FIVE ROSEATE SONNETS BY DAIPAYAN NAIR

Born in 1988 in a small town of Silchar, Assam, India. Daipayan Nair is a freelance writer/columnist, poet, fiction writer and essayist. His works have been published in a lot of printed anthologies and online poetry journals like The Poetry Breakfast, The Galway Review, Tuck Magazine, 1947 Literary Journal, Duane's PoeTree Blog etc. He was recently awarded The Reuel International Poetry Prize 2016. His works have been translated in quite a few languages. He has also got a book to his name. His first collection of poems is named 'The Frost' which was released in 2015. His recent publication is a co-authored anthology of poems titled ‘THE VIRTUAL REALITY’ which was released at the end of 2016. Currently, he is working on his upcoming project, a detailed poetry book on the new poetry form ‘Tideling' titled ‘Parallelism’ to be published soon.

Daipayan Nair
1.

The thread's so thin...

You hold my hand like possibilities, and dark drools fresh down that skin, in this never-ending December

As we lie, secret and naked, like a hundred days and ninety-nine nights, wrapped in a calendar

Unforgiven is the hour of the kiss, we age to our comforts, unforgotten becomes the touch

I seek no God, I meet no soul, the crow lands on my grave without a faith, and I love you very much

You hold me age-old like a dead branch, and we fall high and low

On my return, I find you soft, I find you fragile, that's how a sin breaks into kisses, melody shatters into a song

Yet there you're, lover of the old, mother of the new, with arms, open wide, there you're, like one fine romance

Waiting till forever lasts, till the musk of dusk's all there is, he's all over you, somewhat like my bleeding heart, how far can I go...

Love desires power and power needs love, both possess, it's like our first kiss, a hundred years old

And likewise we grow, over a hundred Decembers, that's how I challenge greater forces, that's how I love your soul

Ruin is where you hold my hand tonight, and creepers grow fast, we're still not done ruining each other enough

Often during Decembers, our powers rain, it's black and white, like those eyes, I flash and silence is human, joy is pain

Seconds after you begin a rose, I end a poet, lover or a sin, I end with a weak faith, that's how easy for love it's been 

Every December love's different, and every December we think we're similar, our beloved kin ties us both to our age-old tree, and the thread's so thin.

© Daipayan Nair

2.

Love's holier...

Love's holier when you fall naked and I'm warm on your breasts, and God's no fire 

Love's holier, when the Sun sets on your face, and dead silence takes a gigolo for hire

Love's holier, when you ring my tongue like a temple bell, it's an abusive fuck, and God's no liar

Love's holier when I return like a dusk, like a loner, her wishbone hangs by a wire, and the Thrush's done with the fire

Love's holier when you burn trees high like desire, I fall on my knees alive, and God's no fire

Love's holier, when I'm done with a doppelganger, it's thousand bucks, and your soul still tilts my bum

Love's holier, when I scream your name loud in an alley, all hair and spine, they look nothing like you, and God's no liar

Love's holier, when in winters, I'm warm on her bum, you hang holy on the wall, it's a cruel picture, we're no longer moonlights, but an ancient fire

And so we die into sounds, night after night, you as a river, I as a sigh, our immense silence

Till they give it back to you, the holy tomb of your breast, and my temple on your chest, now I ring in a thousand tongues

Red is how I rise, and red is how you fall, we're flames of our own making

On hardness, you grow soft, and God's kind, He ensures, you're spoiled only by lovers

Settling like death, you rise nothing like life, you ripple my Sunrise like a rose, and God's no saint

End is holier, when you sprout out of my extinction, you're nothing like sexy but soft as grass, before another stack of fire.

© Daipayan Nair

3.

Pure alcohol...

