Minakhi Misra

  • Books
  • Poems
  • Stories
  • Opinions
  • Hindi
  • Archives
  • Library
  • Today

    A day I am so whole and glazed.
    Another, fissured head to tail.
    It all depends on how Today
    Decides to roll the cowrie shell.

    July 31, 2021
    Poems
  • Soup

    Why so self-obsessed?
    So dramatically self-absorbed?
    They got their own shit.
    They don’t need mine.
    Write to bring joy? Laughter?
    Enough do that. I’m not them.
    Positioning, are we?
    Corner of some neural field?
    A dot on crossing axes?
    Where’s the craft in this?
    Deliberate practice, remember?
    Writing, not motions?
    Confusions?
    Ahh. Experimental? Hehe.
    That’s how we pass this off?
    Nice nice. I likeses.
    You didn’t gets it – we’ll says.
    Breaking the habitses.
    Yes, yes.
    And who knows?
    Someone squinting
    May manage meaning
    Out of osmotic obsession
    Or obvious observation
    Or…yes, yes. Very clever.
    Absurd the intellectual.
    Too many crooks soup the spoils.

    July 30, 2021
    Poems
  • Reading poetry

    Reading human nature
    In human language
    Is an exercise in humanity
    That I exercise alone
    In solitary separation
    From human neighbours
    And wonder why I don’t get it.

    Reading Poe’s poems
    And Shakespeare’s sonnets
    And Whitman’s verse
    And Dickinson’s dreams
    And Plath and Hughes
    And Yeats and Keats
    And Frost and Faulkner
    And Angelou and Glück
    And Baldwin and the Beat
    And …
    (God, they’re too many!
    And I haven’t even shifted tongues:
    Hindi, Urdu, and Odia)

    Anyway…
    (My life is a series of anyways)

    Reading these greats
    I know I know nothing but:
    They have already read me,
    The whole of me,
    Far far better
    And deeper
    And clearer
    Than I can ever read them.

    Read them I must, though:
    To know myself better;
    To understand others deeper;
    To see things clearer;
    And to have a difficult pleasure.

    But most importantly,
    Most critically,
    I have to have to know
    Who I’m up against.

    I read poems now
    Not with the wonder
    Of the starry-eyed boy,
    But the combative,
    Careful, discerning eye
    Of a self-styled general
    Studying formations,
    And weaponry, and tactics,
    And vulnerabilities
    Of fallible giants.

    No, I don’t care about fame.
    (As a poet. Rest is fair game.)
    I don’t want to join them
    In their Olympian pantheon.
    Who am I kidding anyway?
    Beyond the few friends
    Who tolerate my blabbering,
    Who cares what I write?
    Have I given them a reason to?
    Have I been of service?
    No, I write selfishly
    Knowing there is no self.
    No, I study the greats,
    The giants, the Olympians
    To know how much work remains;
    To learn how much I have to learn;
    To go through writing, not motions;
    To come intentionally to the page;
    And once in a while, on those days,
    To live with myself.

    July 29, 2021
    Poems
  • Different

    Dear ______,

    You write differently now:
    Lines are tighter;
    Composition, leaner;
    Articulation, sharper;
    Optimism, cautious;
    Scepticism, healthy;
    Intimacy, measured;
    Confidence, quiet;
    And a spattering of
    Self-awareness.

    What has remained:
    Vulnerability, courageous;
    And warmth, honest.
    I wouldn’t have recognised you
    Any other way.

    I do miss, however,
    Your beautifully meandering phrases,
    That occasional stunning metaphor
    You used to employ almost innocently,
    Just in passing,
    As if it were nothing more than
    A silly observation of a dreamy child.

    It becomes you. This new style.
    So considered, so deliberate.
    Precise.
    The arresting immediacy of finger-snaps
    More than the comforting captivation
    Of distracted finger-drumming
    On a coffee table.
    I wonder if it is this
    That precludes the satin serendipity
    I so used to look forward to.

    Keep writing, though.
    Stay in touch.

    Always your reader,
    _________.

    July 28, 2021
    Poems
  • The Problem

    Let’s not kid ourselves.
    The problem isn’t that
    I don’t write enough
    Good poems.
    The problem is
    I don’t write enough
    Bad ones.

