnetism. Why must you
fear the blaze when you feel
dreams are all scalded
peppered and decaying in the mist?

Autumn has arrived a bit earlier. Some leaves
are yet to be parched. He rubs his stubble and plays
cross-word puzzles. There are more white boxes
than dark ones, and the clues poke at him like a neighbour
tapping on shoulders. The bear twinkles
and passes time with the sun that is no more a fire
in the noon.

Circles

two paths once met
in a noon glow of autumn

i have an obsession
of drawing rings
that intersect or encircle nothing

it is possibly a mind-gamble without a deal
the alibi for casting off any real hope

raindrops warble
at the fag-end of monsoon

am i passed the age of wrapping myself
with concentric dreams

i just need one last tot
of elixir

fresh circles force older ones to fade