Love is one bottle pure alcohol, my friend, after you're one bottle down

Two sips more, and friends lose their ground, you get back on your feet good, you enter her gown

Jazz sucks its tongue, and the saxophone blows hard, the blonde with her blonde hair, she yells in love, it's pure cocaine

She crosses her legs, we cross ours, she's some terrific sex you say, we leave the bar, two hands in one, she was my beloved, before I left the town

She burned half when I was gone, she burned half when right next to her, mother was blown

Tonight I return, like a 12-year-old sin, eager for none, and she burns full, like a Cuban cigar

She's posh now my friend, she blows the mic for some, that's another word for 'talented'

As we get over her, we still get out of the car, windshields moist, and our hands held above, I remember how she sang for me back then, her moans were love

It's ok my friend, you're one bottle down, you fell deep, it must be her, it's 5 o'clock, and that's five flush down

And she's still heavy on me, like an old Christmas, I carry her light as fuck, and I'm no man, she was shot, long before there was a town

Remember my friend, now that you smell her in the Sun, feel her thorns too,

Offer a hand, relaxed and easy, somewhat soft like trust, and that might just make a wine out of you

She was never a game, she's just a rose, she couldn't bloom beyond her name

Ends the love tale, two bottles down, you jump, there's a chic for sale, she ends her silver breast, she ends me fast, "I knew you'd end like this someday, don't stop now, keep coming, it's better than a stranger every day".

© Daipayan Nair

4.

Jack Daniels...

And when it comes to beauty of grief, I try the blankness of your skin, in simple laments, I don't hold true

You take my drags, my kisses, and bites, as some spoken word and this new hunger is a fake poverty

And when we lie on that cold floor, naked, our lips eating air, we're just homeless on a beach that's blue

I'm fucking urban babe, my tears are distilled, it's Jack Daniels and you

And when it comes to handling grief, your face is a luxury I have

Something's easy babe, you don't kill hunger, and your hunger seldom kills, it's easier for me, with another ninety-nine in the queue

This is the urban babe, love here is fancy, things here are stored for long,

In your case, an unspoiled heart, and a few words, those better than alms, I'm urban, I still survive with 'I love you'

There lies the damn bottle, 18 years blend, I blend in you babe and hell's heaven

I blend enough and your face empties in my hand, damn! grief is beautiful

Red is my grief, yes that is what my grief wears, I don't spill enough when bullets spill me

On a piece of paper I just sympathize, and to revolutions, I just nod, I easily settle for your lipstick

Save the child while he's still young and I become urban with a rose undone, I sleep in my porch where there's none

Endangered sits my beauty of grief, red frozen on her lips, I am urban, I know little how hearts bleed, I die beautiful, I die without a fist, I die rich, it's Jack Daniels and a wrist.

© Daipayan Nair

5.

Back & forth...

You know how love grows pure, it grows like a child on your lips, like a woman in your head

And then they say, love ages faster when I am with you, love ages deep when I am in your bed

And when love fails common, like a man, and black hairs rise like ash, what sky-blue left of your gown is dead

You know love grows pure, it grows like a ruin when we're gone, like a daffodil on your head

Love is mysterious, and love grows humble like a pasture,

We mix six feet below our kins, they've just begun, they just kiss

And love fails young, love fails good, when a young boy hurls sorrows towards the sea

And there you're silent, growing on rocks and sands, six feet from the shore, growing with a love that's pure

She who waits beside you, has a pure heart, she has beautiful eyes, and she has an eye for beauty, she finds her man, he has a strong wrist, she's still very far

So you ask yourself, how failed are we, to grow in each other, as a hot body, as a beautiful mind

When in the world of forgetting, happy and sad, only a simple heart survives

Remember none, my love, after I'm gone, I know you will, it's just my way, of reassuring my kiss

Only roses provide a good challenge, the ones who mean something, even when souls make love

Stored in this world is a lot of pain, sometimes it's severe, sometimes its just me and you

Ending grows pure my love, like your last ember of gold left alone on a disrupted shore, and I am almost there, back and forth.

