Author: Minakhi Misra

The underdressed are overclothed
In either insecurities
Or blissful, misplaced confidence
Or manifold preponderance
Of things to deeply ponder on.
It seldom is a poverty
Of means, but meaning, that prevents
The underdressed from arguments
In favour of being favoured by
The ones who dress for favouring
Themselves than those are neighboring.
And so, I won’t go shopping. No!

It’s best I do not know her well.
Just Lust. No whistle, nor no bell.
No see you later, call me, text.
No need to answer what is next.
Just breakfast – coffee, loneliness.
Just loathing self – I’m such a mess.
It’s best she doesn’t know me well.
It keeps intact her private hell.

I wake up to her fevered lips.
The nape? The neck? No, shoulder curve.
No other touch. No other place.
A kiss of Love that’s only Love.
No other string. No other name.
I say her name. The lips depart.
I turn and see her be the dawn
Intruding on my Sunday sleep.

When Socrates “apologised”
With hemlock pints at seventy,
His Plato was but thirty years
As I was when my Socrates
“Apologised” at seventy.
As Rumi whitened silently
At setting of his solar Shams,
I daily whiten violently
In self-inflicted choler tongues.

They suffered as I suffer now
From painful knowledge of the truth,
Of knowing that our sheltered lives
Have taught us nothing worth a tooth.
We suffer knowing we don’t know,
And just repeat what we have heard,
With no originality,
Except in eloquence of words.

But then, the two didn’t give all up.
Accepting their deficiency
They humbled into writing down
The wisdom of their gurujis.
And through the years of writing them
And much mythologizing them,
The older Plato, Rumi shone
With brighter wisdoms of their own.

And this is why I am not them.
My eyes are still on my own fame.
I want to write my father’s words
To piggyback upon his name.
No Plato, Rumi fate for me.
Just fatal anonymity.

I claim that prose is easier.
And yet I hardly prove my claim.
The form is brutal in essence.
The cleverness of turns of phrase
Is met with lower tolerance
Than poetry of equal grace
And equal lack of meatiness.
(Is poetry just vegan prose?)
It’s easier to disappoint.
It’s easier to get it wrong.
For there are clear rights and wrongs
In prose that poetry escapes.
Is this a poem plain as prose?
Or prose in gait of poetry?
It walks a craven middle path.
It does not put its neck on lines.
It fills the time like nine-to-fives.
It kills the time like five-to-nines.
As meaningful as blurry days.
And guarded just as preciously.

The journal of an emperor,
The letters of a statesman doomed,
The lectures of a former slave,
Are all the works that come to us
From half a century of thoughts
Sojourning on a painted porch.
And yet, in every century
They find a champion of their cause,
And many strong practitioners,
And many weak pretenders too,
And many who appropriate
This way of life into their own:

Remember that you too will die.
Embrace your fate, though good or bad.
You don’t control what falls on you,
But do control how you respond.
Do not lament. Do not revel.
Just focus on what’s in your hand.
The obstacle becomes the way
When actions come from virtues four
Of Justice, Courage, Temperance,
And Wisdom showing which is what.
Your self is all there is to rule,
But don’t remain within yourself.
Participate responsibly
To shoulder everything you can.
And when you can’t, rebuild yourself.
Make every moment worth the while.
Remember that you too will die.

My Read-It-Later bookmark apps
Are full of isolated Its.
No Later ever comes to Read.

What comes is simply FOMO, Guilt
When every time I hit that Save,
That Pocket, Raindrop, Ribbon, Heart.

And then there are the Paperbacks.
They overflow all tables, beds.
My Kindle scroll is infinite.

Two other words soon rescue me:
“Tsundoku” of the Japanese,
And Eco’s “Anti-Library”.

They both remind humility:
There’s more, much more, to read, to know.
The Unread are our talismans.

My mother balks at West in East,
As if there is no East in West.

As if the arbitrary line
That separates the East from West
Is more unmoving than the land
And sea and those inhuman climes
That put some hundred years between
What people thought this side, that side.

As if unearthing ancient ties
Between the words that cast a light
On culture (that is, stuff of being)
Is just an academic trite.

Like, Wine and Venus – tempting twines
For men in need of tempered minds –
Arise from same Sanskritic root:
The “vêna” or “beloved”. Nice!
Or, Video and Idea –
Two words that make you say, “I see…”
Arise from Sanskrit vision word:
The “vidyā” that is “wisdom”. Gee!

And all she has to say to this?
“I see! They stole our words from us!”

To walk through cobwebbed stale perfume
Of biscuits stood up on their dates,
And hear the ghosted furniture
Complaining to refugee rats.

To strain against the stubbornness
Of flaking bolts on shuttered storms,
Secure in rusted couplings hinged
On termite-eaten memory.

To strum again forgotten strings
In corners of undusted hearts
And watch the whirling Sufi motes
Ascend the grace of filtered dawn.

(After Portia Nelson)

1.
I walk into the local store,
The only one that sells my stuff.
I pick my stuff and say my Hi,
He smiles and prints me out a bill.
The price has gone up yet again.
I show the price on packaging.
He shrugs and says, “It’s up to you.”
I stuff the stuff into my bag.
Then pull it out and shelf it back.
Then push it back into the bag.
Then push the bag on to the shelf.
I walk out empty-handed. Fast.

2.
I walk into the local store,
The only one that sells my stuff.
I pick my stuff and say my Hi,
He smiles and prints me out a bill.
The price has gone up yet again.
I pay it, walk out with my bag.

3.
I walk into the local store,
The only one that sells my stuff.
I pick my stuff and say my Hi,
He smiles and prints me out a bill.
The price has gone up yet again.
I quote the price from yesterday.
He shrugs and says, “It’s up to you.”
I walk out empty-handed. Slow.

4.
I walk into the local store,
The only one that sells my stuff.
I pick my stuff and say my Hi,
He smiles and prints me out a bill.
The price has gone up yet again.
I walk out, hear, “It’s up to you.”

5.
I walk into the local store,
The only one that sells my stuff.
I pick my stuff and say my Hi,
He smiles and prints me out a bill.
The price has gone up yet again.
I empty out my stolen gun,
Erase the CCTV files,
And wake up from my fantasy.

6.
I walk into another store.