For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror

यह एक टूटी फूटी सी कविता है। कुछ शब्द जो हैं इसके, वो सपनों से  हैं टूटते झड़ते । इसके कुछ पत्ते, लायी हैं तोडके झंझावातें, किसी दूर देश से । ये दिशाहारा , रास्तों ने जिसको  बरगलाया है,  राहों के कंकड़ पत्थर में, ये अपने अस्तित्व  के शब्द खोजता । तंग पंक्तियों में  उलझा हुआ ज़िन्दगी का तुक खोजता । कभी-कभी इन गलियों के अंतहीन शोर में, जाने पहचाने शब्दों का सन्नाटा खोजता । भटक रहा है उस एक किताब, उस एक  पन्ने , की तलाश में जहां उसे पनाह मिले । ये टूटी हुई कविता , एक टूटा हुआ इंसान ही तो है, जो रात के अंधेरे में अपने साए को खोजता है

When I entered that room, I left time an errand, to find the “measure” of her future being. And now I wait at the centre of her heart. All alone I wait, while time twists and writhes around the dials and dissolves in the vials. In a space crowded with sounds, diseased, I wait. Her ailing sobs do their dance of victory around me. The drips that give her life make noises strident in the silent pool of my heart. Every injection awakens a new portal of the dormant pain. A scream, stifled, reverberates through the body knocking at the door. I travel to the edge of her being to save her soul from sinking into the morass of desperation. But in the narrow streets of her arteries, hope lies abandoned. The image of her rotting visage and the looks of shudder, it bore, all jostle inside “chemo”, which was her blood now. I take a bite-sized  piece of time, in whose peregrinations I sought the proof of her life....

I do not remember Falling into this pit But I do remember falling forever. Its glassy interior offer no footholds. In darkness dim, dance ghostly lights. In terror do I behold the reflections, of an inchoate past, enacting their caricatures on this glassy screen. They connive, they collude and beckon me into the realms of dreams. In fear I seek; the ladder of crystal meth to climb out, the rock of white powder to shatter the glassy canvas. In the numbness of the pit of life, the ladder climbs into me and these little pills shatter me.