© Daipayan Nair

FIVE POEMS BY 'THE' JAGARI MUKHERJEE - PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE SERIES 1

Jagari Mukherjee holds an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Pune, and was awarded a gold medal and several prizes by the University for excelling in her discipline. Her poems and other creative pieces have been published in different venues both in India and abroad. She is a Best of the Net 2018 nominee, a DAAD scholar from Technical University, Dresden, Germany, a Bear River alumna, and the winner of the Poeisis Award for Excellence in Poetry 2019, among other awards. She recently won the Reuel International Prize For Poetry 2019. Her chapbook Between Pages was published by Cherry-House Press, Illinois, USA, in June 2019. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. from Seacom Skills University, Bolpur, India.

CORALS

Of his bones are coral made…
William Shakespeare (The Tempest)


My fishing net full of corals
floats on the waves of the sky.
I know I don't belong
to the earth or the fire
but to the Arabian Sea from the
shores of Land's End*.
When you reach there,
take a deep breath, stand by.

You know what to do..
go down the steps
climb on the rock
wait for the sun to set
in the salty waters and
the clouds to draw their curtains
back from the moon and the stars.

Then you cast my ashes whole
or in part --
my limbs are silver powder.
I won't care as long as
the corals of my mortality
meet the jade of my years…
(till that date)…

You will know that
you are done
when the sky
finally casts down
an empty fishing net

*Last point of Marine Drive

TASBIH

I never used the janamaz
nor finished the bottle
of deep green jannat-al-firdaus.
The purple velvet bag
from Kabul Shopping Center with
colorful pastel leaves was a tad
too gorgeous for my classes.
You were the fantasy of every girl
who was plain and wore glasses.

If I hear the azaan nowadays,
it is by accident:
I try not to make out the words
that I once knew by heart.
I try not to think of Surah Kausar
and the ambrosia denied to me
when I lost my paradise.
I never tell people I learned
to love strong liquor tea from you,
sometimes sucking on
candy or a sugar cube.
I have kept your blue tasbih
in my jewelry box:
my mother thinks
it is a necklace.


GLOSSARY

Janamaz - Muslim prayer rug
Jannat-al-firdaus - a popular perfume
Azaan - call to prayer
Surah Kausar - The 108th and shortest chapter of the Quran
Tasbih - prayer beads

 CHULBULI*

" A chulbuli kabiyetri ( poetess) always likes to write her chulbuli feelings that gives the mind more chulbuli."

-- courtesy a comment on my Facebook post, dated 5/10/19.


The chulbuli poetess
dozes on her bed
dreaming of her former lover.
She remembers lining her eyes
with sparkling black kohl
and staining her lips
with a berry-pink gloss.
She remembers how easily the pink
transferred onto his dark skin,
leaving her lips bare again, and the kohl
slightly smudged from the tears shed
while hiding in his chest.

The chulbuli poetess longs to forget
and to rest. She tries to escape to
far-off lands as it rains and the thunder
scares her less than her dreams.
She sweeps over oceans and continents
and night skies suspended in-between.
The chulbuli poetess still weeps
for her lost lover, unheard. Unseen.

*Vivacious (Hindi)

 ASSIGNATION

You wanted an assignation
and kept messaging me for place and time.
I was making myself a cup of tea
to relieve a sore body.
You were inquiring about a hotel room
with a bathtub where you could
scratch poems on my skin.
I was busy pouring hot water
from the hissing electric kettle.
You thought I wasn't paying attention:
it was not true.
I was trying to, but my body ache was killing me
and the scent of lemon-ginger tea
in a Red Rose tea bag was maddening.
The black cat asked me for food in the
language of her tribe.
I took a warm sip from my cup
and thought it was the perfect time to
reply to you.
Then I saw the cat eating the yellow dahlias
from the precious white vase.
I hastened to scold her and give her treats.
I managed to save the dahlias,
but by then, it was too late for you.

MOTHER’S SOUP

The panacea for all ills
was my mother’s soup.
When I was besieged by a troop of fevers raging
with a running nose and sore throat,
she made me a bowl
of spicy and sour soup with noodles
that I savored hot…and when
I lay weak with oodles of body ache,
she gave me a concoction
of chicken and corn in a mug.
Stomach bugs were fought with
thick creamy mushroom delight
in a steel glass meant for my fix.
With Asterix comics, I sat on the bed
enjoying my broth in my private hub.
Mother would rub mustard oil
to ease the pain and I had soup to gain.
Chinese, Thai, Indian — all styles
Mother specialized in.
I loved the story of Stone Soup
and Mother, to her glory, 
had her own ingredient --
red fairy shrimp in a
hot orange concoction
that convinced me of heaven.
Our staple food was fish and rice
but I loved falling ill because of soup;
and no doctor has ever tried
to convince me otherwise.

