Ghum

Ye mere ghum hi hain
Jo mujh ko yahaan tak laaye hain...
Khushi mili hoti kahin-
To wahin ruk gaya hota.

[by Siyaah]

Where are all the poems I wrote?

Where are all the poems I wrote?
I did not bother to tear them up
Or turn them black, into ashes
I left them
Where I wrote them-
On the backs of pages with unsolved problems
Jostling for space with rough calculations
Complex numbers, the real and unreal
Running into differentiating, integrating expressions
Their words held together with the glue of numbers;
Or sometimes-
On blank first pages
Or back covers of notebooks
Bold, signed-
If you ever come across those bits of paper
Use them up, it does not matter
They are yours - meant, destined for you
Tokens of our ephemeral existences
Why type them up
Bind them in books
As they were never meant to be
Let each verse seek its own free life
Its own meaning, its own survival
Like the rest of us.

[By Black/Siyaah. Circa late 90s]
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Finally I've slipped some more of my old stuff here, perhaps mostly as a diversion. This came about at a time when I first started to realize that I had 'lost' most of what I had written...it strangely brought together the literal and symbolic angle of every part of that experience...