spasms of shadows pulse the walls inside
you are a pebble in the surge of drawing tide
infinity kills breath with a bluster of wind
everything you are not, you once might have been


-Nausher Banaji

You muddle amidst murals
A promise and a prophesy in each hand
Sprawling on mirrors of frozen summer
You forget where your story began
Straining through the ebbs you fall
Grasping a fleeting embrace
The doors are peeling off the walls
Your heart is etched on your face


-Nausher

Through tunnels and doors
you ached you'd be free, 
The doors lead to walls
and the labyrinth leads to me


- Nausher Banaji

a night pummelled by gales of memory,
spasms of shadows marooned on masonry
a ripple of gasps from behind the curtain
you part them only to enter oblivion


-Nausher Banaji

sitting by the river bed
removing one wet stone after another
washing the blood from memories bled
wiping them clean
throwing them back into the water

windows calling out to windows
rhyming the bruises with the night
in a gallery of dancing shadows
pinned by the moonbeam
blinded by bloodlight

how did i get in here anyway
invisible i am invisible you
the most beautiful face you've see all day
is in the gutter
looking back at you-
Nausher

to you they came with teeth clenched  and eyes unseeing
yesterday's truth died at the end of  morning


to you they came searching shadows under the sheets
infinity is the same man crossing the same street

drowning in sand lost out at sea

the surf of dreams the surge of memory


they killed themselves with cameras and revolvers
you killed yourself with minutes and with hours

- Nausher Banaji

they who lost themselves in numbers
and were forgotten in the count
who have voices for lying
and faces to hide themselves behind
they who filled themselves with words
and were emptied by them
who have eyes for dreaming
but were walking blind-N