(c) Kushal Poddar
(c) Kushal Poddar
Bio: Kushal Poddar
The author of 'How to Burn Memories Using A Pocket Torch' has nine books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. His poems are labelled as both existential and absurdist.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Remembering Neeli Cherkovski And My Place
"of late a sun
walks over the hill
and settles-in" from For Agneta, Neeli Cherkovski
Sujata brings
some edible green
for the grasshopper.
Blessings can be
in the balance.
Balance means decomposition
sometimes. The grasshopper
reminds her.
The song nighttime bushes sing
opens the eyes of sleep.
Oh, how late it rolls!
Sleep rushes down the steep hill
of loss and settles on my eyes
These bones,
if found millennia later,
may prove a dot in the progress,
evolution, what we have been.
The Arm of An Octopus
My wife tells me about her
sister's husband, about his job,
and its perks, white collar,
opulence. She feels happy
for her sister. She doesn't mean
hurt my ego. I spilled tea,
dropped a spoon, bend and
knock my head against
the wood of the table, break a porcelain.
We joke about apes, fleece,
and other beasts and things.
That night night dreams about
an arm of some octopus. It calls me
in its tick-tock voice. I see what it sees.
An arm but no octopus or
any other appendages.
A lone arm swimming in the dim.
It seeks a purpose, fails in finding
a hold, grasp. Light withers it,
crumbles into sand beneath the fluid.
The Rat, Ants And Some Curried Fear
From the kitchen of the diner
I frequent for the unlimited
streams of lentils and curry
everytime I order a helping of rice
one rat, lean, as if the food
we eat doesn't nourish it,
scoots out. I feel the ebb
of the appetite, even vomit a bit
into the cracked porcelain
basin. In the mirror above the same
my face casts an aging mask
and some ants, tangible albeit indistinct,
crawling carrying curry wrapped rice
slip inside my eyes.
A small noise makes me turn and see
the rat alongside its fright.
I accept one of them as a tenant in my heart.
The Criminal Mind
"I do not possess a criminal mind.
My mind perpetrates the crimes."
He says. His eyes remain on his
cuffed hands. His shoulders forge
an unfinished bridge, engineering flaws.
I comprehend what has happened
in the houses at the other side of the lane.
When we return, the Sun runs between
two ends. It is a child, line survivor
wearing blood over its raw flesh.
I pat its frame, feel the heat. Beneath
the dark circle of my umbrella it
disappears. I shiver. Am I it in this noir?
The Troubling Lines of The Toilet
Some undefined lines shape
the walls and the door of my toilet.
Time shows its two poles these days.
The quivering lines, rebellious ones,
spill out of frames, tilt even
if my head and heart so conspire.
My safety razor falls into the basin
The pool of quasi solid white and
a red thin bloody swirl rises
for one moment and I steady myself
in the next. I stand stiff, a steep slope then.
I hear your concerns. I hear
your knocking. I listen to
the first cuckoo's proclamation of Spring.
If I open the door, if I emerge naked
except a towel python around my neck
will you nest with me again in a world
free of worries and fire in its firmament?
The Dark
After a while I see the pattern-
she apologizes, and
a lightning flash, muted behind
our thick panes, highlights
what dark keeps safe.
There rolls a purposeless wheel.
The tree that bends to survive
doesn't miss the beats.
One bird's flesh, hissing and burnt,
leaves its mark on the path.
The fragments of its nest we see
only for one jiffy, and then the sky darkens.
My sister says, "Sorry."
I turn my head towards the window.
My blood seeks the tilt on the floor.
Shared Ownership
The light and the shadow speckle the path.
My uncle's whispering holds onto his last sentence
as if our argument, uprooted, half dead, matters,
and as if the mathematics of ownership
proportion matters, and as if matters matter.
All wane. All dissolve. All are the love letters
written to the dear ego at the instance
of some authority, now shredded, burnt after reading.
The garden grows, but does not follow
the landscape we designed.
A shadow toddles this way. He sings
a drunkard's notion of a fine song.
My uncle keeps talking.
Guest-starring In The City of the Rats
The rat in throes
stumbles through the backdoor
of the very eatery I lunched in
and convulses.
I watch it struggle
with the burden of death
and wonder about the victuals I had.
The venom forms a pool
near the end of the pest.
Some ragpicker bares
his two missing teeth,
"We guest-star in the City of the Rats,
and it's matinee."
I vomit. The road with its cars,
all similar, and its crowd,
all masked after eachother,
blurs and emerges from the bokeh.
Up my spine a vermin runs.
Soon the shock will be an addiction.
We Have A Fence Around Memories
The fence, bamboos with hearts
pierced by the wires, keeps
our rock garden within the acre.
Some dreams show them
crawl away, skip on the water
of neighbour's koi pond.
I ask my wife, "What's the point?"
She says, "Something exists
only because it does."
She fumbles for a better articulation.
I hold the pole of the rake.
The season of puzzling over
a word stuck in the head
uprooted from its meaning is here.
Fevers of the Mind 