Black and Pink

She was a woman like no other. Completely out of her mind. She always chose the riskier path. Always. And she revelled in it! It was glorious for her. I haven't met another person like her, who took joy in failing because, "It was just an experiment, after all." A lunatic, I tell you.

But around me, she was totally opposite. Like flipping a coin. Fussy to the point of frustration(fussy is always frustrating, I know). She always looked at me with a suspicious eye, wondering whether I'd been up to any mischief. And as always, I'd disappoint her. But that didn't deter her, oh no! She would be unhappy with me because I wouldn't do anything wrong so that she could fly in as a messiah and set things right. I'd stopped messing things up a long time ago, and she hated me for it. I think she hasn't forgiven me for that even now.

Spirited

Quiet, ever so hushed and calm,
The silenced await, solemn and patient.
Bated breaths and muffled sighs,
Their rustles deafening, the whimpers blunt.

Stray not over the dizzying emptiness,
Step not on that fresh mound.
Their anguished cries may claim you,
Cries of the stricken, the slaughtered, the drowned.

Mir

Mir walked slowly, every step sending a strained message to his brain. To stop. To lie down. To give it a rest. It had been a long day, like every other. Mir should relax.

The saner, wiser part of him argued vehemently against those pleas. If he stopped, he wouldn't be able to get back up. And then a kind villager would have to carry him to his shack. He wouldn't be able to bear that sort of humiliation again.

Connecting...

'Freud's Psychoanalysis', I scrawled on the magnificent ruled paper, and paused to allow myself a moment of self-pity. The scrawl looked incredibly ugly on the white sheet, and I almost convinced myself that I shouldn't study. Freud frowned up at me.

The reason behind the 'almost' was the dishevelled creature in front of me, who snapped ferociously if any one of us so much as yawned. Zeenat(as her name suggested, albeit in a different sense altogether), was someone to be handled with care.

You

You're the scarred soul and the blistering body,
The blood that shimmers inside,
The sweat that glistens violently,
As you stoke your demonic light.

You're the speckled sky,
The constellations floating in a queer dance,
The brilliance of the afternoon stupor,
Lit by your inner suns.

A Lament

Seas trembled and writhed in dismay,
The flames shed a single tear.
Rock withered and sky staggered,
The murk dissolved, stale but clear.

Splotches of red stained the whispering snow,
A frown creased the brittle heat.
Clouds burst forth in a reckless rage,
Pooling round the tempest's feet.

The errant mob behaved itself,
Rivers stiffened and ceased their flow.
The dead heaved an expectant sigh,
Machines skidded to a halt, wiping their brow.

The world slowed down, panting,
Time itself caught its breath.
Chaos went numb and silent,
Lamenting the poet's death.

The Noose

Crowded, suffocating,
The air now closing in.
I feel the urge to escape,
Escape away from this din.

The Fall

I stared down the blackness, my feelings a mixture of queasiness and exultation. The void seemed almost impenetrable, as if it were a veil, a barrier instead of empty space. The breeze blew past ever so slightly, brushing my cheeks like the tender hands of a lover... a lover.
The moon was at its full, shining benignly down at the scene, casting shadows wherever the trees behind me cut through its light. The faint smell of wet mud hung in the air, stirring up memories of childhood. Everything looked beautiful, breathtaking, as if in mockery of my plight. An excellent place to die.

Song of the Faithful

I just met a non-believer,
Ah, the same old tiff again.
It has dragged on for decades and centuries,
Not a suitable place for the sane.

What has religion given us,
but war and blood, you say?
We'd all be machines with gears gone awry,
if it weren't for the beliefs that still hold sway.

The Lark

When I was a child, I was friends with a lark. It was no ordinary bird, for it could talk. And by talk, I mean human speech. This isn't one of those stories where in the end, the narrator turns out to be an animal or some inanimate object.

I was speaking about the lark, yes.