Category: Poems

Some days, I find my Muse’s song
A little too unsavoury,
And so I find myself in hunt
Of ideas more suitable.

I walk up to the kitchen nook,
Surround myself with poem books,
And peel a book at any page,
Another at another page,
Another, yet another page,
And so on till I open all,
And take the words in as they fall,
And spin them in my blender brain
Until a novel metaphor
Arises from their pulped remains.

I taste it with the confidence
Of Cheetahs chewing bovine cud
To get insights into the minds
Of unsuspecting customers.
I like the sweetened aftertaste
And so conclude it must be good
Enough to pass for daily bread,
While hoping that, some day instead,
A better Muse will bring my food.

He was the first to smell the smokiness
Arriving palanquined on summer Loo.

He was the first to see the wood and straw:
As wet as femur bones in dusty trunks.

He was the first to call the one-o-one.
The trucks were reprioritised away.

He was the first to make the news, “Infer-
-no! Suspected amputee on the run.”

Gather mickles,
Get a muckle.

Gather nickels,
Get a knuckle.

Gather fickles,
Get a fuckall.

It’s not as simple as it looks.
The bad are simply verses yet
To make their way to better worth.
The bad are never meant as bad.
Upon the writing, they are filled
With ambition that’s just as grand,
And optimism just as high,
As any poem labeled good.
They come in from the very place
That better ones do come in from.
It may, of course, be just the case
Of coming out on different days.

If I write a throwaway line
Do I have to throw it away?
Or can I use it in a text
And hope no one notices?
Or do I write it stricken-through
And show how I could think of lines
But still have my judgment about
To let you know it wasn’t the one?

If I write a throwaway poem
Do I have to throw it away?
Or can I slip it gently in
Between a good and a very good one
And pretend I was simply setting the stage?

If I write a throwaway …
Oh alright. I’ll throw it away.
There. I threw it into the … oh my!

If I could write as fast as thought,
I may capture the beat of Time
And so produce some poetry
That’s better than the ones produced
By thoughtful poets, live and dead,
Who labour over every word
And every mark of punctuation
And every single break of line
And every single turn and jamb
And every single this and that
To match the innate frequency
Of echoes from the boundless Space.

I haven’t got the wish or ink
To paint the town in red and run.
Instead, the milder pastel pink
Is what I prefer for my fun.

I like my mornings coffee brown,
And evenings acrylic blue.
And so the colour of the town
Has got to be a lighter hue.

I like the rose’s popping head;
Hibiscus, proud in portrait view.
And hence, the town cannot be red
For them to stand out as they do.

I like my fellow Indian man
Who sees a corner wanting use.
A reddish town will drown his plan
To spray his chewed up betel juice.

I like my fellow Indian bride
Who dresses up to catch the eye.
A reddish town will tend to hide
Her saree worth the price of sky.

So, now you know my reasons why
I cannot paint the town in red.
So, let me get this ink to dry
And let you pink the town instead.

If I sit at this desk, like so,
Will I write a poem?
Probably.

If I press this pen down, like so,
Will ideas flow out of it?
Probably.

If I squiggle questions in lines, like so,
Will the answers be straight?
Probably.

If I make that a dialogue, like so,
Will that be poetry?
Probably.

If I send it to people, like so,
Will they think it poetry?
Pfft.

My hands got used to pen and page
And find it hard to type with grace
Upon the QWERTY on the Mac
Which used to be the only place
I wrote my lines in for my verse
And wrote my lies in for my work.
Though now my thumbs can swipe a screen,
The other fingers feel a jerk
As I attempt to type on Mac
The type of things that make me doubt
If this is what I studied for,
If this is what my life’s about.

I have become addicted to
The gait of words on trotting feet:
da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM
And so it goes in every line.

The sound obeys the tides of tongues
And rolls before you notice how
You have a music in your mouth
Without a sign of rhyme or break.

And yet it carries on its back
The ebb and flow of reasoned thought:
And now clement, and now intense,
And all the while at steady pace.

It needs no one to know its name.
It lives and works for readers’ joy.
I know the name they write in books:
The iambic tetrameter.