Word island

Words break with waves
On a distant shore.

A stream drowned in the sea...

The mountains had cried.

And a thousand stories 

Slept in a water grave. 

I was retrieved from the ocean
Hidden in a shell with a hermit crab.
Longing for days when moonlight
Traced it's fingers across my lonely back.

This is a lost island
Refuge for drifting souls
Sailors, without a map...

The amphibious me
Crawled up the sky;
And the birds flew upside down...

I see skyscrapers on the ocean bed.
Order that shames civilisations...
And an old woman sits at the bottom
Carving shells and colouring corals.

How do the fishes know
They're not swimming upside down?
How do they separate
Depths from heights?
Or is it the sky that is inverted...

Clamps in pockets
Salt on the face
In a dream that won't last forever
Nor would leave any trace...

Who would believe in my island
We are past the age for fiction;
I burnt my fingers and my net
When I tried to salvage the sun.

Saba

When her music died

The heavens were silent
And angels sighed!
In the calm of a night
Her music died.

The stars were shattered
The moon, too shy
A veil of smoke
And smokey eyes...

In the lines of kohl
A day summarised
Its charade of order
Its false pride.

And a bag of shards
On her shoulders laid
Carcasses of dreams
Pieces of dismay.

In the name of truth
To her heart she lied.
With a smile she fiddled
As her music died.

Saba

Escape

I curved my spine
And turned into a ball.
Rolled
From one end of the world to other
Till I was told it's round like me.

Escape. There's nowhere to escape.
Keep rolling, I tell my ball-self.
How many universes I've traversed
Never reached anywhere though.
Home. The mythical place of rest,
Left far behind, or maybe never existed
Yet, a summer evening lingers
With a bit of petrichor.
And voices long forgotten
Echo...
Calling me by a name
That no one remembers.

Maybe, I'm just a snail
For the universe, too slow, too small.
And yet time is but a theory
I live in the past, present and future
Yet, don't live at all.

Saba