Is there consensus in community
To look upon the easiness of rhyme
With those indulgent, patronizing eyes?
As if…as if…the pleasures of the damned
Are damned as guilty pleasures, damned as guilt,
And damned as damsels’ distressed liveries.
As if…as if…the tools of titans dead
Deserve the pantheon of literature
Exclusively. Excuse-moi, rhyme!
Pentameter! I wrote in it, you see?
And not a hint of rhyme to pollute it.
I dashed my diamond. Are you satisfied?
A crutch! A crutch it has become.
A crutch I must discard at once.
A crutch that holds my words upright,
Though none of them are fit to stand
Upon their own iambic feet.
A factory site it has become:
Assembly line of poetry,
Producing lines of poetry
In cycle time of seconds few
At cheapest cost and quality.
At once, at once, arrest this flow.
This flow will make me write a lot.
A lot of shallow nothingness
In garb of musicality,
Eroding all the work so far,
The work in which I struggled much.
My masochistic vanity
I must protect. At once! At once!
They:
Irrational! Insensible!
So fully irresponsible!
You really want to waste your days
In writing, for which no one pays?
You have the schooling, brains, and skills
Enough to pay a hamlet’s bills.
And yet you squander all your time
In drafting up a silly rhyme.
You were the envy of the town,
And soon you will be but a clown.
As all you have is family name,
You will be shortly off the game
And off the board – a captured pawn!
Your every single friend has gone
Ahead of you, ahead in life.
You will not even get a wife.
Renounce this crazy habit now.
Become again the money cow.
Me:
I have been writing fewer lines
Compared to what I truly can,
And thus have wasted all the time
Enrolled in apprehensions that
I cannot write beyond a bar.
And yet, if anything, I see
I write a good amount of verse
If, on a bet, I sit and think
And think on paper, not in mind.
I have a grip on pen and page.
I have a grip on form and style.
And when I get a grip on me
I can produce a decent batch
Of poems, stories, two-in-ones.
So, every day I will permit
Myself to sit and scribble on
For longer than it seems alright
To linger on the writing desk.
Some days, I find my Muse’s song
A little too unsavoury,
And so I find myself in hunt
Of ideas more suitable.
I walk up to the kitchen nook,
Surround myself with poem books,
And peel a book at any page,
Another at another page,
Another, yet another page,
And so on till I open all,
And take the words in as they fall,
And spin them in my blender brain
Until a novel metaphor
Arises from their pulped remains.
I taste it with the confidence
Of Cheetahs chewing bovine cud
To get insights into the minds
Of unsuspecting customers.
I like the sweetened aftertaste
And so conclude it must be good
Enough to pass for daily bread,
While hoping that, some day instead,
A better Muse will bring my food.
He was the first to smell the smokiness
Arriving palanquined on summer Loo.
He was the first to see the wood and straw:
As wet as femur bones in dusty trunks.
He was the first to call the one-o-one.
The trucks were reprioritised away.
He was the first to make the news, “Infer-
-no! Suspected amputee on the run.”
Gather mickles,
Get a muckle.
Gather nickels,
Get a knuckle.
Gather fickles,
Get a fuckall.
It’s not as simple as it looks.
The bad are simply verses yet
To make their way to better worth.
The bad are never meant as bad.
Upon the writing, they are filled
With ambition that’s just as grand,
And optimism just as high,
As any poem labeled good.
They come in from the very place
That better ones do come in from.
It may, of course, be just the case
Of coming out on different days.
If I write a throwaway line
Do I have to throw it away?
Or can I use it in a text
And hope no one notices?
Or do I write it stricken-through
And show how I could think of lines
But still have my judgment about
To let you know it wasn’t the one?
If I write a throwaway poem
Do I have to throw it away?
Or can I slip it gently in
Between a good and a very good one
And pretend I was simply setting the stage?
If I write a throwaway …
Oh alright. I’ll throw it away.
There. I threw it into the … oh my!
If I could write as fast as thought,
I may capture the beat of Time
And so produce some poetry
That’s better than the ones produced
By thoughtful poets, live and dead,
Who labour over every word
And every mark of punctuation
And every single break of line
And every single turn and jamb
And every single this and that
To match the innate frequency
Of echoes from the boundless Space.
I haven’t got the wish or ink
To paint the town in red and run.
Instead, the milder pastel pink
Is what I prefer for my fun.
I like my mornings coffee brown,
And evenings acrylic blue.
And so the colour of the town
Has got to be a lighter hue.
I like the rose’s popping head;
Hibiscus, proud in portrait view.
And hence, the town cannot be red
For them to stand out as they do.
I like my fellow Indian man
Who sees a corner wanting use.
A reddish town will drown his plan
To spray his chewed up betel juice.
I like my fellow Indian bride
Who dresses up to catch the eye.
A reddish town will tend to hide
Her saree worth the price of sky.
So, now you know my reasons why
I cannot paint the town in red.
So, let me get this ink to dry
And let you pink the town instead.
Minakhi Misra 