Minakhi Misra

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  • Ownership

    The questions come and haunt me now.
    The questions I’ve been pffting off.

    I know the answers well and through.
    I know they aren’t what I want.

    Again I’m striding want and need.
    Again I’m split on wanton streams.

    The boats have different helmsmen now.
    The boats no longer do my bid.

    Or so I say to cut me slack.
    Or so I say to own it not.

    January 31, 2022
    Poems
  • The Writing on the Wall

    My mornings have been starting late.
    So late the curfew’s back in state
    Around the time I brush my teeth
    And fail to touch my yoga feet.

    The tick-tocks of the hanging clocks
    Remind me of the banging knocks
    Of daily debts that wait for me
    And care not for my penury.

    I see the number on the wall,
    The one I always mean to call,
    The one that’s still a sticky note
    The therapist’s assistant wrote.

    I sigh again and leave it there.
    Perhaps tomorrow I will share.
    Today I have a lot to do.
    A lot to do? Yeah, lot to do.

    January 30, 2022
    Poems
  • Blend of Reality

    The Truth is often late to brew.
    But Fact is instant coffee shot.

    You choose to scalden, in your haste,
    Your tongue with instant bitter taste.

    So when the sips of Truth arrive
    You splutter, cough, and call it hot.

    January 29, 2022
    Poems
  • Economics of Welfare Rice

    With card in hand, she joins the queue,
    Which serpentines around a tree,
    To get her monthly kilos of
    Unpolished rice at one rupee.

    With bag in hand, she walks away
    To where the grocer waits for her
    And halves the bag on to his scales
    To pocket thirteen rupees per.

    With scales in hand, the grocer goes
    To where the miller waits for him
    And bargains down the two rupees
    The miller tries to skim off him.

    With cash in hand, the miller goes
    And polishes the brownish rice
    Into a whitish grain of sorts,
    Which can be sold at fifty price.

    With grain in hand, the miller goes
    To where they do the packaging.
    They seal his grain in branded bags,
    Which sport the portrait of a king.

    With kings in hand, the packager
    Proceeds to where the grocer waits,
    And, over cups of milky tea,
    Dictates the share of babu seths.

    With hand in hand, the grocer smiles,
    Servility arching his back.
    From suckers of the middle-class,
    He profits twenty-five a pack.

    January 28, 2022
    Poems
  • Self-restraint

    I turned a morning nice and calm
    Into a morning full of stress,
    Because someone I trust and love
    Accused me of a pettiness.

    I wonder why I’m worked up, when
    Secure I am in innocence,
    And why my fists are clenched to punch
    A crack through their distorted lens.

    And where is meditation’s fruit –
    So many hours in Silence spent
    To learn to keep my mind in check
    For times it fills with ill intent?

    And while I sit and scribble lines,
    I feel it bubbling up again:
    The urge to scratch and tear and crush
    These verses so pedestrian.

    I want to take this crumpled page
    And chew it into tasteless yuck
    And spit it out on to their face,
    Iambically, “What the f…??!!”

    January 27, 2022
    Poems
  • A Storm is Brewing

    A storm is brewing in the sea.
    And power’s gone for hours now.
    I wait, I wait, I wait to see
    The showers crush the flowers’ brow.

    What right they have to pretty be?
    So pretty fresh, so pretty red?
    The rest of us in us we see
    The ugliness of pretty dead.

    A storm is brewing in my eyes,
    So wet and salty, thanks to sweat.
    My power’s gone for hours now.
    I feel so helplessly upset.

    January 26, 2022
    Poems
  • Finding Father

    I find him scribbled here and there
    On margins of important thoughts
    In books on western ways of life,
    Attempting to untie some knots
    Inside his head about himself,
    About his choices and their fruits,
    In words that overcompensate
    With long, obscure Germanic roots,
    Inadequacies plaguing him
    And bringing down his confidence
    To do the things he knows he can,
    But finds himself upon a fence.
    You switch his lettering with mine,
    You’ll find me in his every line.

    January 25, 2022
    Poems
  • Finger burned on Boilerplates

    I stepped into the giddiness,
    An infant drawn to fairy lights,
    So mystified by twinkling eyes
    That stirred me into clinking ice
    And melted down my rigidness.

    I let it lift me, slowly first,
    A surfing moon on sunset waves,
    Until it wasn’t slow at all,
    My heightened senses now aware
    Of gravity in recurrence.

    Like finding on a Ferris wheel
    A figment of forgotten fear
    Of churning guts and whirling heads,
    A wanting of the praying kind
    To slow it down. No, stop it all.

    I stood her up again today.

    January 24, 2022
    Poems
  • What it takes

    Some days it takes Herculean strength,
    Some days a willingness to wait,
    Some days a medication sweet,
    Some days a yogic crow-like gait.

    But mostly it’s a matter of
    An extra hour of sleeping in
    And half a spoon of coffee more,
    To have a one-shot morning dump.

    January 23, 2022
    Poems
  • The Symbol of Life

    If you look close enough
    The Christian Cross nails it.
    It sums up Life succinctly,
    Subtracting all the noise.
    A + and a – concatenated,
    Like so: +–, but without the space,
    To signify that you can’t separate
    The plusses from the minuses,
    The ups from the downs,
    The gains from the losses,
    The joys from the sorrows.
    Because they come together.
    Always together.
    Inseparably together.

    January 22, 2022
    Poems
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