He gently filled the tub with milk
And brought the injured puppy close
To let it drink, to let it heal.
The puppy twitched its velvet nose.
He gently took it by the scruff
And plunged its head into the milk
To help it drink, to help it heal.
The puppy twitched its body silk.
He gently held its legs and tail
And smashed its head into the stone
To make it drink, to make it heal.
The puppy twitched its final moan.
Be warned: this is a toilet poem.
And a men’s public toilet at that.
Meaning, you should turn back now
Before you cross the next line,
For that’s when it will stink worse
Than that unflushed commode
With betel-juiced red velvet cakes
And open-mouthed tobacco sachets.
I didn’t have to go there, you say?
Holding it in wasn’t an option either.
I don’t like watering highway plants.
When I can find such a place, I generally
Prefer pointing pressurised parabolas
Playfully past pink perforated plastic
Mats in colgate-white urinal bowls
That wet themselves after the hosing
And get wiped clean by invisible men
In indigo uniforms and yellow masks.
Better, if I can juggle naphthalene balls.
Today was just not one of those days.
Today I could go anywhere. Desperate!
Why don’t I have this determined urgency
For other life-threatening situations?
Like relationships about to burst out.
I wasn’t angry at the toilet for the shit
I had to put up with for a moment’s peace.
I got to the point, direct and grateful.
Cursing would have only prolonged agony.
Like it always does with the people
Who aren’t shitty on their own generally
But are having a bad day, stuck with
Someone else’s unfinished business.
They don’t need me piling on them more.
The water tap inside just pffted at me.
But a faucet outside was forthcoming.
I filled a pail, upturned it on the bowl
And repeated thrice for good measure.
It still stank. I still retched. Still am.
But at least it took a load off the bowl.
You’re welcome, next guy!
It’s not that I’m resisting poetry.
I’m just replete with okayish ideas
That I don’t really want to write about.
You know how exams slacken the trip-wire
With relatively easy multiple-choicers
Where the last option is a revelation:
That popular “None of the Above”?
It’s such a timely lifebuoy, right?
That it’s reasonable to tick that option,
To float along to the next question,
Without any real clue about how to
Snorkel down to the right answer?
Well, you can’t respectably do that
In a poem, you know. You can’t, right?
I wonder how with all these years
Of cat-landing my way through exams
And urgent-important work meetings,
I haven’t yet found a workaround for poems.
I should be able to reliably get away, say,
By airdropping a metaphor every fourth line
That readers recognise when I nudge them to,
Making them retrace the poem to count lines.
I should be able to write a recreational poem
Where I remix a reusable prefix repeatedly.
It shouldn’t be too reprehensible to suggest
That once in a while, when the rest of the day
Requires full attention to my responsibilities,
Resuscitating Creativity with a Snow White kiss
Should take priority over reverberating poetry
That resonates with the reader’s sensibilities.
I’m not recusing myself of my writerly duties.
I’m just respiring between the lines today.
My Morning Muse adores her mousse
Like Doctor Seuss adored his shoes.
She feeds the Cat out of its Hat,
As Horton hears his happy Whos.
My Morning Muse adores her Moos
Like Shaggy dudes adore the Doos.
As Scrappy stacks the Scooby Snacks,
She rounds the milkers on the loose.
My Morning Muse adores her moose
Like Bullwinkle adores the Blues.
As Rocky tries to beat the spies,
She gently tells me, “Hit the snooze.”
She leads a vowelous insurgency
Against the consonantine hegemony
Of rhyme schemes in English poetry.
Her miniature poems are carefully built
Sound by minimal sound
Stripped down to skeletal frames,
For metered maps of meaning
Charted by drilled marching feet
Of throat, tongue, palate, teeth, and lips
Do not spark that spontaneous joy.
Her rhymes often turn inwards,
Following an internal locus of control.
If someone fails to appreciate them,
They don’t seek that person’s validation.
Nor do they blame the person for failure.
They simply emerge again and again
With every successive intentional reading,
Like meditating monks sitting statue-still
But arising anew with every silent breath.
Have you meditated on a meditator?
That is how you read Kay Ryan.
The paper’s lounging moisturized
By memories my eyes have shed,
And every gouging prick of pen
Impels it bleed into the bed
Of sheets awaiting underneath
To rise, receive my pouring fears,
And store me blunted in a sheath,
Until the glint of glee appears.
I work with words, but cannot find
The right one at the right time.
My every poorly chosen phrase
Then tips a loaded scale that weighs
My choice against my choices past,
And adds a guilt that’s made to last.
1.
Sequel movies are about pouring
Good money till it’s bad, and then some.
Sequel poetry is bad from the beginning.
2.
Mumbai rooms are small
By design. No one has time
For entertaining elephants.
3.
When I see a painting,
I see a person a-painting.
Verb, process, input. Art.
4.
When you look for a parent
In a partner, you find one
Letter does a real number on you.
5.
The Marshmallow Test
Melts down every single time
You do it with ice cream.
1.
If a tree in a forest is standing tall,
But everyone swears they heard it fall,
Imagine the noise its silence makes.
2.
The day a monkey falls from a tree,
The others swear it is slippery.
It’s good to know the truth of things.
3.
A million matches a tree can churn.
A million trees a match can burn.
We light the way to our own demise.
4.
The birds flock to the tree with fruit
And die by stones the children shoot.
How ripe the blush of so much attention!
5.
The branches in a forest fight.
The roots instead are hugging tight.
A little privacy makes a lot of love.
Paintings like people and poems
Reveal themselves the longer you stare
What is merely aesthetic in appearance
Or thoroughly alarming in abstraction
Dissolves into a trickle of imperfections
Presenting themselves in their temple clothes
Emerging from behind the curtains of shame
After much coaxing from the intent eyes
Of an embarrassed parent trying their best
To make their little creations behave
Each imperfection is a deliberate decision
A conscious choice of what to reveal
And what to leave out of the conversation
Silence speaks loudest like the morning motor
Of a water pump that does the heavy lifting
Which everyone chooses to ignore as noise
Silence is the language a painting speaks
Only fools hear a mere thousand words
Entire novels emerge with Time
As the painting continues to arise anew
With every passing pensive moment
Ask anyone who lives with books and art
Ask anyone who lives with Time
Painting imperfections on their Praying Hands
Minakhi Misra 