Shaharyaar Kamaal Siddiqui

A self-imposed exile from love's territory,
Shutting out grains of sunlight,
Rendering myself untouchable,
In bounded, fortified high walls,
...

From start to finish, from alpha to omega,
No straight course this!
Gullible mind and naive eyes may well breed this,
Tortuous and labyrinthine it is!
...

I asked them to come along,
They shunned,
Saying, you think with your heart, not mind!
And shall make a journey perilous,
...

In the garden bright, bathed in sunshine white,
Lined with dazzling daffodils and marigold ochre,
Aroma in the air and semblance of the heaven high,
Why the vagabond bee, fluttered and alighted gently,
...

I come to your abode, with wishes unfulfilled,
Like a faqir, with calluses and wrinkled face,
Sweaty and dark, arriving on a hot summer noon,
Tracking miles, barefooted,
...

With weary eyes, I stand and look into the endless, dreary desert of the future,
My heart shuddering, grasped viciously, in the thoughts of times, unseen;
Of stories unshaped, and the enigma of that fleeting entity called time,
Yet to unravel;
...

Starting in the wee hours of the reluctant dawn,
When a streak of white light fights all night with the engulfing dark,
I begin my tryst with life on a worn out bicycle,
Weaving through sun and rain,
...