In carrying down the fumbling flame,
My slippers slip on lichen steps
That lead into the blackened pond.
My knees are knees reflected in
The rippling water pulling me.
My arms are arms of nearby trees
The monkey troupes are highwaying.
He must be blinking heavy sighs –
The one who always stood so firm,
Unshaken but for grumbling lips –
Receiving bumbling offerings.
I’ve trussed myself in narratives,
Inextricably intertwined,
Of who I am and who I’m not,
For none are a convincing rope
To hang my dreams with hustle clips,
Or hang myself with dignity.
The fires underneath me grow.
I fan it with my every throe.
The “easy” tetrameter rhyme
Makes reading so enjoyable –
Despite the claims of “cringe”, remains
Effectively employable.
The “busy” pentameter verse,
Though blessed by Milton and the Bard,
Makes reading it so “dronorous”,
The reader feels like full retard.
I took our words from WhatsApp chats
And sieved out all connector words,
And passed the rest through AI code
To get a glimpse of what we talk
And what we seem to leave alone.
It did not help we speak three tongues
And often mix them all at once.
It did not help we make up words
And often misspell ones we don’t.
It did, however, help to know
We speak sarcasm fluently,
But only when we start a fight.
Results are underwhelming, though.
The AI says we are in love
And not just kids who talk of love.
The AI says we are at risk
Of getting bored and ending things.
The AI says we are confused
Of who we are and what to do.
The AI says we are okay,
No matter what the AI says.
The point, I think, is merely this:
We’ll love until we’re tired of it.
And pray we’re never tired of it.
She twirls into a sudden dance,
Or scribbles with her crayon green,
Or hums a tune she’s never heard,
Or all together: single thing.
She’s not an -er or -ess or -ist.
She doesn’t wear those lanyard nouns.
She’s happy doing just the verb
In tearing, browning, smelling gowns.
“A shame,” she says at eighty-three.
“I took so long to just recall
How as a child I never thought
I had to separate them all.”
Genetics is genetics was.
Mutations occur rare.
Mutations occur and survive?
Rarer than the rare.
A werewolf breeds a werewolf too.
The werewolf gene survives.
So, even ones who do not bite,
Are loath to take up wives.
Our bubblegum relationship,
Its flavour dead by seventh chew,
Is down to simply chewing on
For sake of simply chewing on
This bland pastiche of sweeter times.
Except, perhaps, when asinine
Emotions make us blow up thin
With airs that, silent, stay within
Until they tear us with the pop
Of pistols at the Shoot’Em shop.
Perhaps, it’s time we spit it out
And stick it up Society’s seat.
She opened shop at 6am
And sat in there till ten at night.
You went to her for bidi, paan,
Suppulu, daantikili bites.
You also went to her for sass,
For, man, she had a saucy tongue.
You went to her for asking who
“Forgot” to clean their cattle’s dung.
For that is what she did the best.
She monitored the street entire.
She knew when bulls were in the heat,
And men had groins itching fire.
You often overheard her tell
A pregnant, newly wedded bride,
“You have to let him do you more.
He’s started sprinkling walls outside.”
You often overheard her scoff
At men who bragged of honest work.
“If I start selling alcohol,
There’s not a day that you won’t shirk.”
She’d seen her husband die of lust
And lost a son to spurious drink.
She saw a grandson smoking up
And tottering around the brink.
On rainy days, you saw her cry.
The pattering unnerved her so.
But even on the cyclone days
She wouldn’t close her shop and go.
For nothing waited back at home,
Except a silent misery.
Her living son, a beating brute.
His wife, a pot of trickery.
And so, when age caught up with her,
When she became banana-shaped,
When walnut lids restrained her eyes,
She planned her terminal escape.
No matter what she tried, alas,
Her son, his wife, would foil her plans.
They lived on pension she received
For government service of her man.
And that is how two decades passed,
Until she couldn’t hear or talk
Or see or feel or eat or sleep
Or even get up for a walk.
Whenever there were drums of death,
She’d feel them shaking up her bones.
You’d hear her scream into her dark
And shiver at her drumming moans.
Tonight, the drums are all alone.
No scream, no moan, no wailing voice.
Tonight, at ninety-three, she passed
Amidst a soundless raining noise.
The pill that holds the pain at bay,
The one that drowns the voices loud,
It also keep my muse away,
No poem passes through its shroud.
The doctor says I should not write,
At least, on days I take the pill.
The doctor says I’m wasting time
In sharpening a useless skill.
It’s easy to get “serious”.
They teach you that in nursery
With rulered hands and fingered lips;
In jobs, with carrot-coloured sticks;
Online, where everything offends;
On TV, where they all defend
The shaming of the “too relaxed”.
Pretending to be stressed and taxed –
Though everyday we do the drill –
Is not a differentiating skill.
It does not catch the pretty eyes,
Nor give someone the butterflies.
It does not earn revered trust,
Nor give your loved ones needed thrust.
It does not help them understand.
Instead, it shows that you demand
Their latitude, while you have none.
That you’re the more important one.
Minakhi Misra 