Minakhi Misra

Is nothing here so fertile
To match unburdened turmoils
Of idle workers’ jealousies,
Whose farmvillesque imaginings
Can sling and fling them on the wings
Of angry birds who crush candies?

Is nothing here so sterile
To match encumbered salty toils
Of sweaty workers’ hopefulness,
Whose dreams, as freshly cottoned fields
Receiving monsoon’s early yields,
Are drowning in a muddy mess?

This man, he wrote which we by rote
Recite in hopes to match his pen.
Emboldened by his poetry,
Assuming ambiguity,
We play the cast of characters
Defining our humanity.

This man, he did invent the man
Upon a Globe – as Nature, Earth –
In verses, with researches deep
Into the one or two accounts
Historians had penciled down.
He breathed into the paper hearts
The spirit and the sentiment
Which, to the glass of seeing eyes,
Supplied the misty warmth on which
The fingers of his fantasy
Described the circularity
Of things that are, but will not be.

This man, he sowed the seeds of time,
Against the knowledge and the art
To know which grain will grow, which not,
And reaped the world in afterlife.
His good was not interred with bones.
Not once intrepid lines of his
Did ask to be or not to be.
They are, they are, they are, they are
So good that thinking makes it so
Today and every next today.

I know he’s Ogden’s Muse’s Friend,
Who rhymes to put an end to end.
He’s always boiling all day long
Fomenting yet another song
Which Ogden’s Muse regards and tears,
And legs him out without his fares.
So, when he pleads upstairs for cash,
He sees the teeth of Ogden gnash.
He fast retreats into his lair
To fall about his falling hair
In rising cones on carpetry,
Which teach him laws of geometry.
He squints at scraps of paper torn
Until he sees the verse reborn:
With spellings at the ends of lines
Distorted like two valentines
Who change themselves to rhyme themselves
Though truly they are cryim’ themselves.
He smells his uppertunity
And crosses uppatrinity.
He pulls a paper, puts to use,
And runs again to Ogden’s Muse
Who sees his new integligence,
Forgives his former negligence,
And promptly pays him with a check.
He takes it with a whattheheck.
As zeroes, commas seem too few,
He gurgles up an interview
With Ogden and his mandible
Which looks so outofhandible,
He hesitates to make his plea
And head-n-tails uneasily.
He starts to question existence
And grateful for his legsistence,
He waterfalls into his lair
And heightens up his cones of hair.
He turns the check and writes some verse
But tears it with a beeping curse.
He plants the scraps inside the leaves
Of Pelham Grenville’s _Write Ho, Jeeves!_.
He woosters at his rummy plight
And dreams that money sprouts at night.
The dream becomes a wake up splash:
He sees the teeth of Ogden gnash.

I read too many books.
So, life isn’t as interesting.

Or maybe it is. And I’m not.
Interesting or interested.

I can deal with languages.
But not with conversations.

I seek drama on the page.
And bring it to relationships.

I don’t buy gifts.
I don’t give surprises.

I don’t even remember dates.
So, I don’t forget them either.

I cook enough to survive
But not enough to serve.

I walk through most chores
But not run many errands.

I play chess, sitting alone by myself.
I meditate, sitting alone by myself.

I bite nails. I nail scabs. I sweat a lot.
I don’t buy clothes or accessories.

I don’t stream TV. I don’t go to movies.
I don’t play videos on my Chinese phone.

I don’t order in. I don’t dinner out.
I don’t drink drinks. I don’t eat meat.

I don’t like entertaining guests.
I don’t like entering as guests.

I don’t treat myself so well.
I don’t treat loved ones so well.

I don’t earn anything useful.
I don’t learn anything useful.

I look at the sky and murmur.
I talk to stars and clouds and rain.

I look at the mirror and sigh.
I talk to my self, my muse, my voices.

I write.

Before the inky cat could tell,
We got on her a jingling bell,
So, now at all if she would dare
And saunter in without a care
To steal a lick of creamy milk,
We’ll catch her by her scruffy silk
And take her to the garden grass
To show the bowl of burnished brass
In which we’ll leave her dairy drink,
Beside a plate of plastic pink
In which we’ll leave her meaty treats,
Which no one in the fam’ly eats.

A weariness infects my world.

Contagion, your art is viral now.
It moves so many well beyond,
Beyond their dreams and best laid schemes.
Yet, moves it not my weariness.

A weariness infects my veins.

My blood is still C-negative.
A sea of trouble parts to show
A reddened arterial road
Away from hearty destiny.

A weariness infects my breath.

My oxygen is high enough
To think it still imparts me health.
Combustible it is as rage.
As obstinate, as impotent.

A weariness infects my thoughts.

My tongue excites no mercury
Beyond the normal level marked.
My speech is, but, mercurial.
It makes a bond to break a bond.

A weariness infects my calm.

My nails are chewed up cuticles
Which spew anxieties in a spit.
I file the ragged sharpnesses
Before I scratch my other itch.

A weariness in…fuck my life!

I haven’t got maturity
Enough to bear with stoic strength.
A poet I am meant to be:
Condemning, cursing much at length.

I run no venture, nor no trust,
Nor am I employed. I must
Admit I only volunteer
To spread a little fun and cheer
At places for the elderly,
And help them get some clarity
On how to raise their capital,
And leave them better capable
To manage their accounts and books.
At times, I volunteer with cooks
Who daily whip up filling treats
For children on the city streets.

I’ve traveled throughout India
By freelancing for media
In every UT, every state,
Through times of love and tides of hate.
I’ve lived with many families,
To listen to their tragedies,
Immersing in their daily lives
To see how India survives.

I read, I write, I quiz, I learn.
Yet there is more for which I yearn.
I’m walking with an infant gait
Upon this path, I dedicate
The future chapters of my tale:
To serve the old and young at scale.

His fingers walked across the globe
Through Delhi, Tokyo, Vancouver:
The road not taken in the sky,
When two diverging careers
Had made him choose his family.

He was the age I will be soon.
And on my road, I see a sign:
Two arrows splitting up ahead.
The stakes are same. The choices same.
Decision likely to be same.

Will I in forty calendars
Be walking on augmented globes?

Dear W,

I dub you a pundit of puns.
Your pungent writing packs a punch
And punctuates my punishing role
That punctures out my very sole.
With stakes so high, I have no beef
With well-done cuts from masterchief.
It’s rare now, but they’d leave me raw
When I couldn’t follow Murphy’s Law.
Your play on words then works on me
As if it is origami
With manifold advantages:
1. A compass for my lost wages
To circle round and find my purse;
2. A ghazal couplet so di-verse;
3. A gentle cup of charity
For one who has no proper tea;
4. Exciting whys of algebra,
Algorithms, et cetera.
My monkey mind needs husbandry,
Punctilious buffoonery,
So thanks for how your punctual jokes
Arrest me like a painter’s strokes.

The quieter I am through the day
The more I save for Slumber’s Forge,
Where all the things I have to say
Are cast in verse from Meter’s Gorge.

There’s little that I need to do
Except behold a fantasy:
Imagination’s set to brew
Upon the Flames of Poesy.

My words are dipped, tempered in full,
And hammered true by metaphors
That make the meanings pliable
According to the metered verse.

So all I have to work on then
Is test the balance of the weight
And with the mallet of my pen,
To gently tap and set it straight.

The days I spend in talking, though,
Become my nights of penury.
And Slumber’s Forge has naught to show
Upon my morning inquiry.