1.
The three-year-old was not convinced.
For all his mountain-climbing mud,
He got no chance of plucking stars
To sparkle up his goodnight milk.
2.
For thirty years, he sat on hills
So Milky Way adopts him once.
But all it ever did instead
Was orphan him of conviction.
3.
It took his words three hundred years
To rise as cream in people’s minds,
Convinced, at last, to hear their breaths
That pluck at constellation chords.
A reader of my poetry
Who also watches poetry
On YouTube, Facebook, Instagram,
Reported on a WhatsApp call
That poetry on page is dead.
That poetry is poetry
If performed as poetry
By singers, actors, rappers, prudes,
Or simply boring poets too.
“If writ for ears the poem is,
Why leave it as a paper piece?”
Because it’s written with the ear,
But for the mind to find the time
To grind through lines and rhymes that try
To pound the sounds of all around
Into the silence of the Self.
A poem is a poem live
If all it ever does is lie
Upon a tongue, be old or young,
For just a moment’s inwardness,
Arousing an inflection in
Intuition’s inventory.
The page is good enough for that.
Dissevering a cucumber
I envied how each slice retained
Identity as “cucumber”.
Now, there’s a litmus test for craft.
You slice your poem into lines,
And thumb a line between two slides,
And hold it up to cloudy light,
And squint to look for “poetry”.
If all you see is whitened verse
In search of fractal fulfillment,
Compost the line inside your mind
And hope a vine is recomposed.
Until then salt your severed whines
And grit your teeth on cucumber.
Her Cinderella crystal shoe
Bombarded on my Iron Mask
With shattering ferocity
Of Simba roars in Tiger Caves.
Of course, her crystal shoe was strong:
She’d bargained off her Ariel hair
And mermaid fins for thousand pricks
Of steely blades on every step.
I swept my Humpty Dumpty mask,
And picked the shoe to lick it clean.
Of course, it cut my Sparrow Tongue:
It’s made of Diamonds in the Rough.
She pulled me by my Beastly mane
And blew me her al bacio,
Accepting everything about
My Ratatouille existence.
She wrapped her Riding Hood on me
And called her band of Seven Dwarves
To play the Pied Piper tune
And danced with me forever aft.
Some dreams begin on coloured sheets
Arrayed triangularly on
An ancient clothesline hardly used
Except on Ganapati days.
A pinch-out zoom reveals on them
The oily fingerprints of past –
Some tinier than memory
Of when the ladoos seemed so big.
Another pinch-out zoom reveals
A grain or two of guilty glee
On faces of two hasty boys
Who wiped their chuda ghasa hands.
Some three-four pinch-in zoom-outs show
The chairs arranged as temple frames,
The wardrobe hanger temple arch,
And cotton saree walls and roof.
A pinch-out zoom into it all
Reveals a china clay Ganesh,
Whose gangashiuli garland hides
The modak belly we all love.
A swipe to left reveals the bowl
Of disappearing boondi balls,
Correctly placed within the reach
Of that prosthetic probosis.
A swipe to right reveals the books
Which parents want the kids to read
With jasmine petals cringing at
The boring subjects underneath.
Somewhere beyond zoomable dreams
A father chants remembered words,
A mother hums forgotten tunes,
A grandma grumbles at them both.
Somewhere inside a beaten man,
A little boy is tugging hard
To keep the coloured clothesline taut
With flags of hope against the dark.
Economy of brevity
Erases opportunity.
Elaboration soon dilutes
Essentials into absolutes.
She had a falling out with me
The day I fell in love with her.
The fault, I say, was in our feet.
Our gaits were unfamiliar:
I was iambic, out of step
With her trochaic tendencies.
I climbed to slide and jump with joy.
She dove to soar and glide with ease.
She planned pentasyllabic fun
For my monosyllabic moods.
And when she needed space and breaks
I walked into prosaic woods.
It’s good we weren’t meant to be.
I’ve found who’s meter-made for me.
Enduring Worth needs Urgency.
But Urgency needs Patience, Poise.
Before the Cheetah sprints to hunt,
It scopes terrains and runs through ploys.
It welcomes Boredom, Tedium –
Essential allies in the hunt.
The dreary sharpening of claws
Prepares it for the final stunt.
Its mighty heart and massive lungs,
So inefficient, bothersome,
Are just the tools it needs to chase
Opportunities when they come.
It goes for days without a kill.
It doesn’t store its food as fats.
The hunger focuses its search,
Impels it to new habitats.
Our artists, scientists deep in work
Are cheetahs sharpening their claws,
Amassing bodies of research
Required for their mighty cause.
Their days are dreary, dull to watch.
They do not swim in ready cash.
But when their time arrives at last,
Their action makes the biggest splash.
I’ve seen the bodies of our dead,
But haven’t seen them as they die.
I’ve seen before-and-after states,
But never during, never live.
I wonder how they leave their lives.
I can’t forget a single time
I’ve seen a goat or chicken cut:
They always writhed in blood and slime.
I’ve seen the crabs in boiling pots.
They start to climb but lose their steam.
Their spirits rising, full of scent,
Disperse as unremembered dreams.
I’ve seen a rat under a bowl
Of crystal-clear plexiglass
Eat up its tail when desperate
To live its way through poison gas.
I’ve seen a bee without its sting.
I’ve seen a puppy’s highway crash.
I’ve seen a pigeon in a well.
But haven’t seen a human pass.
Is that why Death is so obscure?
A foggy concept in my mind?
A thing that comes to movie stars,
Dramatic front with gore behind?
Perhaps the doctors shouldn’t hide
The dying in their curtained spreads.
Perhaps they should record the deaths
As done by some on birthing beds.
Today my muse has taken leave.
She needs to get her second shot,
Innoculating her against
The viral temptations I’ve got.
She tells me distance, quarantine,
Are vital to my solitude –
The well from which I draw my ink –
I shush her with ingratitude.
She tells me I should mask my words,
To keep my germs from getting out,
Infecting those who’re close to me,
Who chose to be with me throughout.
And yet I whine, complain, protest.
I raise my fists and say I’m free.
“I’m free to do the things I want”
Forgetting I’m a nobody.
Forgetting no one owes me shit.
Forgetting all I get is love.
They give me gifts because they care.
I cannot claim that I deserve.
Minakhi Misra 