Minakhi Misra

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  • I Don’t Like Waiting

    Why do you think it’s okay
    To take my time for granted?
    I value your attention.
    And all I’ve ever wanted
    Is for you to value mine.
    How difficult is that?
    If you won’t give an answer,
    Don’t say you will get back.
    Don’t beat around the bushes
    Like lawyers prevaricate
    When they don’t like an offer,
    But won’t tell it to your face.
    Don’t leave me in the dark here.
    Both yay and nay are fine.
    Just tell me now, if ever,
    Will you be my valentine?

    October 18, 2021

  • Letting Go

    The art of letting feelings go
    Begins with losing all you know.
    For what you know is dear to you.
    And dearness is a feeling too.
    This game is not a finite game.
    Your every moment is the same.
    Your feeling comes, you feel it grow.
    Observe it now and let it go.
    Your feeling comes, you feel it stay.
    Observe it here, then peel away.
    Your feeling comes, you feel it is.
    Observe it so and stay in peace.
    Your feeling comes… you get the drift?
    Accept the feeling as a gift.

    October 17, 2021

  • Gaah!

    Again I struggle with ink today.
    At the paper blank, I blink today.

    With the streak at stake, about to break,
    I find myself at the brink today.

    The street’s so quiet, muse on diet,
    I am on my own, I think, today.

    In form I trust, for write I must:
    Some ghazal couplets I link today.

    These muddy lines, like spilled over wines,
    To my shamelessness, I drink today.

    Do you hear the scare? “Misra, beware!
    Your words are going to stink today.”

    October 16, 2021

  • Gajapati

    At the portrait of the man, I frown:
    Is he getting up or sitting down?
    The chair and crown are still his for sure,
    And the heirs around seem to endure
    His testing presence among their kind.
    And he must rest his august behind,
    For age has set in, and so has gout.
    His rage is sharp, though, without a doubt.
    He will holler on for two years more
    While his heirs die crawling on the floor,
    Each punished for High Conspiracy:
    Ambition over intimacy.
    The throne will pass to the cowherd king
    Whose prowess today our children sing.

    October 15, 2021

  • Twelve Kilometers

    The fifteenth lap around the track
    Was when I first became aware
    Of dust on my emerging jaw
    And itch in my eroding hair.

    For with no music in my ears,
    No tracker band around my wrist,
    I wondered how I ran so long
    And how my mind did not resist.

    October 14, 2021

  • Rooftop Bots

    I hum a tune about the moon
    While watering some rooftop pots.
    But then I spy a distant eye
    On me from other rooftop spots.
    At once I freeze, full of unease,
    Aware of all the rooftop shots
    Her iPhone takes, as she makes
    Her drone fly over rooftop lots.
    I turn around to the buzzing sound
    To see the drone in rooftop knots
    Of clotheslines, as tangled vines,
    Hatching their own rooftop plots
    To catch all spies, and foil their tries,
    Defending us from rooftop bots.

    October 13, 2021

  • At Ease

    He’s eaten nothing all day
    Except his own words
    At the end of sentences,
    Which he washes down
    With an occasional sip
    Of the electrolyte water
    On his bedside table.

    He’s read nothing all day
    Except his own palms,
    Cupped as a folded leaf,
    I don’t know whether to
    Receive divine healing grace
    Or offer up his own divinity
    To the nondual infinite.

    His beatific smile is scaring me.

    October 12, 2021

  • How to catch a petty thief

    It was the year 2007, when
    A new Inspector of Police
    Visited our street and asked around,
    Who steals the municipal water taps?
    The street responded as it always does:
    Must be the ghosts on the tamarind tree.
    The Inspector blinked as others had before.
    His Constables also smiled for a bit
    But quickly looked down again, perhaps,
    To investigate the splatter pattern
    Of litres and litres of spilled water.

    This was the seventh tap to be stolen,
    And the seventh time the pipe had peed
    Into the street, like morning kids,
    Long after the women had left
    With heads and armpits and hips full
    Of large pots and larger gossip.
    The Police of past had failed to nab
    The ghosts who took the taps away,
    But the new Inspector declared aloud
    That he will catch the petty thief.

    The next day a new tap was fixed.
    And on the tamarind tree was tied
    Two closed-circuit TV cameras,
    The cross-eyes of Blindfolded Justice:
    One looking up the street,
    One looking down the street,
    With a long optic nerve descending
    And entering a grilled window where
    The Inspector had taken permission
    To leave a powered magnetic brain
    That he called a CPU
    But the street heard as Seipeyu,
    The daughter deity of Mother Goddess
    Who watched over the street’s safety.

    A few weeks passed with no event
    And the Inspector sat up proudly tall
    Each time he passed by in his Jeep
    Until the day he held in his hand
    A severed optic nerve lying down
    With no tap on the pipe
    And no cameras on the tree
    And lots of water on the street.
    He took the CPU away.

    Next day, the women filled their pots,
    And laughed aloud at the Inspector’s
    “Extra oversmart idea”
    That had so many gaping blindspots.
    That was when he came in his Jeep
    And sent a lady constable
    To cuff one of the laughing maids
    And take her back to the Police Station.
    The women around raised alarm
    And within two blinks came armed men
    With sharp blades and sharper eyes
    And a deficiency of self-restraint.

    The Inspector had predicted this
    And pointed his baton up and straight
    When two constables came running out
    With large printed gray-scale photos
    Of the woman cutting and stealing.
    The people knew from the photo angle
    The camera had been in the grilled window
    Where the Inspector had left the CPU.
    The Inspector then brought it out,
    Placed it on his Jeep’s bonnet,
    Removed the outer metal cover
    To reveal a glimpse of divinity
    Where the large exhaust holes had been.
    The people saw Seipeyu’s third eye:
    A webcam looking straight at them
    Burning down their aggression.
    The Inspector asked his constable
    To step back into the Jeep
    With the cuffs but without the maid,
    And himself stood tall and told them all
    He’s exorcised the tamarind tree.

    And truly it has been fourteen years
    Since a tap has been spirited away.

    October 11, 2021

  • Stepping Up

    Sometimes I dream of you.
    And in those dreams
    You come not
    As you are now,
    But as you were
    All those years ago.

    No.
    That is a lie –
    You come
    As the one
    I used to dream of
    Back then.
    As the person
    I chose to see in you,
    Instead of the one
    Who was really there
    Standing with me.

    I haven’t stepped-up
    In all these years,
    Have I?

    October 10, 2021

  • Eagle

    It circles alone across cyan skies
    On spring noons, wings outstretched,
    Looking for someone, anyone willing,
    To give a big warm feathery hug.

    We stare at each other every day,
    But when I don’t open my own arms,
    It pretends it was just practising
    Posing like Shah Rukh Khan.

    I opened my arms wide today.
    Closed my eyes too, welcoming.
    But it sat on its perch, head crooked,
    Letting me know how it daily feels.

    God! I need a hug today.

    October 9, 2021

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