FIVE POEMS BY JAMIE DEDES OF BEZINE

Jamie Dedes is a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. She also manages The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Jamie's work has been published widely in digital and print publications. Her primary professional affiliation is Second Light Network of Women Poets (U.K.)

Jamie Dedes,

The Poet by Day

The BeZine, Founding & Managing Editor

* The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others Short linK: http://wp.me/pne74-etc

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY JAMIE DEDES 

Another Kind of Beauty

they’re paralyzed on the Atlantic seaboard under
the weight of snow drifts, the detritus of blizzards;
stark bare branches of oak, elm and maple
etch dark veins into an icy-gray cast-over sky

on the West Coast we’re breaking out magnolias
and blades of tender young grass are unfurling;
the near-spring temps us to wrap ourselves
in its perfumed and congenial blessing

along the stretch of Big Sur the sea strikes stone
and the air explodes, bright and wet with spume,
the green patinated-brine salts our mouths;
above us cloud turrets mimic white-capped waves

standing here, consumed by this seeming infinity,
our hands and eyes and mind conspire
to imitate nature in the most apt way, using
our sketch pad, pen and colored pencils

a quick wingless flight into that dancing sea and
we surface with visions grasped tight in our fists,
our eyes are blinded by a palette of colors, our
pencils bear witness to the gift of another morning,
another kind of beauty; undulating, animated
and so unlike the silent white majesty of snow

The Softness of the Moon

See the softness of the moon on my block,
Visiting on this street’s end, smiling at that woman
She collects tossed cigarette butts, a homeless man
Raising arms, large hands waving blessing, at the
Bench by the bus stop, food magically there where
He habitually sits, food left by a stranger, no stranger
To hunger, lights beam from open windows, fortunate
Housed, dinner and television, maybe heart wonder
Maybe heart break, there are some who want to
Die and haven’t, some who want to live but died
Some who take to joy, some pained, stewing in
Despair, the varied elements of the human spirit,
The softness of grandmother moon, gracious
Company for an old poet in reverie watching

Mourning Brooch

the memories have little substance
they flit and fly, pollen on the wind,
like the quick passing of a joyful birth,
the school years, the sweet trysts ~
a waving bridal veil . . .

             the way your love drained you of your dreams
             just to fill yourself with him

. . . . . the epitaph of tears

only when yesterday becomes a story,
once upon a time, do memories
become memorial, a mourning brooch
forever warm upon your breast

 the grandmother stone

at the medical center you put your ear
to the trunk of a birch and listened to my heart
while i roasted potatoes in a snowed-under parking lot
and managed the effects of a shrinking brain

when i heard the door to the crematorium slam shut,
i found myself floating on waves of heat that flayed my skin,
mom held me in mourning and sang Salve Regina
(she was slightly off-key)
but i found the grandmother stone you left in my hand
it pulled me back to the earth and the snow

i heard you say you savored the taste of my blood
in the kalamata olives you ate the day i died
i listened to doves cooing and watched the wind
wrap silver filigree around tree branches

the morning was crisp and fresh
the others came to say goodbye, arms full of flowers
but your arms were empty and heavy with love
i decided to live

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Night makes way for morning
The clouds tumbling in like
Cotton bolls blown across a
Field of promise, sun ablaze
Tinged with crimson and saffron
Grooving to the rattle and the click
And caw of our city corvids, and
Hear too the blue jay’s whispered
Song, the mourning dove’s coo
In my kitchen, five stories up, is a
Breakfast reminiscent of my father
Broiled trout, roasted potatoes, and I
Pull cartilage from the fish, evocative
Of a trachea, and salt the potatoes
To the humming of O2 concentrators
I drag on a nasal cannula, life support
In this, my Valley of the Shadow of Death

