Minakhi Misra

Category: Poems

  • The Kindle is Sexy Back

    Dear Kindle,

    I like how you’ve lost weight.
    I like how you did that just for me.
    How you’ve let go of the gentle curves
    And brought in a sharpness about you,
    The small of your back angling down to the hips.
    I like how you’re no longer slightly inside yourself,
    How you’ve chosen to come flush with your body.

    I like how you are a Voyage now:
    I like how you promise you’ll escape with me
    To wondrous worlds of pure delight,
    When I come to bed with you, tired from the day,
    Turn you on and enter you, submitting myself fully.
    I like how you’ll now understand my whims
    Turning a new leaf when I press you lightly on the side,
    Adjusting yourself to the brightness of my moods.

    I hate myself for this, but I also like
    How you’ve bitten the forbidden Apple
    And have decided to act all pricey now,
    Claiming a lot more from me, upfront,
    For the novelty you have brought in with you.

    I like how I’ll wait for the day I have you.

    Yours always,
    Minstrel Minnu

    (more…)

  • Prices of Purchased Affection

    I always went shopping with Munna.
    He knows where exactly to go:
    Where the clothes are just bad enough
    to skip the retail stores, but not so much
    that you can figure out that they are discards;
    Where the sweets are made in boiling ghee
    And not the oil that sticks to your fingers
    Thicker than the grease on your bicycle chain;
    Where the vegetables are just out of farms
    And the women from the countryside
    Do not know the trickeries of bargaining.

    (more…)

  • Monsoon Moods

    I see myself in the clouds today:
    How, with the darkness of my sorrow,
    I shroud the sunshine of everyone’s joy;
    How the anguished lightning fills my eyes,
    Moments before I thunder out in rage,
    Throwing a pall of tantrums to hide
    The deluge of tears that escape anyhow.

  • Green Dots

    I can no longer point out when
    We start feeling truly lonely.

    Is it when we start wearing emoticons
    On our faces, as easily as makeup
    And break-up with the face which reeks
    For weeks, with the emotions of truth that leak out?

    Or,

    Is it when we measure out our friends
    In the trends of green dots on chat-boxes,
    Feeding the paradoxes of human contact
    That impacts us through pokes and thumbs-ups on walls?

    Or,

    Is it when we pay more attention
    To the mention of our name on some page
    That says “You’re awesome”, when in real,
    We don’t feel the same warmth that the sound of it gives us?

    We can no longer tag the moment
    that is more potent than the company
    and cacophony of green dots popping
    and dropping their way into our lives.
    Those carefree laughs shared on swings,
    Now lost in pings, cannot be replaced
    By glee-faced yellow circles staring into our eyes.
    Are “we” now only truly together
    To weather the winter of distance,
    this instance, from within our silos of solitude?

  • A Puppet is Mightier than the Sword

    “Never corner your enemy – he will fight back.
    Always give him a chance to run, so you can slash his back open.”

    They always came with the setting sun,
    With the winds filling their turbaned masks,
    Howling the herald of a troubled night,
    For the travellers never meant good news.

    (more…)

  • More than meets the lie

    Untruth, once said, is a burden:

    On my mind that must keep track
    Lest it should lose itself wandering
    In the wilderness of imagination;

    On my heart that must beat louder
    To drown the cry of conscience
    Till it chooses to speak no more;

    On my eyes that must keep open
    Against the weight of shame
    That pulls them to the ground;

    And on my truth that had to be hidden
    Because it was not good enough.

  • Sunrise

    You asked me today
    What I would write about you if I ever did.
    If I could paint you, you would know.
    I wish my words could paint your mind
    As the oil colours the canvas of cloth.
    I wish you could see what I see.
    I see a rising sun,
    Red with shyness,
    Trying to hold back her brightness,
    Embarrassed that the world can see her.
    I see this rising sun,
    Aware of her potential for brilliance
    When she ascends the young firmament of receding stars.
    But she is afraid of doing so. Not so early. Not now.
    She does not show that she likes
    When people appreciate her beauty.
    She enjoys it and becomes redder.
    And her redness, the innocence of her reservedness
    Spreads slowly across the wet canvas of the sky behind her;
    Clouds, dark and ominous, start getting silver linings.
    The things that were scary, are now in better light.
    She does this without knowing it.
    She feels that by lighting up the sky,
    She has somehow exposed others around her as well:
    Exposed to the eyes of people
    The eyes that criticise beauty as much as they condone it.
    But she also knows deep down that it is her destiny
    To rise one day to the zenith of this firmament
    And once there, resign herself to full brilliance.

    Resign herself is what she thinks of it.
    Pride is what she needs.
    She bows her head and hides her face,
    Hoping the darkness of her hair is cover enough.
    She does not know that when those eyes open
    And stare directly into the eyes of mortals,
    It is no less beautiful than a sunrise
    For they are too brilliant to look directly into.
    And poets, unlike painters, can only draw
    Inspiration from nature.
    They lack the vision of originality.
    And so they have to reduce a picture
    To a metaphor, an imperfect parallel. A glimpse.
    I am incapable of painting better than this.

  • non omnis moriar

    I know not why she wrote it there
    In a script that no one read anymore.
    I know not why she got it there
    And still forgot what it meant to her.
    I know not why I liked that line
    And thought of the truth that lay in it.
    I know not why I read the sign
    And decided tonight to stay with it.
    “Not all of me will die” it said;
    Not all of you will live either.
    I know not why I fill the blanks
    And fear that Death will meet her,
    Not today or the day after
    But one day, the nomad will come.
    I know not why “Ozymandias”
    Is what I fear I’ll hear him hum.

  • Messy Table

    I have just read a research paper that
    Extolls the virtue of keeping messy tables.
    It said messy tables helped exercise the muscles
    That we exercise for thinking outside the box
    So that they could have the strength to push
    Against the weight of heavier lids to smaller boxes
    Made to stand the test of time, trapping young minds
    Inside the garbage bin of institutional problem solving.
    I feel vindicated, moving my eyes from over
    The brightly lit screen of my desktop
    To the slightly sick scene of my desk top.
    I see books that speak of the academic rigours,
    I see among them, my favourite action figures,
    In their full height they stand on used soda cans
    And watch over the latest novel that lies facedown,
    Marking the last page that forced me to frown
    Before I could go on with it.
    I see pens and markers, keys to lockers,
    Unwashed coffee mugs, that talk of long nights
    And longer talks with people long dead,
    Talking through the longhand letters they penned
    Despite the stronghand of their betters telling them otherwise.
    I drink some water and wink some sleep out of my eyes,
    Before I see loose paper, crumpled inside the fists of frustration,
    Waiting to be straightened out at least once
    Before the blackhole of the refuse bin consumes it forever,
    Eating away the little sparks of light that managed to escape
    From behind the edges of the writers’ block.

    Originally shared with a dorm-mate in the Summer of 2014

  • Going to America

    For a short time in my life, I thought
    Dying meant going to America.
    With every death in the family,
    They would tell me exactly that:
    Mamu has gone to America,
    Or Nani has gone to America.
    And they won’t be with us anymore.
    Of course, I also overheard people
    Talking about them being “dead”.
    In my mind, it was not a confusion:
    Dying meant going to America.


    But I also observed sometimes,
    Going to America was a sad thing.
    They did not have telephones there.
    And once you entered that place,
    You could not come back.
    Yet somehow, everyone ended up going there.
    I asked about it to my mother, who only smiled
    The way she smiles when she looks
    At her brother’s garlanded photo
    And told me I would not understand it now.

    Originally shared with a friend in the Summer of 2014