Why do they label a poem “derivative”
When all it does is approximate
The infinitisimally limited
Direction of human experience,
Charted (by them, mind you)
As a continuum of crucifixions
Of its expression (by artists and diarists
And traveling, chronicling historians)
On the axes of achievement and emotion,
Just to make a few points?
Do they forget sometimes that
The essence of a human age
Can be calculated by integrating
Its poetry over that period?
When yesterday the monkeys stole
Our peels of corn and coconut
To drop into our backyard well,
I only saw the monkeys steal
Our peels of corn and coconut
To drop into our backyard well.
It’s only when I peed today
To drain the en-saids from my veins,
I saw them for the physicists
Who tried to test Galileo,
Controlling for the autumn draft
That often plagues the Pisa lab.
The pills are killing more than pain.
I found a fence of staggered stone
Around abandoned greenhouses –
A centre tall, two broken wings –
That had been moulting shattered glass.
A kid was plucking ripe granite:
A final meal for a fallen Roc.
1.
Spaghetti on a clothesline taut
Returns to drawer or washing tub
Depending on the pigeon’s food.
2.
The drones emerging from the train
Return to hives or nectar bars
Depending on their honey’s mood.
3.
The dog-eared haikus in this book
Return to bark or lick my wounds
Depending on my gratitude.
A schoolyard fence proclaims this quote:
“The wise are those who ask the whys.”
Graffitied underneath, a note:
“The lice are those who spread these lies.”
And to the side, the silhouettes
Of children busy scratching heads.
They say the Master read a lot
In secret, silence, solitude.
And so, they say, his haiku’s not
Originally virginal.
They point at eighteen thousand lines,
And, shrugging, claim they cannot know
If in the cherry-blossomed snow,
The Master buried evidence.
From where I see, the Master saved
(If at all he plagiarized)
The poetry that no one cared
To keep so deeply memorized.
And if you ask me who he was:
A voracious reader, sure.
Avaricious writer, more,
Who pries into his present tense
And pays the price of making sense
To pilfer moments that comprise
The prize of living daily lives.
It injured me to see her read
A poem I had texted her.
Her narrow screen and largish font
Were wrapping down my metered lines,
Distorting chiseled, sculpted form.
I ran a finger on her screen,
“It’s meant to be a single line
A single movement, left to right,
Of eyes, of mind, of breathing voice.”
I pinched to show her what I meant.
She ran a finger down my face,
“It’s meant to flow into my heart.
So, let it flow the way I want.
I like it when it wraps me in.”
She pinched my chiseled, sculpted nose.
A middle glaciers out of me.
A word, an image, something small,
Atomic with two valencies:
A good beginning, worthy end.
And if I want to make it flow
I better get the start and end
To match like hydrogen protons
That swim around an oxygen.
It’s best if there’s a little turn,
A Mickey Mouse of three quatrains
Transporting readers’ minds aboard
A Steamboat Willie whistling off.
You pinged me at the chime of three,
“Oh sweetie, have you gone to sleep?”
I saw the notif, saw the time,
And saw the price of answering.
And yet, I saw my fingers swipe,
“Some nights are just too beautiful
To drone away in snoring sleep.”
“What makes tonight so beautiful?”
“The power’s out. Been out for hours.
The moon’s translucing through the clouds,
The cateyes shining through their shrouds,
And not a single human light.”
Except the glare I’m staring at.
“A punctuated silence moves
Through steady rain on metal rooves,
Through crickets cricking in a groove,
And not a single human sound.”
Except the pinging of your words.
“A beloved sleeping somewhere else.
Afar, her bosom’s dips and swells.
Afar, embracing sentinels.
And not a single human touch.”
Except these haptic responses.
“I’m sorry I disturbed it, then.”
“Oh no, you didn’t disturb it, love.”
Except, you ruined it. With my help.
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.
Minakhi Misra 