FIVE POEMS BY REENA R

Reena Prasad’s poems have been published in The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly, York Literary Review, Lakeview International Journal, Duane’s Poe Tree, Mad Swirl, etc. She is also the Destiny Poets UK’s Poet of the year for 2014 and one of the editors of The Significant Anthology released in July 2015. She was adjudged second in the ‘World Union Of Poet’s’ poetry competition, 2016 and won an award for poetry in 2016 As ‘You Like It International Poetry Contest’, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. She won the Reuel International Prize for poetry, 2018.

NaPoWriMo 6/if

If…

A tough terrain that stretches yesterday into tomorrow is where ifs thrive as burrs. There are some on the faded jeans I treasure. If you could pull out the ones you wear upon yours, give them away, cross a few continents and wait for me in that narrow lane between the middle-class homes where the tulsis grow like weeds and pink roses bloom like teen love, we could hear the gong once more and if the gray hairs and the loose folds could be erased by the receding waves of time tugging at the blankets of moss that grow over human joys, we would still be smiling, brave and earnest. We could walk back a year in a step and cross the words that parted us, crushing them under our shoes if .. if ifs were our tomorrows, ours to hold, to cherish and to let go, there would be an if before every breath that left in search for yours and before every breath that returned vanquished, bereft of warmth

©reenar

Posted on April 6, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

NaPoWriMo 5/Sun and shade

Sun and shade

The gentle art of melancholy
is to see “print as light and white paper, shadow”
There is an end, beyond every horizon

The Wandering Jew thrives though pot bound
The moss rose blooms where it is flung, but we practice
the gentle art of melancholy

Too much sun within, to meander out of the soil
The sea salt, like happiness leeches out of underwatered pots
There is an end, beyond every horizon

too faint to discern too vivid if dreamt, the rays converge
and we are parchment, then flame, then ash, simple soot black. Behold
the gentle art of melancholy

Breeze-blown paper caught by a nib, sails without a ship
Ocean depths of promises, undying hope a never-ending misery
There is an end, beyond every horizon

Sun, the cross, cosmic omissions, shade,
the lovely creepy crawlies, spring flies in with
the gentle art of melancholy
There is an end, beyond every horizon
©reenar

refer
“Light & Shadow by Anne Waldman

Posted on April 5, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

NaPoWriMo 4/looking at loss

Sparse white hair
shining pate

a grin
with gaps

endless walks
but the wind stilled

stunned
I stumbled
but he will not hold me again
©reenar

Posted on April 4, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

NaPoWriMo 3/ Pebbles

Smooth pebbles under my feet
and in my heart
you fill my sieve when I skinny dip my senses
into time’s muddy pool

Inheritances never forgotten
never realised
have accumulated over mindless existence
There I am in my mother’s eyes
as she looks at hope through a window
newly chiseled by a man
walking in from several storms

And then time rippled its skin once more
shook off the fireflies hovering over
bright eyes
and poured black tar over the living

It filled the lungs of an era
with the hatred of co-existence
and brought forth babies dipped in vengeance
fed from breasts that heaved in rhythm to chants of revenge

At the pinnacle of it
carried over by the butterfly effect of  waves
dashing against cliffs of shores far away,
a land lies wasting
Its trees
singing of blood and ignorance
kills sparrows with their apathy
and below them
hungry powers wrestle for dominance

I am still in your eyes, mother
refusing to be part of the scenery
to be a fringe element in this landscape
to be a visual representative of an era
that promises nothing but delivers hate
Unbidden

Let me look hard at the faint outlines
in the distance
conjure up the mountain passes
too feeble to be the truth
and cross over the bridges of time
Time after time
till I find the parallel river that matches my inner one
Till then

tell no one, Mother
that you conceived me on your own
and I named myself Hope
©reenar

Posted on April 3, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

NaPoWriMo 2/where are the answers?

Where are the answers?

What if they forgot to ask the girl if she could sing?