    I throw away so many
    Sprouting seeds,
    Hatching chicks.
    So many that don’t look
    How I want them to look.
    As if ‘lyricist’ is,
    Like other -ists,
    Someone who discriminates
    On the basis of lyric,
    And ‘artist’ is
    Someone who discriminates
    On the basis of art.

    Let’s not kid ourselves.
    The problem is I am
    Someone who discriminates.
    The problem is
    I don’t write enough.

    July 27, 2021
    Poems
  • Space

    The thing I struggle with the most
    As poet practising the craft
    Is pruning branches off the point
    And grafting space into the draft.

    I bargain with myself about
    The clues to cut, the keys to keep,
    The room to leave the reader with,
    So they can make with me the leap.

    To not react to everything,
    To not relate it all in flow,
    To pick the point to write about,
    A thicker skin I need to grow:

    A patina of perspective
    Protecting the peculiar
    Against the acid raining from
    The frequent and familiar.

    July 26, 2021
    Poems
  • Where have I seen him?

    I know I know him from before:
    I can’t forget his empty cheeks,
    His naked chin, his bearded ears,
    And how familiar he reeks.

    And yet I cannot place his face.
    Not with the tattered cloth he wears.
    Something made me notice how
    He kept his posture down the stairs.

    I ask my brother if he knows.
    His eyebrows meet, but mute he stays.
    I ask my mother if she knows.
    Her eyebrows jump, she showers praise.

    For forty years he has been here,
    He daily scrubs the temple floor.
    I marvel at the Bhakti of
    The richest man in Berhampur.

    July 25, 2021
    Poems
  • Heart

    I make some friends at hospitals.
    I made another friend of five.
    He held in hand the Mighty Hulk.
    He made it jump. He made it dive.

    He growled its lines, came hard with
    ‘Smaaaash’.
    And sent a shockwave with his breath.
    To death he sent some villains, then,
    Forgetting he was facing death.

    His surgery had not gone well.
    A hole in heart they could not heal.
    How irony had struck this boy:
    So whole of heart, so full of zeal.

    A doctor better, costing more
    Will come to see inside his heart.
    I pray she somehow plugs this hole.
    I pray my friend keeps scripting art.

    July 24, 2021
    Poems
  • Hope

    Hope, you better stay back awhile.
    Don’t you maroon us to our doom.
    See, Grief is standing at the door,
    Waiting for you to leave the room.

    You and I don’t see eye to eye,
    I don’t keep stock by you these days,
    But now isn’t about our scores
    We’ll settle those in other ways.

    I need to be present with him.
    No time for me to figure out,
    How to deal with what may pass.
    No time for us to fool about.

    Stay with Mother when I step out.
    I know she’s steady and she’s strong.
    But in a moment when she’s not,
    She’ll need your gentle push ‘fore long.

    And, when he’s up for minutes few,
    When he looks for a friendly face,
    He may not recognise me then,
    So you must sit there in my place.

    July 23, 2021
    Poems
  • Crape Jasmine

    Writing is tough at hospitals,
    Sitting in a sea of sitters,
    Worried some, reluctant others,
    Jittering with their own jitters.

    I miss my bitter coffee black
    Shimmering against china white,
    As I drink from this paper cup
    An excuse of a ‘coffee lite.’

    The lobby is too crowded now.
    No hope of social distancing.
    I walk out to the parking lot
    Dreading the virus menacing.

    I stand under a barren tree
    No shade, no men, no fear of flu.
    Yellow leaves are leaving behind
    A crape jasmine budding anew.

    The bud, in its solitude,
    Mirrored my loneliness, it sees.
    And hears the only thing I’m saying:
    “Don’t leave me, now.
    Don’t leave me, please.”

    July 22, 2021
    Poems
1 2 3 4
Next Page

Thank You.

Readers like you help me make my best art every day. The simplest way to support my work is to buy my books, or make a donation.

Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Return & Refund Policy | WordPress | Contact

  • Follow Following
    • Minakhi Misra
    • Join 34 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Minakhi Misra
    • Edit Site
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar