Huzaifa Pandit
I could never taste
The purple fire
On roses without thorns
Inert to the loud sneeze
Of the Evening Call to Prayer
Peeled off from the cold sun
Itching from the damp blanket
Of the pale clouds
Emptied of all steel-colored rain
I could never hear
Fully the lisping breeze
When it injects the garden weeds
With epilepsy
They scream off phantasmagoria
Bred in drugged asylums
Of a summer-plagued city
I have often tried to touch
The overgrown pine trees
Their bare brown bones
Beneath their bottle green flesh
But I could never store
Their black silhouettes in my skin-memory
All my poor sketches were burnt
Surreal photos confiscated
For authentic forgery
I have rarely tried to see
Minutiae of navy blue sky
When I tried yesterday evening
And the evening last cold September
And the blue snowing December
I found the sole pinkish magenta bird
Circling, wailing, hungry
Pecking at barren clouds
For that date buried by history
When wise old crows
Cursed it a curse
The length of a crawling century
I sit in the steaming kitchen
Listen to snippets
Between simmering oil
And refrigerator
About blue thin wire
That transmits misled emotions
To circuits of cognitive penury
Here I am an old man
Waiting for warm day to sink
At rusted gates of an old cemetery
I have crafted in my memory
Huzaifa Pandit is pursuing an M.A in English at the University of Pune, and blogs at http://colourofmemor.blogspot.in/