Never marked by sunbeams glancing off hilltops
Shower after shower leaving behind greenlight
Hiding their crests in dishevelled tree tops
Lurid shimmers behind the tresses of clouds
Steaming vaults of black and blue serenity
The dense tide of a coming monsoon
The mire dallying in water and an older season
Quiet and unmoving figure in shadowy sanctuary
Heavy in cement, garish colours and mass produced worship
Your arms wide, open and embracing the slums and towers
The misery, noisy and desperate incantations- calculus for virtue
Hungry in extravagant prayer, furious in all encompassing faith
Harder and colder in steely indifference, gold hearted over empty stomachs
Adorned, lavished, ancient and praised amongst aching limbs and inner torment
Before you we fearfully fold in submission, for you may be muted,
But the devil’s voice is always echoed, among spectral nations and monstrous profit
Blood drinking machines and ciphers in our souls
A meteor shower, frozen
asleep on the empty road
I gauge the feeling on my arm, how cold
the pulse of the night wind
give me a homeland
this ancient crooked tree
no one replaces you
give me a homeland
my lips are chilled
dreaming
I write poetry for pictures
They’ll say it all,
Play it subtle & soft
Keep it ambigious, keep it safe
They’ll hide, what your afraid of saying
Birds of prey
watching me
Corner of the page
every turn of my life
Birds of prey
watching me coldly
Marking me from trees
rhyming at me,
Every silver lining, spying
strife of the midwives
Archives of the afterlife
calling, wanting and watching
Birds of prey
bray grey cliches
Colour my decay
play games of dismay
A face dripping daylight
A seaside cafe
Nursing dregs
Over a story
The skyscraper spire
They wear clip on ties
The unseen order of things
Talk of war, sugar in darkness
Once boxed
Deep in the midst
Of falling leaves
Winter fog
Floats off our coats
Baring shoulders
Morning coffee
The night grows longer
Still hungry
Journey by moonlight
As it spills through the highway
So many boulders
Yet,
The river finds it’s way.
Blue balloons
Drift to hide,
Covered up in
A blue sky,
Shimmering,
Burning under glaze,
Brush strokes
On a vase.
Cold moonlight,
Solemn grasshoppers,
A dog barks
At his own echo.
Rijul Ballal 