"In tumult" [boomerang poem]

The days when I may wander in the evening are returning
I have perhaps some while yet to tarry on the earth
they say there's wondrous order in the play of death & birth
some claim the world is fashioned as a school for lovely learning
but reason's insufficient to produce the rhyme of mirth
for reasons under reasons hide   like waves whose restive churning
describes a heart in tumult   such a heart dwells in my girth
the days when I may wander in the evening are returning

Sin-city.

AD.(double click on pic for higher reso)


She slithers
through the night
and hides
the grim grime
as the city glitters
and bears
a false smile
soul-dead inside;

A baby wails
behind locked doors
its business as usual
as the Limos roll;
Her mother's heart
trips, the tight vice
constricts;

'Its money
babe'!
He snorts at her.
'Get in the car,
do some bz'ness,
just part your legs
then you can go,
babe!'

And
the baby wails
behind
locked doors.

Tenebrae - Songs of Darkness

Consumed by Fire

*Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina.

Every word an eternal fire
And yet you think I have forgotten
All dewdrops that fell from your lips long ago –
Oh but I merely long
For litanies, to alchemize these to icicles,
That I may burn my memories in this wilderness
With your light.

The Death of Fire

Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, mine acquaintance is darkness.

How desolate this place is
Yet no more than the space I left behind,
The fires lit by others I kill blaze by blaze -
Oh but I merely wish
Forgetfulness, to throw your face in shadows,
That I may quench all hopes of resurrection of lust and longing
In your light.


Broken Music

Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? Shall the dead arise and praise thee?

The canticle melts into the darkness
And the notes fall like tears from the night sky,
Lonely, gasping, torn asunder from the word –
Oh but I merely desire
The death of voices, to silence expression,
That I may hide behind veils, stone walls, and my eyes
Without your light.

Death

I have come into deep waters and the torrent washes over me.

The words I longed to tell you breathe their end
They drown in the tears you held in your eyes when I left,
They flit in the space that I imagined was you –
Oh but I will delude you no longer
There will never be a turning back, a return to you,
That I don’t repeat this loss, this dying of music
In the murder of our light.

*O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

Woman

Vermillion
is the colour
of devotion.

Cover your head
This thin translucence
will protect you

Laugh softly,
and softly walk
like gentle rain

Pull a smile
across the thin lines
of your face

Wear modest pastels
Never scream,
my grandmother said

mother, barely twelve
with scuffed knees
and trees to climb still
laughed and jounced out
to adopt stray dogs

Forty years gone

Time sprints like
running water
or quicksilver
and disperses what it must

But some things remain.

Don't wear shorts, look down
slouch so your breasts
don't really show
tie your hair back
keep the boys calm

cross your legs -
Be cheerful always
please don't scream

I with scuffed knees at twelve,
dungarees at eighteen
and lovers lost,
reclaimed, discarded
like driftwood
by twenty one

could never listen
with exactitude

I wear red
My eyes are dark
Sometimes, I scream.

remains

For R.D.

what remains free:
stories you wove in the cold breeze
as we sped down congested roads, a patchwork
strung together by laughter, commas and silence.

what stands firm:
stone churches, white churches, chapels
and flowers wired to pews and altars, as broken thoughts flew
and formed wordless prayers for strength.

what remains trapped:
A face in candlelight,
A touch that broke through my dark dream,
tears that fell on the road i wished i'd picked up
but feared i had no right to,
unspoken words
that translated into refrains of songs,
fear,
time.

and what do i do now?
sever etched pathways,
run through the desert, for the arrows
are beyond me, within me,
and wait for Orion
to open his portal and let loose
the angel of death?

For nothing remains...

MIDNIGHT COLLOQUY

Long after the others have dined
you pad in on pussy feet.
Night’s your time, and your meat
the worried carcass of my mind.

***

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?)