By Sanjeev Naik

Why this incessant need to unburden myself
through words - attempts to quell the silence,
fill the void? Maybe this is my way of
having a yard sale for my collected emotions
- necessary purging.


I thought it was a search for myself
- growing pains; trekking through
alien mindscapes, looking for answers
that weren't there. Looking for
love. Hope. Peace.
Mere mirages of the mind?


I thought I wrote to forget
but the memories these words keep
imprisoned - safeguarded through
the ravages of time, between the folds of
these books like a dried rose....
the lingering aromas of love.


These poems remain - potsherds
from an excavation of the mind,
transliterated now into these lifeless
poems - maps of my mental landscape.

Sanjeev Naik
November 14, 2000