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Saturday, June 12, 2021

Paranoid and bitter? Poem

A Tribute to Nightbirde*
I remember back then
how you used to come
hang on to my every word and every poem
You and you and you
and you and you and you
I was the stars to your moon
My poems the sun to your sunflowers
I was the one you could practice heliotropism on
Then when you thought that you had arrived
Your visits became few and finally none
You said you are not a poet, or your silence did, to me
I am bigger than you now, it said, I know it all
I watched you try to remove the ground beneath my feet
Unable to feel hurt, or anything
The Krishna whom you felt that you could give a bhashan to
The Drona whose thumb and forefinger you wanted to remove
The one who was just an inn on your way to your destiny
Or cut down to size, to step into my shoes
I was busy watching the ants in the anthills
The anthills in the savannahs and not the cities
You did not know of people like Nightbirde
In comparison with whom you would never become anything
As you did not have the same amount of humility
People whom I watched, the tears streaming down my face
The real thing, whether successful or not
Fighting insuperable odds and able to go on
To sing, to dance, to write poems to fight, to live
To hope, to have faith, to love, with the courage to go on alone
I did not know them and they did not know me
But we were kin and wing to wing flew in the unknown, lost
"It's ok, it's ok, it's ok," was our song
"To be among the lost," and soar, vast, "sometimes".
To burn a hundred poems and still be strong
To never look back, and have nothing to look forward to
to break the yellow lights and know it is only you you lied to
"It's ok, it's ok, it's ok", you see
"To be among the lost", and not even soar**, "sometimes."
*Everything in this poem may be wrong. (ref. to Richard Bach's Illusions)
** have a golden buzzer moment

Prompt poem

 

given by Amita Paul

This is photograph of Karwar Railway Station which Karnataka Tourism claims is the greenest in India.
It looks breathtakingly beautiful in this photo.

I wonder how many poets in TSL would feel inspired to write a poem or two on it?






that green that mist those tracks that train those platforms and the smell of rain is that not where i kissed you once that rain that green those mountains that mist that smell that pain

The night as seducer/seductress - a poem.

 The night as seducer/seductress

the night has its longings
the day does not know,
takes off its furs/dress
no longer trammeled by the light
not afraid to reach out and touch
for warmth
the skin of the one/s it wants to darken
the night has its own restlessness
its feelings/failings
and longs to be found at some hearth
watching the flames licking at the logs
curled up on the carpet
legs stretched out
in its nakedness
having crept in through the window
and the sliver of light
underneath the door

to slide, sidle into bed
and watch over
the breath in sleep,
the soft rise and fall of some fair breast/chest
black now, with the light switched off,
as its own face
in the mirror near, a mere* now
in its sight.

*well

Anti-moon poem

 I would not want a lover like the moon

Far away and probably cold not only in June
Just an eye or peering in through the window
Yellow or silver, pitted black or new
I would not want a lover like the moon
She is only a dream that makes you want to swoon
Never comes down from that distance, up there
To the earth to take off her clothes as an apsara
and dance with me to my poor tune
No, I really would not want, either, to be the moon
And be compared by poets to atrocious similes,
lies, metaphors and lunatic images
The moon is like a paper cup
She is cheese and a crescent of t/horns
Dripping blood, a vagina, a sand dune
A desert, there's a girl in it, no, that's a cosmonaut, you fool!
Must be painful to read all that and not feel like a poltroon
Roses are there and stars and the sun
Golden ladders to the night and sky
Blue of the morn
Be careful what you wish for
Be wary of the moon
I would not want to have her for a lover,
That old, capricious, woman moon.

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