Classic Poem

My bed smells of textbooks
and it is more than a month or so,
since I dreamt of sunlight and the sky's
embrace. Even a woman's lush vanities —
scarlet silk and shining gold — have been lost
on me. I am snared in a world of aqua, fuchsia,
and lime set dangerously against black and white.

Words tightly wrapped,
and imprisoned in a cluster of
highlighter colours, share my slavery.
Rattling loud, the colorized intrusions
have pickled the past, leaving me to savour
saturation. Oh hell, even my treasured dreams
have been bleached away in shades of three, or five.

Save me, from this
unbearable starkness
of fluorescence; where lines
rehash the pages brutally, moving
with sounds of spectacled scrutiny.
For, all that I can bear to comprehend
is the loss of dare: my sheltered cowardice.
And, the sole comfort I crave, through stifled
tears is stolen love beneath stained glass windows.

Dearest, lavish your love
in slender earthtone shades,
in the colours of skin singing —
to shield our renewed dreams,
and to believe, once more, in absolutes.

(First published in Sulekha)