Would her music cease

Would she no longer knit their afternoons into a mellow sunset?

Or would she burst into her own song

singing as if the summer would never end

And the house would rattle along to her sound

Eager to hear every note that came unbidden to her lips

Which song could be better?

reenar ©

Posted on April 2, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME2

Napowrimo 1/ Living with infidelity: Instructions

Disown bodies
Disown tea rituals
Live outside every temptation to ask

Tune out of conversations
Be deaf to hints
Function at medium levels

Breathe in air but not scents
Sell all albums to the raddiwala  one at a time
Change the photos in their glass frames

Be ready
Be gone
before you go
©reenar

Posted on April 1, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME

FIVE POEMS BY DR. SANTOSH BAKAYA INCLUDING A CONCRETE POEM AND AN ONOMATOPOEIC ONE WITH A MESOSTIC

Internationally acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu (Vitasta Publishers, 2014),

Dr.Santosh Bakaya is an academician -poet-essayist- novelist-reviewer-Ted x speaker, whose Ted talk on 'The myth of writer's block' is quite  popular in creative writing classes.

She writes a much appreciated column in Learning and Creativity.com, Morning Meanderings, and is the recipient of the Reuel International Award for her long hundred page narrative poem,Oh Hark !(2014). 

The Setu international Award in recognition of her 'stellar contribution to world literature '  2018(Pittsburgh ,USA),
The Universal Inspirational Poet Award (Ghana government and Pentasi B ,2016),
Bharat Nirman Award 'for brilliance in the field of writing' , 2017 

The First Keshav Malik Award ,2018 ,for 'her entire staggeringly prolific and quality conscious oeuvre' in fiction, prose and poetry are some of the  other awards that she has received . 

Her other books are :

Where are the Lilacs ?(Poetry,Authorspress, 2016 )

Under the Apple Boughs (Poetry, Authorspress, 2017 )

Flights from my Terrace( Essays, Authorspress, 2017)
 A Skyful of Balloons [ novella , Authorspress , 2018] 

Bring out the tall tales (short stories with Avijit Sarkar,Authors press, 2019)

Only in Darkness can you see the Stars :a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (Vitasta , 2019)

ALL RIGHTS BELONG ONLY TO DR SANTOSH BAKAYA

The hens in their pens

Time it was, when in my prelapsarian haven,
the sounds had  not lapsed into a cacophony,
when it was only the cicadas chirping frenziedly,
and the noisy hens skittering madly,
cackling in tones of agonized entreaty,
as they were chased into their pens.

 Then came autumn!
Those copper leaves,
so much a part of memory, bid adieu to those branches
 to which they had clung with a fragile resilience
swirling to the ground to rest on a new home.

On another half- clad tree,
sat a sad little robin singing its autumnal dirge,
while the autumn leaves fell on us one by one,
singing elegies, tinged with hope. 
The hope of resurrection.

 
A long way away from home,
I recall how I had roamed its vales and meadows,
inhaling the fragrances of my snug universe
singing happy verses.

But, now, death parades,
uniformed and starched,   strict-looking.
 Chinars mourn, willows weep, and parched lips
 mumble incoherently.
Narrow slits, they say, were eyes once
looking at the horizon,
 will the sun rise today?
Hens once robust and feisty
are again chased into their pens,
as agonized entreaties rent the air,
 but none hears them,
as freedom pens its swan song stooped,
and stooping more every day
under a leafless, skeletal tree. 
 

Near the bougainvillea creeper

 I glimpse a rosy- cheeked toddler being pushed around
 in a perambulator as the young mother twitches
his tiny sunhat in place, looking at him fondly,
as he sleeps in the warmth of the sun- sheathed pram.

Now and then, she glances nonchalantly
at the gardener tying the vines,
trimming the fence, and noisy kids
quickly dropping their rubber balls,
hopping towards the spunky squirrels,
skidding, squealing and screaming.

