Nurturing an Argument

Turn your head just a little bit
You'll catch it out of the corner
of one hollow, ennui-swollen eye
Move nimbly towards it

Pounce quickly!
Before it slips through the doors
and out into the quiet night
where people linger with jazz
by firesides
and feel warm.

Pounce now. Hold it tight,
your fingers clenched around its
soft, prickly texture
like a ripe lichee.

It's thin now
but if you keep it warm
look at it many times,
touch it with warm fingers
before you sleep,
it will grow voluptuous.

It needs intense attachment to survive.

It may be your last chance
to be voluminous, to speak
your many words, like helium balloons
they climb air.

When it shrivels
your life will return
to the usual rhythms.

© Anindita Sengupta

Transluscence

You did not tell me those were tear drops
that stained your eyes, you blamed dust
and told me it was normal. I believed
your lie and then joked about things
that made you laugh and forget,
for a moment, the terrible pain
you carried inside so silently.

I nearly guessed the truth once
but your explanations were clever
and so beautifully wrapped in evasions
that I failed to understand things
and did not probe deeper into the hardness
of your self-defence, and instead
remained comfortably gullible.

But if I only knew, would I have acted
differently or even changed the course
of events completely? Maybe or maybe not,
but who knows? Time makes conjectures
such an easy and convenient exercise
like the poetry we read and write to seek
explanations for the inexplicable in life.

But I do know that, if nothing else, the flowers
on this stone would have sung a different song
because you would be sleeping more peacefully.

6:30 a.m. 2nd february

    perspicuous poems       or poetry opaque?

    perspectival viewing       with angles oblique?

    snow falls so seldom here!       who recalls a flake?

    morn arrives too swift now       like snow on my cheek

Silence

Silence


Was what I craved
So I piled up some stones
And built towers taller than dreams
Then barred their windows with my weathered bones
Leaving no escape for my screams
And here I sit alone
In this depraved
Silence

(c) Rajendra Pradhan

an effort in Rictameter with symmetric rhyming (is it really called that?)

A Dog & Its Tail

A dog
that chases
its own tail
is bound to
mostly, fail

But the one
that succeeds
will live to tell
How his own
arse does smell

Republic Day in Rictameter

Mother
had many names
and no face, just wrinkles
For her, nothing. But some twinkles,
she had asked for her starry-eyed children
So she got a constitution
and two more names
None sweeter than
Mother

 

c) Rajendra Pradhan

MARTYR

Silence descends like a curtain,
shrouding the land, inert in heat
and history. This is locust country,
no matter borne on wings or feet.
The river minds its inventory
of fable, back into the far uncertain.

Silence descends, its shadow swallowing
the skits and masques of earlier farce,
stage cleared of all but the man:
only the desert shifts in this sparse
theatre, wayward wind against sand.
The calm will herald the blowing.

Soon the horizon darkens, and a hum
or murmur gives life to cloud, dust
spangled with glints of steel, clock
racing with hooves: till a spear’s thrust
makes mud of human rock.
And silence closes, till the armies come.

***

Beloved City

City of large
and uncompromising
things. Each layer of history
thickening with the blood
in your streets that flows easy

but nothing sticks for long.
Time moves, quickening
heartbeats, train schedules
marriages.

City of loudness,
a cacophony of car honk, gull cry
wind whoop, wave crash and
voices raised in selling, haggling
and survival

because what else is there, really?
life churns, spits, throws you out
and you, unsuspecting stranger
try to hang on, your knuckles white

City of rough
and biting realities
jostling for space with
the cool, the fast,
the heady shot
at 3 in the morning

that never makes anything go away.
But sinks with you into the deepest part
of your dreams, and his, and her's
till all thoughts shriek

In your depths, my city,
the cool blue shout that smashed the window pane
and disappeared over the horizon, somewhere
may still be found.

And I may begin. Again.

© anindita sengupta

A Man Remembers

There she is, her fat bottom resting
on the faded chintz sofa in the corner,
her bemused and crinkled hands
counting each little loop on the needle,
her eyes scratchy with seventy years
of squinting through bright light and dark.
It is the hour of midnight dreams
Outside, the dogs start their howl.

I watch her, a little restless
It's time for my nighttime medicine
and she seems to have forgotten.
She's knitting an azure muffler
for our daughter with the impatient eyes,
confident that she will love it.
I fear for her, for her childlike trust.

She used to be lovely.
Standing near the window on a chilly night,
brushing stray strands off her face,
fingers smooth and long
an artist's fingers, or a writer's,
her hands lingering
a little longer than necessary
because she knew I was watching.

© anindita sengupta

The Colour of Truth

It was a sunny day, the roses
At my window bloomed a fierce red.
I sat still and quiet on the bed
Pondering all that time disposes.
On all the lies that truth imposes
Its blood red print till they're dead
I stared at the roses with mounting dread
and rage at all that trust supposes.

Your beloved face,your penchant for blue,
Your acid words and the routes they steered
So much there is to leave behind --
Your laughing swoop, my love of you.
My cry echoed in the street, I feared
Actually, it resounded in my mind.

© anindita sengupta