 She sits on a bench under a tree,   
 its leaves sprinkling the two 
 with shots of vivid sunshine.
She sighs a blissful smile,
pushing a tendril of the baby’s hair from his face.
‘Aww’, she gushes as the child smiles in sleep.
Then she beckons her fond husband,
 standing  near the lily pond, who rushes to her side,
leaping towards her in two quick strides, 
bending down to kiss the child,
glowing with ineffable pride.
 The morning is almost over,
but a poem is born right there
near the bougainvillea creeper.

In the Shadows

Life sits in the shadows , multi- tasking,
oft crocheting bibs for her babies,
to burp and puke on,
smoothening them on her sturdy knees
[not the babies, but the bibs! ]
with massive sighs of satisfaction ,
 often jerked with rib -ticking laughter .

 
The babies tumble around, chortling and lisping. 
She soothes the colicky ones in hard hitting indignation,
smiling at them over her spectacles, gives a dry chuckle,
happy that her expostulation prevails. 
 Oft peering down with a serious judicial expression,
 having a mind to tweak their noses,
 sometimes their desultory songs and eloquent silences
 soothe her; sometimes speaking in a lofty strain,
 gives her a high. A sigh escapes her lips, and often
 her lightness of tone masks a faint alarm. A pesky refrain.

She looks at the quivering fingers of an emaciated woman
trying to make the buttons and the buttonholes
of her child’s tiny shirt meet.
When she fails miserably, Life wrings her hands,
gnashes her teeth
and looks away.

 

The walking stick

A soggy old man, groggy with sleep, heads towards his tumble down cottage.
His eyes look around frantically for his lost calf; ‘ho! ho! ho!’  He bellows
some vague impulses, some wayward fancies, some laughable absurdities,  
and recurrent revelries, whirl in the mind of this soggy, old shepherd.
A twig between his chipped and discolored teeth, breathing
in sporadic bursts, eyes fixed at a beetle, predator-like.
There is the gentle, soothing tinkle of a goat’s bell,
his eyes light up, looking around frantically,
a benediction springs to his lips,
easing a crick from his neck
rubbing a nervous tic, he
gropes for his stick,
finds it, then he
hobbles forth,
stumbling.
Shouting   
happily. 
Baba’,
bleats
the
calf.
Says
he,  
ho
ho
ho
ho
ho
ho
Ho
ho
ho! 
ba
ba
ba
ba
says
the
lost
one
in
joy.  
 
 Whiplashes of time

Those waves, ah those waves!
Why does he keep going back to those waves?
 How they sparkled, how they gleamed,
as though a rose-tinted dream
played peekaboo with his senses,
 confusing his tenses, mauling his syntax,
vexing him with a teasing chuckle,
cocking a snook at grammar
 vanishing into the surfing foam,
with the force of a hammer.
 Those rippling waves, ah those roaring waves!
The waves, waves, waves.

Overhead, a shard of a once colorful kite,
 brings a smile to his wistful face.
 It does some sort of a belly dance
 as a blustery wind lashes it with all its might.
 The summer sun of an alien land scorches him,
singes him, bringing him thoughts
of those waves, waves, waves.

So far away from home, his ears still
ring with melodic murmurs of the waves
 that he left behind,
 whiplashed and uprooted,
 his name still etched on that ancient pine tree. 
The waves, waves, waves.

Reminiscent of the tintinnabulation of Poe’s Bells
 they chime rhymes of the melodic times. 
‘What a world of merriment their melody foretells ‘.
The waves, waves, waves. 

He ploughs on With lacerated feet

Grimy hands, Appealing

Trying so hard To                  

Walk on, parchEd lips

Mouthing an eaRnest plea
for water
through parched lips.

Every year he is richer by one more wrinkle.
 But, oh, where, is now the merry tinkle
of the waves, waves, waves?
 Now, he hears only a threnody
of the waves of the River Lidder.
The waves, waves, waves.
  
How they roared, roared, roared,
billowing, surging, swinging , breaking, curling,
rushing, purging  , swelling , whirling , uncurling
undulating , rolling ,pell- melling  
The waves , waves , waves …..
He misses the way they kissed his feet,
beating, crashing bashing, thrashing, lashing, dashing
 the waves, waves, waves.